Sounds like bandwidth tbh.
And now the issue re- occurâŚ
I have upgraded from RPi3 and pixhawk to RPi4 and Navigator on one of our ROVs.
Adding the DWE OS as an extension in BlueOs is apparently only causing old problems to resurface. The picture is freezing, even when setting the camera on VBR. We do not have these issues on the other ROV, using the same hardware, but with the DWE Os 1.0, installed in parallel with Blue OS. We access the DWE Os 1.0 via 192.168.2.2:5000.
Has anyone been successful getting the DWE camera to work properly with Blue ROV running DWEOS 2.0 as an extension in BlueOs?
The camera is working fine when connected and tested directly on the topside computerâŚ
Hi @SDI -
I would recommend against installing DWE OS - their implementation conflicts with the default Camera Manager in BlueOS - weâre working with them to address this.
In the meantime, if youâre able to completely remove the DWE OS software, the camera should be possible to setup normally from the Video Streams page., and you shouldnât have bitrate issues with the more powerful Pi 4 now!
Hi again @SDI -
I just noticed DWE has updated their instructions and includes the details on how to install DWE OS as an extension. Is this what you did?
Tony, yes that is how it is and there is also the problem by the look of it. The ROV with dual OS is working just fine with the combination DWE and BR camera.
I will look more into the video stream page link you gave me. The issue with the DWE camera has always been with RPi4. I have have never tried it on a RPi3. The problem startet right out of the box and after much back and forth the issue was solved be installing DWE OS. Now it seems like that options is not there anymore. When I set the ROVS side by side and plug the camera from the ROV with the latency into the ROV with working set-up, then the latency disappear, so the camera seems to be ok. It also has updated firmware.
Letâs see what the day brings.
Hi @SDI -
I would guess the default bandwidth consumption of the DWE camera is excessive, and introducing latency in your connection as it becomes saturated. Their interface allows you to reduce this, as variable bit rate (VBR) changes the amount of data sent based on the amount of activity in the video stream captured.
I installed the extension version of DWE OS, but it did not load successfully⌠Iâll reach out and see if that can be addressed! Please share your results if you attempt to install the extension.
Tony, here are some update regarding the DWE camera on our BR. We are not able to get any of offered set-up to work. We have an old type of set-up where DWE OS ond BlueOS is installed seperatly and accessed on 192.168.2.2:5000. This set-up actually works with the other BR we have so we used clonezilla and cloned the SD card and inserted the cloned card into the new ROV. Now that is working also.
A new issue we are facing now is that the the UDP settings menu is dissapearing from QGS quite randomly. We have to reboot and close QGC and restart to get the UDP menu back in vehicle settings. It does not behave the same way all the time. Its unpredictable when it happens.
Video setting menu showing
Video setting menu not showing
Why is this happening? Has anyone else experienced this?
Note: We run latest stable firmware and latest stable QGC
Hi @SDI -
I think the video menu is only occasionally showing in QGC due to conflicts between mavlink-camera-manager in BlueOS, and QGC.
What version of QGC are you using? Newer versions also do weird things with hiding some menus, we recommend 4.2.8 as listed here.
Mavlink-camera-manager works fine to stream explore HD video, but doesnât support the bitrate configuration options that you may need. If you simply install a fresh BlueOS and NO DWE software, you should be able to operate nominally, assuming your tether/topside computer can support the 10 Mbps of video data.
Every time mavlink-camera-manager starts and there are no mavlink-camera-manager streams configured, it creates a UDP stream for every H264 camera that it finds, so DWE OS streams will fail because extensions are always started after mavlink-camera-manager.
There is a mavlink-camera-manager REST API that could be used to delete the stream that is already claimed, freeing it up for DWE software to make adjustments to. Afterwards, the stream should be handled ok, assuming those settings changes you may make via DWE OS are permanent.
