MediaMTX is great for streaming / recording cameras

General
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kind of a miscellaneous post, just highlighting unknown unknowns that may be relevant to PLR users

I have been using PoE cameras (they encode h264 (or h265) themselves) and media mtx just repackages it into webrtc for streaming. so no transcoding on the computer, which means it uses almost no resources and very low latency (around 100ms). it has a built in api for starting/stopping recordings (useful for protocol setup/teardown)

im still finding the best PoE camera, they are a little more expensive than usb (around $40) but wiring is much easier with them especially over bigger distances.

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oh yea mediamtx is great, i use ffmpeg and mediamtx to pipe computer desktops into rtsp streams without any serious overhead. helps monitor the human situation alongside the robots

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@rickwierenga btw what poe cameras do you use? I haven’t found ones I really like. Mostly cheap revodata ones on amazon and some home security ptz cameras

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I have been using these: Amazon.com : REVOTECH Mini Fisheye POE IP Camera, HD 3MP Indoor Security Camera 1.44mm Lens 180 Degree Wide Angle P2P Remote View CCTV Video Cam H.265 (I706-4-P Black) : Electronics and some others from that vendor. You can see in the product pictures which have PoE, it’s not super well advertised which have poe vs which dont. The picture quality is good enough for me and I like that some are wide field some fish eye. For the non poe ones I use dc cables we had laying around, but have this PoE splitter coming on monday: Amazon.com: Revotech Gigabit PoE Splitter 48V to 12V 2A, 5.5x2.5mm DC IEEE 802.3af/at Standard Power Over Ethernet Splitter Adapter for Security IP Camera,Voip Phone, AP (PS5712TG-25) : Electronics which should make things easier.

I have the cameras running on a private subnet (just a switch connected to my computer using a ethernet → usb connector) because the cameras actually want to phone home. so important to disable ip forwarding (default on Mac). I’m actually having claude RE their system for this rn

Note this also requires a poe switch of course

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Yea interesting. Not unexpected though I admit I never checked. I keep cameras on their own vlan and try to manage the phone home stuff via firewall rules.

I am curious though, could you share a little about your firm re toolchain with claude? This is an area I wanted to explore more but claude has opened so many doors it’s hard to find time to explore them all.

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i pretty much always use defaults for everything. for the cameras i just said “can you figure out if it’s phoning home”

for machine reverse engineering (the main topic of this forum), i just put the pcaps next to claude with descriptions of what happens in them and sometimes tell it it’s connected to a machine and then it figures it out. the bitter lesson is true about prompting and setups as well

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after multiple days of running them, they actually run quite hot! one is 64C right now! another 50C and the third 32C.

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Weird - we use tons of those revotech cameras too. I’ll have to feel them and see how hot they are.

We’ve been using BlueIris $60 per install, but nicely does all the rolling recording, multi-camera view, restream, etc. Andre on my team put together a repo GitHub - calico/Remote-Camera-Monitoring · GitHub. Has a useful magnet mounting cover too.

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that’s cool! tons of useful info in the readme

the holders are cool, I’ll be printing a pair!

I have never used blue iris myself, but from briefly looking it looks like media mtx can do all of that (I had claude write me a little website where I can group cameras)

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We’ve been using these: AXIS F2135-RE Fisheye Sensor | Axis Communications . Super easy to install and everything local.

I’ll have to check these options, they seem cheaper

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