ISISComputingGroup / ISISComputingGroup/IBEX

Remote working: Saving webcam pictures of equipment at 1 minute intervals

Open
#5,549 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Dominant language
No language data
Stars
6
Forks
2
Avg merge
16h 40m
Merged PRs (30d)
2

Description

As one of several scientists needing to keep "an eye" on something which might change during my experiment (overnight for example) I would like to have a webcam pointed at the thing I want to monitor, it might be a dial or gauge which is not currently connectable to the control system via normal means, or a sample which might move or deform or change, or where part of my experiment is to keep a record of a visible phase change which can be correlated with a neutron experiment.

### Acceptance criteria
1) Snapshot images are saved 1 per minute (or on similar time scale).
2) Images can be easily processed into a time lapse video stream (e.g. .mp4) so I can spot a change easily by looking at this.
3) The solution guarantees any user failure to manage images being stored does not risk filling up a disk where it might break on a critical machine (which may not be restartable remotely).
4) The solution should be installable by copy onto multiple machines as needed and be script based to lead the user through the process.

### Notes
There are two solutions to this
1) To use IBEX to take the snapshots from the video stream and feed properly run numbered data into the ISIS archive via the instrument data area (so synchronized with the neutron data taking), this is most appropriate for data which is part of the scientific record of the experiment. It would require manipulation of common public domain capture/image/streaming and conversion utilities via a script or IOC. This would be useful over the long term for properly capturing imaging data in IBEX.

1) A potential route to this might be to adapt/extend the area detector IOC to view and/or record a video stream or snapshot.
2) For a "proper" solution, the ability to stream this data via Kafka as with other scientific data should be considered.

2) The more simple solution is to portably assemble the tools listed below into a limited (say 10GB .vhdx file) and store data withi this when mounted on a viewing or analysis machine. A bounded disk solves acceptance criteria (3) as filling this disk will limit space on the main system `C:` drive.

1) VLC can be used to sample frames at a desired rate from an `rtsp:` mp4 stream from our standard web cams. This is easy to setup given that VLC would probably be the optimal tool to view webcam output (non-browser related). Setting up a "Scene" filter will do this.
2) a sampled image folder can be processed quickly the next day using ffmpeg to produce a short timelapsed video for inspection and archiving manually if necessary.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.