Help with a OpenWRT/Webcam project

[Rob Giseburt]

I’ve been working on a project where I have an ASUS WL-510GU (cheap, ~$30 on sale) with OpenWRT on it and a cheap webcam (also ~$30) and I’d like to get it to stream to my iPhone//MacBook Pro/TiVo for security purposes.

I started some blog posts a while back, but I had to let the project linger:

http://www.tinkerin.gs/2009/04/wl-520gu-hacks.html

Anyway, I’m picking it back up. I can get it to stream mjpeg (without sound), but it appears to crash if I try anything fancy like including sound, or re-encoding it. (I’m willing to send it to my Mac Pro for re-encoding if I have to, but I was hoping to avoid that.)

Anyway, I’m thinking of bringing my setup so far to the cave next time I get a chance. Is there any chance that someone could provide some assistance?

Thanks,

 -Rob

[Toast]

Where's it crashing?  Would you mind outlining what you've got so far?  Ex, what's the webcam plugged into, where do you see it crashing, etc?

[cinus]

Can you check any logs on your router? Is the entire router bombing or just your stream?

dd-wrt has live system stats in there so you could monitor your ram and proc usage while you stream through it.

[Rob Giseburt]

Well, if I try to run ffmpeg, I get either a crash of the usb layer or a hard crash of the router and I have to power cycle.

I’m running OpenWRT trunk (as of a few weeks ago, so fairly recent) with a 2.6.x kernel, with the video kernel modules. I know that this means I’ve probably lost the on-board WiFi.

I have a 1GB microSD card in a usb-microSD reader, and a Rosewill UVC camera, both plugged into a USB hub (I’ve tried unpowered and powered). I actually have several different cameras, and am able to see video off of each with mjpg-streamer.

The microSD card is for swap (100mb) external storage (ext3 — the rest of the 1gb). I have some of the kernel modules and libraries on the microSD. (Everything ffmpeg, for example, since it takes so much space.)

Like I said, I can get mjpg-streamer running fine, and it usually works. (I have to have the swap, or it won’t work.) But, that won’t carry the audio.

I tried ffmpeg, and haven’t given up yet. What I have given up on is getting ffmpeg to do any heavy encoding, so right now I’m looking for the lightest-proccessing way to get video (with audio) off of the router and to a Mac Pro in order to reprocess it. I have tried encoding as avi (muxer missing), mpeg 1 (encoder fails when usb kernel layer goes down) & 2 ( same or hard crash), mpeg-4 (muxer exists, no encoder). I can’t seem to find the right options to get it to stream raw video/audio off of the router. I have loaded the streaming component of ffmpeg, ffserver, but I can’t find much docs involving video. I can use VLC (or most linux commands) on the MacPro. I also have a few VMs of various OSs (Windows, Linux) running on the MacPro too.

I eventually want to run a few of these routers. Ideally (but I’m quickly losing hope in this) I can run 2 cams per router.

Thanks!

  -Rob

On Mar 8, 2010, at 11:47 AM, Toast wrote:

Where's it crashing?  Would you mind outlining what you've got so far?  Ex, what's the webcam plugged into, where do you see it crashing, etc?

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[Rob Giseburt]

> dd-wrt has live system stats in there so you could monitor your ram and proc usage while you stream through it.

I can pull the dmesg logs later, if you think it’ll help. I’m using a USB-Serial connection directly to the board, so I have full logging and control.

[cinus]

Go for it, would be helpful to see any log. Also pull syslog - if thats even on there.

On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 4:19 PM, Rob Giseburt <gise...@gmail.com> wrote:

> dd-wrt has live system stats in there so you could monitor your ram and proc usage while you stream through it.

I can pull the dmesg logs later, if you think it’ll help. I’m using a USB-Serial connection directly to the board, so I have full logging and control.

[Rob Giseburt]

Ok, I was trying to get the ffmpeg error I get, and I’ve got a corrumt ext3 on the microSD, so I’m going to wipe the whole thing and start fresh, then report back when (if, perhaps, if this was the real cause of my problems…) I get the error messages again.

Thanks for the help so far.

-Rob

PS: When I get this going, I’ll share. Does anyone seem interested in doing something similar?

[cinus]

This is a pretty cool project. Small, self contained, and as long as the radios still work you could stick it anywhere with UPS or solar cells. If i understand your setup completely. 

[Rob Giseburt]

On Mar 8, 2010, at 4:58 PM, cinus wrote:

> This is a pretty cool project. Small, self contained, and as long as the radios still work you could stick it anywhere with UPS or solar cells. If i understand your setup completely.

Yeah, that’s pretty much the intent. I’m afraid that for now, due to the broadcom driver issue (common to netbooks too, I understand) and the 2.6.x kernel requirement, on-board WiFi is lost for now. In the mean-time, a USB WiFi adapter could be used. (Yuck!) A 3G USB adapter could be used instead, however, and that’d be pretty damn cool, I think.

As for power, it runs off of a 5V/2A power adapter, and I’m sure it’s uses way less than that. I haven’t tested it, however. It probably depends on the camera and such as well.

-Rob