Video streaming module

Bod has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Can you give any recommendations for a Perl video streaming module?
Usually, I would ask Google but all I get are video tutorials for learning Perl.

Here is what I am vaguely thinking of doing in case anyone can offer any specific help.

We have a bluetit nesting in our new birdbox. Being above the back door, it cannot be seen from inside the house and we thought it would be nice to be able to observe its comings and going. Nice for us, perhaps not so much for the bluetits. So, I've bought a WiFi camera, built a little box for it and set it up opposite the birdbox. It works OK but the only way to use the camera is to use the mobile app. I thought it might be nice to be able to do something else with the stream, perhaps monitor it for movement or display it on a bigger screen.

So I thought about trying to capture the video stream using a Perl script on a computer permanently hooked up to the network. Once I've got the stream, it should be relatively trivial to do whatever I want with it.

The other thing I need to do is power the camera with a solar panel instead of having to bring it inside to charge every few hours.

Any suggestions appreciated although this is nothing more than a fun project...perhaps better labelled as a means to procrastination!

Comment on Video streaming module

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Re: Video streaming module by kcott (Archbishop) on Apr 20, 2022 at 02:18 UTC
G'day Bod, I'm certainly no expert on the subject but I have used "OBS - Open Broadcaster Software" (at basic user level only). This might be suitable for the streaming side of your project. A "CPAN search for OBS" indicates a number of modules that might be useful for your Perl needs. Anyway, those are just suggestions. Others may have much better ideas. — Ken	[reply]
Re: Video streaming module by Corion (Patriarch) on Apr 20, 2022 at 08:16 UTC
I found `ffmpeg` quite good for producing/capturing video streams. Depending on the Wifi camera, it most likely produces an RTSP stream, and ffmpeg can record these to disk (for later viewing or re-encoding): `ffmpeg -i rtsp://@192.168.241.1:62159 -r 15 C:/DB_Videos/2013-04-30 17 +_18_34.703.mp4` [download] `ffmpeg -i rtsp://@192.168.241.1:62156 -acodec copy -vcodec copy c:/abc +.mp4` [download] I haven't found any good abstraction for `ffmpeg` on CPAN yet, and my attempts haven't crystallized into anything worthwhile yet either.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Video streaming module by etj (Priest) on Apr 20, 2022 at 18:30 UTC
Not really an abstraction for ffmpeg, but a bit of PDL that can interface with it: PDL::IO::Pic. I can envision (ha!) additional functionality for the `rmpeg` function that could interface to a stream (obviously relying largely on ffmpeg capability). Today, that's a synchronous read rather than a stream. What do people think would some sample (maybe pseudo-)code look like that would solve this? I anticipate a write-stream as well, but don't want to bias people's thinking.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Video streaming module by Anonymous Monk on Apr 21, 2022 at 08:45 UTC
I wrote VideoLAN::LibVLC which could do the job but the portions I implemented are more focused on playback. An API for ffmpeg would most likely be named "libav".	[reply]
Re: Video streaming module by soonix (Chancellor) on Apr 20, 2022 at 07:49 UTC
From the link you provided, I see that the camera opens up its own WIFI network. If it can't be attached to an existing WLAN, you might need an additional device to bridge between the camera's WLAN and your "normal" network, or a "dual homed" streaming server. Pertinent modules for that might be Win32::Netsh::Wlan and/or Win32::Wlan.	[reply]
Re^2: Video streaming module by Bod (Parson) on Apr 25, 2022 at 17:51 UTC
The camera opens its own WiFi network so the app can connect to it and configure it. As part of that configuration, the camera is added to the same WiFi network as the mobile device was on before switching to the camera WiFi. Once configured, the camera uses the house WiFi network.	[reply]
Re^3: Video streaming module by soonix (Chancellor) on Apr 25, 2022 at 19:52 UTC
Ah. Sounds easy to configure. One of the commenters seemed to have difficulties anyway :-) - Are there provisions to change the WIFI password, or connect to a different WIFI?	[reply]
Re^4: Video streaming module by Bod (Parson) on Apr 26, 2022 at 23:09 UTC
Re: Video streaming module by cavac (Prior) on Apr 22, 2022 at 08:16 UTC
Most cameras provide an RTSP stream. You can convert that to HLS using ffmpeg: https://girishjoshi.io/post/ffmpeg-rtsp-to-hls/ Then just point the browser to that directory. I have not played with that for quite some time, but you can look at my old code for how i played around with that: https://cavac.at/public/mercurial/pagecamel_framework/file/tip/lib/PageCamel/Web/Livestream The nice thing about HLS is that the video is already split in many small files on the disk. So if you want a feature to make a short clip from the stream, basically all you need to do is copy the relevant video files and the corresponding part of the m3u8 text file into a new directory and you're done. There is also https://github.com/video-dev/hls.js/#player-integration for a list of players with added features. `perl -e 'use Crypt::Digest::SHA256 qw[sha256_hex]; print substr(sha256_hex("the Answer To Life, The Universe And Everything"), 6, 2), "\n";'`	[reply] [d/l]