Audio & Video possible in one stream?

[ringzer]

Hi,

This project looks awesome and exactly what I'm looking for - an easy audio and video streaming application I can install on a raspberry pi.

Can you confirm the steam at http://RASPI_IP/view/ is video and audio, assuming I add a camera and microphone to the Pi? Also what app would you recommend on android to watch this stream? Would VLC work?

Thanks,

Ciaran

[iizukanao]

Thanks!

Can you confirm the steam at http://RASPI_IP/view/ is video and audio, assuming I add a camera and microphone to the Pi?

Yes. You need a Raspberry Pi Camera Module, not a USB webcam.

Also what app would you recommend on android to watch this stream? Would VLC work?

Any app that supports RTSP would work, including VLC. Also, Android's VideoView class natively supports RTSP. In VLC, enter rtsp://RASPI_IP:80/live/picam as a URL, where RASPI_IP is the IP address of your Pi.

[ringzer]

Thank you for your quick reply and apologies for the delay in replying.

I have the Pi NoIR Camera and have ordered a USB microphone.

I am facing some issue in getting it setup however. This is what I have done with my Pi connected via Ethernet:

1. Downloaded picam-streamer an wrote to a 16GB card.
2. Without camera plugged in, expanded file system and rebooted
3. Plugged in camera and rebooted again
4. The red LED on the camera is lighting up and when I browse to http://192.168.0.12/view I can see "Video stream" in the page title and can see something between <script> when I view source. However I the page is blank.
5. I have tried in Firefox, Chrome and also the rtsp link via VLC but no success.

Another thing I've noticed is that with camera plugged in, the Pi seems to be somewhat unresponsive - looking at top I can see picam using quite a bit of CPU. When the camera isn't plugged in, the Pi is fine.

  476 root      20   0  119336  16632   5064 R 21.3 13.8   2:38.23 node
  813 pi         0 -20  102652   6556    696 S 17.1  5.4   2:05.02 picam
   30 root       1 -19       0      0      0 S  4.2  0.0   0:30.60 VCHIQ-0
  954 pi        20   0    5080   1060    724 R  1.3  0.9   0:09.74 top

I've also noticed that the Pi drops off the network and is unresponsive after 5-10 minutes as well as feeling quite hot physically.

I'm happy to post log files but I'm not sure where they are. i would like to resolve this but I might also try and install the complete picam image.

[iizukanao]

Please allow a few minutes for the /view/ URL to be ready for use. The boot time depends on whether you are using Raspberry Pi 1 or 2.

That top command output looks pretty normal and such load itself will never make the Pi unresponsive. Login to your Pi, cd picam then run touch hooks/start_record and touch hooks/stop_record to check if the camera is capturing correctly or not (see https://github.com/iizukanao/picam#recording for usage). If you use VLC, RTSP URL is rtsp://PI_IP:80/live/picam (replace PI_IP with your Pi's IP).

I think it is more of a hardware issue such as power supply problem rather than software. System-level error messages will appear in /var/log/messages. If you think this is a software problem, please post several lines of vmstat 10 output when the Pi is recording video.

[ringzer]

I am getting an error when trying to run those touch commands:

pi@raspberrypi ~/picam $ touch hooks/start_record
touch: cannot touch ‘hooks/start_record’: No such file or directory
pi@raspberrypi ~/picam $ sudo touch hooks/start_record
touch: cannot touch ‘hooks/start_record’: No such file or directory
pi@raspberrypi ~/picam $
pi@raspberrypi ~/picam $ which touch
/usr/bin/touch

Seems odd that I cant run the touch command given that it is supposed to create a file but it is complaining there isn't such a file and the touch command exists.

I will try and run on a Pi 2 and a different power supply, but I believe they are good power supplies.

[iizukanao]

Sorry, I was wrong. You need to be in ~/picam-streamer/ directory. Replace cd picam with cd ~/picam-streamer and try the touch command again. Recorded file will appear in ~/picam-streamer/archive/.

[ringzer]

Apologies for the delay in replying, but I was waiting for my USB microphone to arrive, which it now has: see here for details

I am getting an audio and video rtsp stream but it is choppy and jumpy due to high CPU utilisation node and picam are almost maxing out the Pi.

I have a Raspberry Pi 1 Model B.

