I bought a sonoptix imaging sonar for use on a BlueROV, and intend to use the sonar to help with navigation / localization. I would like to be able to publish the RTSP, VIDEO, and wbms. Has anybody had luck getting anything aside from the RTSP stream from the sonar? Thank you very much.
Hi @mazini -
Welcome to the forums! Besides the video stream from the sonar, you can also access the raw data used to create the image in the data stream. Things like navigation and localization are not supported “out of the box” but are theoretically possible to achieve using this raw data! This data still comes in a RTSP stream, but is not possible to interpret visually in a media player - the picture that shows does not reflect the full data available.
I have successfully used the example from the sonoptix integration guide to get the “raw” data, which is an image stream.
It would be very nice to be able to see both video stream and the rtsp stream at the same time, which I am unsure is supported since the video stream is sent over websockets. My solution to this is to create my own human-readable stream by processing the data from the rtsp stream while still using the raw frames.
In addition, I was wondering if I could have access to the actual raw data. Something similar to a lidar point cloud. Currently, I need to write my own model that takes the images and processes them into reflectivity and distance per channel.
Thank you for the help.
Hi @mazini -
To clarify, the raw data is not quite an image stream, even if it uses that container! Each of the bits is the strength of the return (see below), so while an image is sort of visible when this stream is opened in VLC, more data is available to be processed if desired.
This is the “raw data” , as close as you’ll find to a lidar point cloud - but in the frame of reference of a sonar! As the manual states:
When decoded, each image corresponds to a rectangular matrix of unsigned 8-bit integers. The matrix has one column for each beam, and one row for each sample. The number rows changes depending on the range. The intensity of each pixel represents the return strength of the acoustic signal at that point
Using the data from this raw RTSP stream while viewing the sonar output video stream in the browser simultaneously should work?
Thank you for the pointer! I can clarify that the UI video stream says “video stream not enabled while raw stream enabled” but I have just made my own output script that uses the raw stream.