CCTV Monitoring on Joggler

[jimeney]

I'm trying to monitor some simple IP cameras using the joggler but not having great success so far. I'm running sqPOS installed to MMC and have tried the following:

1. Install Firefox and open the HTML page for the camera. The video begins to stream but after a while the browser crashes (presumably running out of memory or similar because of the javascript constantly hitting the camera for the images)
2. Install VLC and open the stream from the camera (VLC appears to be broken, and installing it stops the Joggler from booting needing a reflash to fix)
3. Install gnome-mplayer and open the stream from this (doesn't appear to work, just shows as stopped on the stream).

Does anyone have any suggestions? I know sqPOS supports video, but can't see a way to force it to open the camera's URL. I guess I could try XMBC and open the stream from here?

Many thanks,

James

[roobarb!]

Try using something more lightweight than Firefox - I'd recommend Midori. May well be more stable.

[pete]

Relating to HDIP CCTV cams....

I am doing this today with XBMC and VLC in Linux.

In XP I am also doing it with XBMC and VLC.

Relating to XBMC just creating favorites.

I have not tried it with SP yet.

[johnnygal]

Did you get anywhere with this? I would like to do this on my SqueezePlayOS installation.

I have installed midori but how do you run it up when SPOS is running?

I tried PuTTYing in and calling it from the terminal line but I get "Cannot open display". I tried setting the env variable DISPLAY to 127.0.0.1:0.0 but same effect.

Thanks.

[roobarb!]

I have installed midori but how do you run it up when SPOS is running?

Edit the .xinitrc file to fire up Midori instead of SqueezePlay:

Code: Select all

nano ~/.xinitrc

Then swap out the line that fires up SqueezePlay and add in your own for Midori.

[johnnygal]

Ok, thanks for that roobarb.

I was kind of hoping that I could be running Squeezeplay listening to music/slideshows/etc and fire up midori (initiated remotely using ssh) to display an IP camera stream when someone calls at the door. Sounds like I'm asking too much

[jimeney]

I've never figured out how to launch something remotely on whats essentially another user session as anything you do through ssh runs within the confines of that ssh session. I muddle through with linux so there may be someone here who can tell us otherwise. Whats possible however is creating a new menu item in sqpOS that launches midori on top of squeezeplay - see this post where I give an example of how to fire a shell script from a new link on the power menu: http://www.jogglerwiki.com/forum/viewto ... f=2&t=1271

Its not perfect as it requires ssh to kill the browser (the touchscreen is too fiddly) and requires you installing fluxbox as a window manager so you essentially spawn a window manager on top of squeezeplay, with the browser on top of that (spawning the browser directly resulted in a window that didnt fill the screen)

Again, my linux knowledge isn't too great, so theres probably a better way of doing this.

[johnnygal]

Thanks for that. I will have a look at this over the weekend.

[roobarb!]

You could do it by having a script running on the Joggler watching for some kind of change, or perhaps a CGI script that waits for an incoming HTTP call. That script could then run Midori when triggered, sleep for a bit, then kill Midori to reveal SqueezePlay again.

To have a script running on the Joggler have an app appear on the display, just make sure that you have:

Code: Select all

export DISPLAY=:0.0

In your script. That tells it what display it should be using, otherwise it will error out as it won't know where to show Midori.

[johnnygal]

You could do it by having a script running on the Joggler watching for some kind of change, or perhaps a CGI script that waits for an incoming HTTP call. That script could then run Midori when triggered, sleep for a bit, then kill Midori to reveal SqueezePlay again.

To have a script running on the Joggler have an app appear on the display, just make sure that you have:

Code: Select all

export DISPLAY=:0.0

In your script. That tells it what display it should be using, otherwise it will error out as it won't know where to show Midori.

Cracking idea. Thanks.

[jimeney]

Any ideas on why launching the browser from a menu in squeezeplay results in it not taking up all the screen, versus launching fluxbox and then subsequently the browser on top of this which works ok, but means the steps to closing this are closing the browser and then exiting fluxbox?

[johnnygal]

Still playing about here trying to get my camera stream working but I have found if you drag the lower right corner of the midori window to make it full screen, then exit midori (cleanly), it remembers this size the next time you launch it.

[johnnygal]

I want to try chromium too. How did you install it as the apt-add-repository doesn't seem to be installed?

[johnnygal]

I want to try chromium too. How did you install it as the apt-add-repository doesn't seem to be installed?

Ahh, ok. Manually added to sources.list so have it now.

[roobarb!]

Any ideas on why launching the browser from a menu in squeezeplay results in it not taking up all the screen, versus launching fluxbox and then subsequently the browser on top of this which works ok, but means the steps to closing this are closing the browser and then exiting fluxbox?

SqueezePlay (well, the display plugin for SQP) is hard-coded to 800x480 and it use the whole screen without a proper window manager being present.

I know Midori doesn't like not having a window manager telling it what it's got to play with, so Fluxbox will be providing what it needs. You could always just run Fluxbox first, along with SqueezePlay. It shouldn't hurt.

[johnnygal]

I have had more luck with chromium.

It runs up pretty much full screen. I only need to view the camera for a short while when someone is at the door, so far have had no issues. You can also set it so the address bar is hidden giving maximum screen area for the camera stream itself.

[roobarb!]

Super - on the Raspberry Pi I've found Chromium to be a real resource hog, but for your use case it sounds like it fits the bill nicely! We've got a fair bit more x86 horsepower than a Pi, though.

[roger l]

As a slight digression from this flow. I have my webcams viewable through the jogglers. I am using PNP III as the native OS and I have an orbcaster account http://www.orb.com/en/download.html
When I have Orb logged in on the local PC, it shows under UPNP and allows access to libraries, internet TV and Webcams. You have to set the webcams up on the Orb control panel web based set up, but it can all be customised to stream. I have two remote webcams both viewable full screen. Has never stopped working.