Apologies for the formatting but I have highlighed the % CPU and process name.

top - 22:07:48 up 6 min, 3 users, load average: 1.46, 1.36, 0.71 Tasks: 89 total, 3 running, 86 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie %Cpu(s): 74.5 us, 23.6 sy, 0.0 ni, 0.0 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 1.9 si, 0.0 st KiB Mem: 380072 total, 216788 used, 163284 free, 21092 buffers KiB Swap: 102396 total, 0 used, 102396 free. 113196 cached Mem

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 434 root 20 0 86216 25588 13288 R 61.8 6.7 2:15.66 node 733 pi 0 -20 94864 13328 7600 R 30.3 3.5 1:41.48 picam 30 root 1 -19 0 0 0 S 5.1 0.0 0:16.88 VCHIQ-0 842 pi 20 0 5080 2548 2132 R 2.2 0.7 0:01.58 top 3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:00.51 ksoftirqd/0 19 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:00.75 kworker/0:1 518 root 20 0 25172 13072 6988 S 0.3 3.4 0:01.92 Xorg 710 pi 20 0 102124 21932 18560 S 0.3 5.8 0:04.51 lxpanel

When I disconnect the microphone top shows

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 733 pi 0 -20 98960 17732 7600 S 75.3 4.7 5:16.10 picam 434 root 20 0 88940 27064 13288 R 21.7 7.1 7:31.09 node 842 pi 20 0 5080 2552 2132 R 1.6 0.7 0:12.39 top

When I reboot with the microphone still disconnected the video stream works perfectly fine with top showing

top - 22:27:30 up 6 min, 3 users, load average: 0.90, 0.75, 0.42 Tasks: 89 total, 2 running, 87 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie %Cpu(s): 54.7 us, 19.4 sy, 0.0 ni, 23.2 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 2.8 si, 0.0 st KiB Mem: 380072 total, 212144 used, 167928 free, 19144 buffers KiB Swap: 102396 total, 0 used, 102396 free. 112388 cached Mem

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 429 root 20 0 85824 24996 13296 R 53.9 6.6 1:33.87 node 651 pi 0 -20 102652 13044 7196 S 16.8 3.4 1:04.65 picam 30 root 1 -19 0 0 0 S 4.2 0.0 0:15.83 VCHIQ-0 769 pi 20 0 5080 2536 2120 R 1.6 0.7 0:00.25 top 7 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:00.44 rcu_preempt

So it seems that there is either an issue with the USB microhphone I have or with running picam with a video and microphone on the Pi 1 B

Interestingly the total CPU % is about 71% without the microphone and about 92% with the microphone and 20% increase for stream audio doesn't seem terrible compared to the base level of 71% for video. It seems to me that the Pi 1 B isn't powerful enough.

I can try running picam-streamer on a Pi 2 in the next few days but I'm curious to know what you think the issue is.

Thanks

[iizukanao]

Hmm, that's strange. When I open /view/ with a browser, Pi 1 Model B's load is:

• node: 50% CPU
• picam: 35% CPU
• load average: 1.5

It's undoubtedly heavy, but both audio and video are smooth.

Pi 2 is very powerful compared to Pi 1 and you should use it if you can.

Also, if you're using WiFi dongle, check if your Pi's network bandwidth is sufficient. picam produces 2Mbps video + 40kbps audio by default.

[ringzer]

Apologies for the delay in replying.

To solve my problem I can either get a new microphone or a Pi 2 but given that I already have a Pi I would prefer to try another microphone.

Can you recommend a USB microphone? Are there any particular requirements for the USB microphone to work with Picam?

Also, the Pi is connected to the network by ethernet so bandwidth shouldn't be an issue.

[iizukanao]

Could you please confirm that the following command records 30 seconds of audio without problems?

$ /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -f alsa -ac 1 -i hw:1,0 -c:a libfdk_aac -ar 48000 -ab 40000 -t 30 out.m4a

The microphone I'm using is this one. https://github.com/iizukanao/picam#recommended-hardware However, this product may not be readily available outside of Japan. I think any popular cheap USB microphone will work.

[ringzer]

Let me try that command and get back to you.

As for the microphone, the one I have this this one: http://www.banggood.com/USB-Microphone-For-Raspberry-Pi-p-993726.html which is a microphone with a USB connection.

The configuration you have is a USB to 3.5mm adapter and a 3.5mm microphone. I wonder is that the required setup, rather than a microphone which plugs directly into USB.

[iizukanao]

The configuration you have is a USB to 3.5mm adapter and a 3.5mm microphone. I wonder is that the required setup, rather than a microphone which plugs directly into USB.

That is irrelevant from a standpoint of software. Any USB microphone should work. I used standalone USB microphone without adapter in the past and it worked.

[sakshirawal14]

Hi I'm trying to use the picam library. When I try to run picam with the following steps: $ cd picam $ ./picam --alsadev hw:1,0

I get the following error: error creating state dir (./state): file exists

Unable to proceed further. I tried running the "touch hooks/start_record" command too, but it says pi@raspberrypi ~/picam $ touch hooks/start_record touch: cannot touch ‘hooks/start_record’: No such file or directory pi@raspberrypi ~/picam $ sudo touch hooks/start_record touch: cannot touch ‘hooks/start_record’: No such file or directory pi@raspberrypi ~/picam $ pi@raspberrypi ~/picam $ which touch /usr/bin/touch

If anyone could provide pointers to resolve this issue, it would be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Shall be highly grateful

[iizukanao]

@sakshirawal14 Please create new issue if you still have problems.