Camera UI Backend

[logbasem]

FROM BARRETT NOTES:

Currently, we have a "video streamer" that just grabs photos on the Rover from statically assigned camera numbers, then sends them to someone in a web browser.

This setup has a number of issues...

Problems + Thoughts

• [ ] Streamer is extremely slow.
  • Sending photos is slow.
  • Instead, use a live stream.
  • Rust is much better at grabbing, processing, and sending images. Consider using it for the backend.
  • QUIC is preferable for communication. If we don't use one of the popular streaming protocols, use QUIC in our own implementation.
• [ ] There is no information on camera status.
  • Use ROS to get info about them. (this is impossible with the '23 microcontroller setup)
• [ ] Only one person can be looking at the information.
  • Stop using flask for fuck's sake
• [ ] You have to relaunch the entire web server to reset the camera numbers.
  • opencv isn't very flexible here.
    • If you're on Windows, there are no "camera paths" to check.
    • You have to manually manage the camera IDs.
    • It has no unique identifiers.
      • NOTE: The CAP_PROP_CHANNEL property is NOT the video capture identifier. It's just for fancy streaming boxes with multiple inputs (such as IP cameras).
  • libobs might be an incredible choice.
    • It's not used much in robotics, but offers better support for interacting with capture devices.
    • It also has a readable codebase. ;)

[megustaloscheetos]

Hi everyone! Sorry for the lack of updates regarding this issue. I have been working on it though! But I wanted to say that I have made / found a working solution in Rust with WebRTC (h264) and v4l! While it may not be QUIC, I thought it would still be a good enough choice compared to just sending jpeg frames. Currently, I am just working on an implementation for cleanly streaming to multiple web clients.