[Elphel-support] compressor state

[Andrey Filippov]

On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Scott Janz <scott.janz at nasa.gov> wrote:

> Software version 8.0.4.3
>
> I don't need to turn off the compressor, I just need a reliable way of
> checking it to make sure it hasn't crashed and then if it has crashed, to
> restart it. The event I described was just such an event, I was running the
> camera and checking elphel_get_state() periodically and it was always
> returning "8". But when I checked the images that I store to the hard drive
> using snapfull.php, they were garbage because the compressor had stopped.
>

Scott,


The easiest way to check that everything is running OK is to read status XML
file from imgsrv:


http://<camera_ip>:8081/meta

It reads data from the circular output buffer, so if the frame number
increments - everything should be running OK.

There are also ways how to check the same from withing php script in the
camera, but imgsrv method seems to be the most independent of the other
functions of the camera

Why do you use snapfull.php - do you have different resolution video being
streamed or recorded simultaneously? The purpose of that program is to
interrupt video fro as little as possible to acquire different (usually
maximal) resolution images. If you just need to record images you may use
either camogm (to record video/images to the HDD/SSD attached to the camera)
or imgsrv if you transfer images over the network, i.e.

http://<camera_ip>:8081/bimg

or

http://<camera_ip>:8081/img

"bimg" is preferrable if the network speed is limited and there is arisc
that 19MB video buffer may be overrun while image is being transferred to
the host - it will first save it in the camera, "img" trasfers directly from
the 19MB circular buffer and so allows higher frame rate.

Andrey





>
> thanks,
>
> -scott
>
> Andrey Filippov wrote:
>
>> Scott,
>>
>> what firmware version are you using?
>>
>> It seems to be a mixture of old/new methods. In the current software all
>> the parameters (including status) are read and modified in the same way and
>> snapfull.php has an example of it.
>>
>> You can manually get/set parameters (and explore them) with parsedit.php -
>> there are some examples, but you can add more by supplying them in the url.
>>
>> Why do you need to turn of compressor? It is mostly used for software
>> debugging and acquiring short frame sequence to memory buffer and then
>> analyzing acquired frames.
>>
>> Andrey
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 12:44 PM, Scott Janz <scott.janz at nasa.gov <mailto:
>> scott.janz at nasa.gov>> wrote:
>>
>>    Hi Andrey,
>>
>>    Just ran into a condition where the function elphel_get_state()
>>    returns 8 (running) but when using snapfull.php to grab an image,
>>    it reports compressor is turned off. Can you explain this condition?
>>
>>    I use elphel_get_state() to monitor the camera status while
>>    snapfull.php runs periodically in the background. I need a
>>    reliable way to automatically monitor the camera status and I
>>    thought elphel_get_state() would do the trick. Also, is there a
>>    way to restart the compressor withouth a reboot?
>>
>>    thanks,
>>
>>    -scott
>>
>>
>>
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