Tony, thanks for your reply, as always, you are very insightful and your advice are much appreciated. We have tried so many options that I no longer have full recollection of how we done it all, but trying to etch a standalone BlueOS is something I can certainly do and see what happens. The funny thing is that after we finally got the DWE OS up and running i parallel with the Blue OS, we set the bitrate to VBR and the DWE camera works fine. THEN we turned VBR off and reduced the bitrate to 2Mbits and the camera still not behaved bad, I mean you notice the difference but only when making significant movement in front of the cam, as you would expect. Then we increased to 10Mbits, and itâs really great. Unfortunately (did not check today) we need to set the VBR every time we start up or else we see the latency and pixelization. But again, I will try tomorrow with a new fresh SD with only BlueOS. And revert back to version 4.2.8 of QGCâŚI believe we updated to 4.4.8 Today
I am quite certain I have either asked and got an answer, or I have read about it somewhere so please bear with me for probably asking the same question again.
The camera menu in QGC is not showing. We are running QGC 4.2.8, any good suggestions? The reason I need it it to set the max and min value for the camera servo. Can that be done from BlueOS?
I`ll slide in a picture of the newborn too. For info, the cutout on the top buoyancy plate has still not been madeâŚwork in progress.
Hi @SDI -
Newer versions (Beta currently) allow easy configuration of these settings in BlueOS vehicle setup.
You can change the parameters now by adjusting the autopilot parameters in BlueOS or QGC, searching servo16 will show the relevant things that can be adjusted.
Hi, Ăystein.
What did you conclude with regarding this issue? Did you manage to get the DWE camera up and running without any pixelation?
I bought the same camera a while ago, and got the same problem, but havenât got the time to test it anymore yetâŚ
Oh, man that is a long storyâŚBut yes it is working now and the only way we got it working was to install the BlueOs AND the DWE OS side by side. Not through the extension in Blue OS. We now access Blue OS on 192.168.2.2 and DWE OS on 192.168.2.2:5000 and set the camera to VBR and choose UDP 5600. In In blue OS we do turn off the stream from the DWE camera and only keep the BlueRobic low light camera on UDP 5601.
We are running the DWE Cam directly in the USB 3.0 on the Pi, not through the DWE multiplexer.
Note: We did not manage to SSH the DWE OS onto the micro SD card by following the guide the lay out. I had help from DWE via Teamviewer. We actually cloned that card to ma it wotk on the latest build. I have been in contavt with DWE who informed me that they will contine wotking on ob how to better get their cameras to work with BR, lets see when that happens.
Note 2: The strangest things keep happening. The ROV is running on 40Volt through the tether and gets transformed to 24 volt in the subsea PDU. For dry testing we connect 24 volt directly to the 24 volt terminals inside the PDU and everything seems to be stable (with the DWE camera) The signals still goes through the tether. Then, when running on 400VDC via the tether, the picture on the DWE camera derates itself from 1920 lines to 680 lines. I then connected it back to 24 volt on the terminals and the option for resolution to 1920 gets available againâŚWe tried connecting the camera via USB extension cord with amplifier and that helped. The camera was then also working properly with 420Volt. So I have permanently installed a small 1-4 USB hub with amplifier to make it all stable. The Blue Robotic camera seems not to care about any of this, it just worksâŚ
Hi Folks,
We have 3x DWE Explore HD cameras.
Have been using the old method of DWE OS side by side with blueOS for 2 years without issue.
DWE OS installed as a docker image on the raspberry pi (accessible through port 5000). We installed it by SSH into the RPi, but I guess it could also be done using red-pill in the BlueOS terminal.
BlueOS doesnât automatically set up streams for all cameras as mentioned above, so this was never an issue for us.
We would use mavlink camera manager to send the BR lowlight camera to :5600 and DWEOS to send the DWE camera to :5601.
Twisting the data cables is definitely important (or using a length of shielded USB cable between the pi and the bulkhead). The ESCs and other switching elements are likely to cause noise.
Unfortunately for us, one of our DWE cameras doesnât work properly with stock settings - we get pixilation on the video feed, but I wouldnât describe it as latency. We have to change to VBR, or disable the H264 encoding on that camera.
Have recently switched to the new DWE OS blueOS extension, and it seems to be working better.
Have you tried with other DWE cameras?