We are currently using the Dashcam extension of BlueOS on our Blueboat. It records video streams just fine.
One big issue/request I have with it is the save path. I can’t for the life of me not change it to a custom path. There is no option in th UI and the config file just resets every time I edit it. What I would like to do is to record onto an external SSD to…
not fill up the RPi’s SD card
be able to easily retrieve the videos on a PC by just plugging in said SSD
How can this be done? Currently I am copying the videos to a mounted SSD after recording, but this is very cumbersome using the BlueOS file browser which really can’t copy a high number of larger files reliably and especially lacks feedback of copying progress.
While we are at it about the dash cam: Is there a way to create an overlay for the recorded videos? I’d really like to have GPS and the current flight mode in there.
The path reverts when you edit it every time you restart, because thats how extension docker containers behave!
If you’d like to setup a custom path, especially an external disk, you’ll need to fork the extension and modify it to your needs. If that’s daunting, I can hit up a LLM AI and get it done for you!
As for the overlay, I’ve got extensions similar to the dashcam (motivations detailed in this guide) that record relevant information from the autopilot to a .ASS subtitle file, this is played back with the recording to overlay the information - the same as if it was recorded with Cockpit!
Forking the extension might not be that much of an issue. But installing it from sources and keeping it updated with your main releases I don’t know how to do.
Also, is there even a way to persistently mount the external drive or will that be removed at each BlueOS reboot?
I already forked, and have updated the extension to have the features you requested. The Readme contains info on installing manually - simply go to the extensions page, and under installed extensions, select the plus button in the lower right. Fill in the information from the readme, and then it will install! If it works as desired for you, please let me know and we’ll pull request it into the existing extension, so the manual installation is not necessary!
Wow. This almost works! (Still impressive what you were able to do this quickly!)
The following issues occur:
No recording is created. (USB drive shows up as vfat file system, which is correct. Maybe an issue still lies here.) As a test, I tried selecting local recording - still no files created. I also tried re-enabling the original DashCam extension. There, videos were created without issue.
I need to reboot the Blueboat/its RPi before the USB drive is found, so no hot plugging.
I need to manually mount the drive via command line before DashCam recognizes it.
Generally, however, it seems that the extension can handle the USB drive: The dashcam folder is created there as expected.
If you can follow those steps to collect an extension log, we should be able to resolve the issue. To confirm, both streams from your cameras are h264 and not mjpeg?