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Opencast Camera Control

Control PTZ camera to move to certain presets when starting a scheduled recording.

This tool communicates with Opencast to get scheduled events for a list of configured capture agents. When an event starts, cameras configured to be part of the agent's setup are then automatically turned to an active position specified by a configurable camera preset. When the event ends, the camera is turned back to a neutral position.

This allows you, for example, to automatically turn cameras to the wall when no recordings are active.

opencast-camera-control.mp4

(Camera moves when a one minute scheduled recording starts and returns to point at the wall at the end)

Installation

PIP

We release Opencast Camera Control via the Python Package Index. This means you can easily install the tool via pip:

❯ pip install opencast-camera-control
❯ opencast-camera-control

RPM Repository

On RHEL 9 like distributions (CentOS Stream, Rocky, Alma, …) you can use the RPM repository to install Opencast Camera Control. Install the repository by adding a file /etc/yum.repos.d/opencast-camera-control.repo:

[opencast-camera-control]
name = Opencast camera control el$releasever repository
baseurl  = https://raw.githubusercontent.com/virtUOS/opencast-camera-control/rpm-el$releasever/
enabled  = 1
gpgcheck = 1
gpgkey = https://raw.githubusercontent.com/virtUOS/opencast-camera-control/rpm-el$releasever/opencast-camera-control.key

Then activate the EPEL repository and install opencast-camera-control:

❯ dnf install -y epel-release
❯ dnf install -y opencast-camera-control

The RPM packages provide a Systemd unit to run the tool as service:

❯ systemctl start opencast-camera-control.service
❯ systemctl enable opencast-camera-control.service

Container

We also provide a container image. A simple docker compose example would look like this

---
services:
  camera-control:
    image: ghcr.io/virtuos/opencast-camera-control:0.3.0
    container_name: opencast-camera-control
    ports:
      - '8000:8000'
    volumes:
      - './your_config.yml:/etc/camera-control.yml'

Configuration

Take a look at the camera-control.yml configuration file. All available options are documented in there.

The tool uses the first configuration it can find. It looks for files in the following order:

  • ./camera-control.yml
  • ~/camera-control.yml
  • /etc/camera-control.yml

You can provide custom configuration files using the --config option:

❯ opencast-camera-control --config custom-config.yml

Supported Cameras

The tool supports PTZ cameras from Panasonic and Sony. The following cameras have been confirmed to be working:

  • Panasonic AW-UE50
  • Panasonic AW-UE70
  • Sony SRG-300SE
  • Sony SRG-X120

Opencast User

To improve security, you can limit the access rights for the Opencast user by creating a user which has only the role ROLE_CAPTURE_AGENT assigned.

Metrics

You can enable an OpenMetrics endpoint in the configuration. This can give you insight into current camera positions and will report occurring errors.

The resulting metrics data will look like this:

# HELP request_errors_total Number of errors related to HTTP requests
# TYPE request_errors_total counter
request_errors_total{ressource="http://camera-3-panasonic.example.com",type="ConnectionError"} 77.0
request_errors_total{ressource="http://camera-panasonic.example.com",type="ReadTimeout"} 12.0
# HELP request_errors_created Number of errors related to HTTP requests
# TYPE request_errors_created gauge
request_errors_created{ressource="http://camera-3-panasonic.example.com",type="ConnectionError"} 1.707571882114209e+09
request_errors_created{ressource="http://camera-panasonic.example.com",type="ReadTimeout"} 1.7075718871156712e+09
# HELP agent_calendar_update_total Nuber of calendar update
# TYPE agent_calendar_update_total gauge
agent_calendar_update_total{agent="test_agent"} 4.0
# HELP agent_calendar_update_time Time of the last calendar update
# TYPE agent_calendar_update_time gauge
agent_calendar_update_time{agent="test_agent"} 1.707571943100096e+09
# HELP camera_position Last position (preset number) a camera moved to
# TYPE camera_position gauge
camera_position{camera="http://camera-2-panasonic.example.com"} 10.0

Endpoints for switchting and checking the camera control status

The camera control status of a specific camera can be changed as follows:

  • Accessing the endpoint /control/automatic/<camera_url> sets the control status of the given camera to 'automatic'.
  • Accessing the endpoint /control/manual/<camera_url> sets the control status of the given camera to 'manual'. The placeholder <camera_url> must be replaced by the actual camera identifier, i.e. control/automatic/cameraXY.example.de. The default control status is 'automatic'.

The current control status of a specific camera can be requested by calling the endpoint /control_status/<camera_url>. The placeholder <camera_url> must be replaced by the actual camera identifier, i.e. control/automatic/cameraXY.example.de.

At 03:00 am, all cameras will be reset to automatic control. You may adjust the reset time in your configuration file by changing the variable reset_time. For instance, you could set the variable to reset_time: "15:00" to reset to automatic control at 3 pm.