Amateur radio, space, technology and other geeky stuff by Alexandru Csete
A lot has happened since I posted my ugly hacks required to take advantage of the H.264 compressor in the Logitech C920 webcam. Gstreamer 1.2 now includes a uvch264src that can be used to read H.264 encoded video stream from the camera eliminating the need for an external capture application.
Continue reading “Using the Logitech C920 webcam with Gstreamer 1.2”
Few weeks ago I posted some notes about using the Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920 with Gstreamer. I have since ported the setup to the Beaglebone, effectively turning my Beaglebone into a streaming IP camera that can deliver constant bitrate H.264 video at full 1920x1080p30 resolution without breaking a sweat.
Continue reading “Turning the Beaglebone into a high definition IP camera”
You may already know about my existing enthusiasm for Logitech webcams, which is due to the combination of relatively good image quality, high resolution and easy to use UVC interface. I was therefore very happy to learn about their newest camera, the HD Pro Webcam C920, which in addition to the standard HD webcam stuff we already know from the C910, also provides hardware encoded H.264 video stream! This is rather new and there isn’t much software that can take advantage of it; however, with a little tweaking and hacking we can get the H.264 stream into Gstreamer, where after we can do pretty much whatever we want.
Continue reading “Using the Logitech C920 webcam with Gstreamer”
I’m happy to report that I am now able to encode video on the Gumstix Overo Water using the DSP in the OMAP3530. It wasn’t difficult to make it work but it took several attempts at building the kernel before I got it right and, as you might know, cross compilation takes time.
Wednesday evening the Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 UVC camera and the Gumstix Overo Fire based video recorder have been integrated into the rocket. I will not have access to them before the launch day on Sunday. Shown below is the camera and video recorder integrated into the rocket.
We will be using the Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 for the flight, streaming MJPG video in 640×480 at 30 fps. Although the camera can stream even 1280×720 at 30 fps the USB interface on the Gumstix Overo Fire can not keep up with the required data rate. So here is a test video recorded as JPEG frames in an AVI container – just like it will be recorded by the Gumstix Overo Fire during the flight.
Apparently, Youtube is not very good to process MJPG video (fair enough since MJPG is a sucker anyway) so you should definitely try the source video (35 MB AVI).
I have been quite busy since the last update trying various options for recording MJPG video using a Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 and the Gumstix Overo Fire embedded computer. The good news is that there has been significant progress reported in the following sections.
It has been a busy night but I have made good progress with the Gumtix Overo Fire. Today’s report is action packed with kernel panics, painful downgrades and a working webcam.
Continue reading “Kernel panic, accidental downgrade and working webcam”
Few days ago I found out the Ustream now has its own desktop application for broadcasting – Ustream Producer. I decided to give it a try, in particular since I am looking for a portable setup and I do not have a Mac laptop.