Camera visualization problem in QGroundControl

I’m having problems to properly visualize the camera with QGroundControl. I’m getting an image like this:

So basically the video it is just in one thrid of the screen, with a black and white color. This happens on the 1280x720 resolution and below. If I put higher resolution, it does not show anything on the screen. On the BlueOS preview, the image is fine, the only problem is on the QGroundControl.

I’ve checked a lot of similar topics and also the troubleshoot for this case, but none of the solutions worked. The camera that I’m using is the one in the BlueROV. This issue happened when changing to the new Navigator with the retrofit tutorial. I’m using Ubuntu 22.04 and connectiing with the robot via the FanthomX interface. The robot has the official BlueOS, ArduPilot 4.1 and QGroundControl 4.2.4.

What have I tried so far:

  • Plug another camera usb in the robot - same problem
  • Change the usb cable from camera to pi - same problem
  • Change the tether interface connection to a more powerfull USB port - same problem
  • Increase MTU - same problem
  • Tried different version of QGroundControl - same problem
  • Change FPS and resolution - same problem
  • Change to different UDP ports and to RTSP - same problem
  • Change the scale for the image in QGroundControl - same problem but with stretched image
  • Check network speed - it is about 65mbps

I probably tried more stuff that I don’t remember as well… But no luck. I normally find solutions online, but this one has cost me more than a day. If you have any suggestions of things that I could try, please let me know.

Yeah, seems like too many bugs in the software. I get a better through-the-camera than you, but cannot record any video, when I hit the round red record button on the right. Can you record?
I’m curious what your error log shows? You can generate it by going to Console in the Application Settings menu.

I also cannot record videos. I’ll get the log and post it here on Monday. Thanks.

Hi @matosinho, apologies for the delay on getting to this.

Can you try a QGroundControl release >= 4.2.5? It was released last week, and made some fixes to the video side of things.

@bajaMike that should hopefully fix your recording problem too :slight_smile:

Hi, thanks for the suggestion, I’m going to try it out next week. From a quick look into the commits of the new version of qground control, I don’t think my problem will be solved, but I’ll try it anyway. Can we keep the comments regarding this issue centralized in @mdares topic? Here it is the new topic:

I don’t think they’re the same issue - the one you’ve linked to is completely unable to detect the camera, whereas yours is seemingly detecting the camera but either setting up the video stream incorrectly in the vehicle, or failing to receive or display it correctly at the topside.

To better understand your issue:

  1. Does the video stream work correctly when received on a different computer, and possibly with a different operating system?
    • I don’t believe we’ve tested much with Ubuntu 22.04
  2. Are you able to get a normal image display if you connect the camera directly to the USB port of your topside computer and try to view it with VLC or similar?
    • If the camera itself is not working properly then please contact our support email (support@bluerobotics.com) to describe what’s happened, along with your order number (or at least a rough order date), to start the RMA process.

Actually I only get this kind of image if I reduce the resolution, if I leave it in full hd mode, I also get no video. I already tested the camera directly on the topside and it is working. I’ll try on Windows to check what happens.

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I cna also confirm issues with QGroundControl version 4.2.8 on Ubuntu 22. The same h264 stream works fine for Android, Windows, and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. The GST log shows the decoding starting and stopping repeatedly on Ubuntu 22.04, i’m guessing this is GST version issue (1.20.3).

Hi @kurtmez, welcome to the Blue Robotics forum :slight_smile:

While we do contribute to QGroundControl, we’re not the primary maintainers of it. I’d recommend raising an issue in the source repository as the best avenue for getting help with this.

@kurtmez minor follow-up, this post might be helpful :slight_smile: