I took my BlueROV2 out last weekend and I was constantly losing the video. I had been assuming that there was a loose network connection somewhere, but then I realized that the telemetry and sonar data are still being received when the video cuts out.
Anyone have tips for troubleshooting? Could it be something with the camera itself?
Hi @btrue,
Not certain what’s going on there, but it does seem to be specifically an issue with the camera stream.
The most likely candidates for that are the camera itself (perhaps overheating or receiving insufficient power), or the stream manager on the onboard computer (recent BlueOS beta releases fixed an issue with intermittent video streams on Raspberry Pi 3s, so it may help to update).
It could also be some receiving or decoding issue at the topside, but that seems unlikely, especially if this issue wasn’t present previously.
I had similar issues where the camera cuts out and everything else was still telemetering fine. It was a lose connector on the camera, the pins are absolutely tiny, find something and push them in all the way and use some hot glue to hold them in place
I will be using the ROV the next 2 or 3 days so I will let you know if I find anything. I did ping the ROV before the dive and it was around 128 ms with no dropped packets.
It was a issue I faced 11 months ago (the last time I used It). Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that it was only the video stream that was cutting out since I have had tons of experience of my ROV having network issues.
For us so far was the issue with camera cable. It is short to reach the RPi. This happens after a while if you use tilting mechanism periodically.
G’day btrue,
I like your secondary camera feed…are you able to share the details of this camera setup?
I am also having issues with the main camera freezing, dropping out completely, briefly showing large areas of green pixels and coarse pixelation. I will be checking the cable and connections to see if this also fixes my glitches.
I checked the camera connections and didn’t see anything wrong. Maybe the wire pins in the camera connector plug are loose. I wiggled everything around and couldn’t get the video connection to drop, but when I tested it in the water the video was completely unusable.
@pforperry
It’s a GoPro camera mounted on the front that I add in later with my video editor.
Thank you btrue, I thought as much. Nice work.
Has anyone else experienced and then successfully resolved the video feed issue with a different method?
If the camera cable and connections are OK, and the camera tests OK when it is plugged into a PC, but the video feed is lost and/or heavily pixelated in QGC when the ROV is sitting idle on a relatively full battery at the surface then what else could be causing the issue?
I have a computer with a relatively capable video card (Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio with i7, NVIDIA GeForce RTX video card and 32GB RAM) and the glitching still happens when forcing QGC to use the dedicated graphics card. I have also used an older but still highly specified HP Elitebook with similar video issues.
Is there a video data logging capability within QGC or BlueOS that we can use to troubleshoot? I note the video recording function stops when the video feed is lost so we would need to use a screen recorder and time sync to compare actual video signal loss with log files.
The Mission Robotics electronics and camera upgrade fixed this issue on one of our ROVs however I need to use the stock electronics on two heavy ROVs (an R2 and an R3 both upgraded with BlueOS) for a project in three weeks time so I am keen to improve video reliability.
I also have the same problem. The video feed is heavily pixelated when flying in shallow water where sunlight reaches and if there is alot of particles in the water.
I think it gets a little bit better when i reach the seabed in deeper water where i have to turn on the lights. But in shallow water it is very poor.
Please let me know if you have other tips to solve this issue!
In my case, an upgrade to the latest BlueOS is likely to fix the issues I am experiencing.
I have completed the upgrade however I am yet to deploy this ROV (and its sister) to confirm if the issues have been resolved. I will let you know how I go.
Hi Jason,
Do you have an update on the camera stream using the latest BlueOS?
G’day Bent,
Sorry for the long delay in reply.
I still get the occasional video artifacts however the video feeds appear stable more often than not.
Kind regards
Jason