Hi everyone,
I’m sharing this because it might help others, and it’s related to @CA_BlueBoat question.
The project I’m developing is a remote-controlled ROV that will be permanently submerged in water at an underwater control station where various experiments are carried out, requiring constant remote control and a fairly high live image quality.
I’ve done many configuration tests with 4G routers, following the projects I already knew about and others I found on this forum, including ZeroTier, for which I’m grateful.
But the truth is, none of them convinced me, as the image latency obtained wasn’t reasonable for the image quality I wanted to transmit with my IP camera.
Finally, I came up with an idea, creating a inverse VPN tunnel through WireGuard software.
I say inverse because I changed the order of the factors. Instead of the 4G router acting as a server, I turned the Windows PC into the server and the router into a client. This way, the 4G router “searches” for the PC, not the other way around. This way, I was able to create a point-to-point tunnel that offers quite good results with low bandwidth and at the same time solves the problems of not having a fixed IP address on the 4G router.
For testing, I bought an inexpensive 4G router from Cudy, but it’s very complete in terms of configuration, as it has several built-in options for configuring a VPN (Virtual Private Network). I forwarded the IP camera port on the 4G router and configured the Mavlink endpoints to the server IP. This is sufficient for Cockpit, but if you want to use Qgroundcontrol, you also need to open UDP port 14550.
I’m sending you a video below so you can see the image fluidity.
The camera is set to FHD (1920x1080) at 60fps, with a bitrate of 8000 kbps. It is connected directly to the 4G router, which is configured as a WireGuard Client. The PC acts as the WireGuard server and is connected via cable to a fiber optic network.
It’s worth noting that I purchased this 4G router solely for testing; it doesn’t have external antennas and its quality is average-low, so the router’s download and upload speeds were only 10 Mbps and 8 Mbps respectively during testing.
Based on these results and the bandwidth tests performed at its final location, I estimate that with the 5G router of the same brand for professional use, which I will ultimately use with directional external antennas, I will get about 200 MB download speeds and at least 100 MB upload speeds. Therefore, I believe I will achieve 4K streaming at 60fps with a much higher bitrate.
I’m really satisfied. Some tests are still pending, but the results are very encouraging. I’ll keep you posted and I will share more info when it is finished.
Best regards