Pi H264 To Browser

Pi H264 To Browser is a simple Python application designed to stream hardware encoded h.264 from a Raspberry Pi equiped with a V1, V2, or HQ camera module, directly to a browser.

Capabillities

• Stream to multiple clients simultaneously (usually only limited by your network connection)
• Support any resolution and framerate the camera module can capture and the gpu can encode
• Able to do both of the preceding from any Raspberry Pi

Features

1. A screen that displays an unaltered video stream that allows you to switch to full screen mode.
2. A screen that provides a focus peaking overlay to help focus the camera.
3. A screen that provides a center reticle overlay to aide in centering a subject in the frame.
4. A screen that provides a standard 9 grid overlay to aide in more creative framing.

Viewing

When server.py is running the feed can be vied from any broswer via the following urls. rpi_address is the ip address or hostname of your Raspberry Pi, and serverPort is the port you set in the configuration section.

1. The primary viewing screen

   http://<rpi_address>:<serverPort>/
   

2. The focus peaking screen

   http://<rpi_address>:<serverPort>/focus/
   

3. The center reticle screen

   http://<rpi_address>:<serverPort>/center/
   

4. The 9 grid screen

   http://<rpi_address>:<serverPort>/grid/
   

Installation

1. Ensure the camera module is properly connected to the Raspberry Pi
2. Ensure the operating system is up to date, and the camera interface is enabled
3. Install the Picamera Python module

   sudo apt-get install python3-picamera
   

4. Install pip to handle loading Python pckages not avaiable in the Raspberry Pi OS archives

   sudo apt install python3-pip
   

5. Install the Tornado framework

   sudo pip3 install tornado
   

6. Donwload Pi H264 To Browser, and copy the src directoy to your Raspberry Pi

configuration

open server.py and edit the following section of code as needed.

• The webserver will run on the port you set serverPort to.
• Refer to the Picamera documentation for details on how to configure it. A lage number of options exist (far more than listed below), that allow for 100% customization of camera.
  1. sensor modes, resolutions and framerates
  2. general camera settings
     • video_denoise
     • iso
     • shutter_speed
     • exposure_mode
     • awb_mode
     • awb_gains
     • exposure_compensation
     • brightness
     • sharpness
     • contrast
     • saturation
     • hflip
     • vflip
     • meter_mode
  3. recordingOptions
     • inline_headers and sps_timing should always be set to true.
  4. Focus peaking screen
     • focusPeakingColor - What color a pixel that is in focus should be. This is a webgl color format string, and must be 4 comma seperated floating point numbers between 0.0 and 1.0! From left to right the numbers represent the red, green, blue, and alpha channels.
     • focusPeakingthreshold - Determines at what point a pixel is considred to be in focus. A pixel with a value below the threshold is considered out of focus, or an aberration. A pixel above the threshold is considered in focus. This is a floating point number that has a theoretical maximum range of 0.0 to 1.0, however values between 0.02 and 0.11 generally yield the best results.
  5. Center screen
     • centerColor - What color the centering reticle should be. This is a css color format string, and must be 4 comma seperated values. The first three are integers ranging from 0 to 255, and the forth is a float ranging from 0.0 to 1.0. From left to right the numbers represent the red, green, blue, and alpha channels.
     • centerThickness - and integer value that sets the thickness(in pixels) of the lines that make up the reticle.
  6. 9 grid screen
     • gridColor - What color the grid should be. This is a css color format string, and must be 4 comma seperated values. The first three are integers ranging from 0 to 255, and the forth is a float ranging from 0.0 to 1.0. From left to right the numbers represent the red, green, blue, and alpha channels.
     • gridThickness - and integer value that sets the thickness(in pixels) of the lines that make up the grid.

# start configuration
serverPort = 8000

camera = PiCamera(sensor_mode=2, resolution='1920x1080', framerate=30)
camera.video_denoise = False

recordingOptions = {
    'format' : 'h264', 
    'quality' : 20, 
    'profile' : 'high', 
    'level' : '4.2', 
    'intra_period' : 15, 
    'intra_refresh' : 'both', 
    'inline_headers' : True, 
    'sps_timing' : True
}

focusPeakingColor = '1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0'
focusPeakingthreshold = 0.055

centerColor = '255, 0, 0, 1.0'
centerThickness = 2

gridColor = '255, 0, 0, 1.0'
gridThickness = 2
# end configuration

Running

• from the terminal

  python3 server.py
  

• at startup
  • An rc.local example!

    sudo python3 /home/pi/code/streaming/server.py > /home/pi/code/streaming/log.txt 2>&1 &
    

How It Works

• Picamera handles all the video related tasks.
• Tornado handles serving out the html and js assets via http, and the h264 stream via websockets.
• jMuxer handles muxing the h264 stream (in browser) and playing it via Media Source extensions.

Licencing

• Picamera
• Tornado
• jMuxer