Focusing a camera and the first tests

WARNING: THIS IS A PAGE IN PROGRESS! DO NOT FOLLOW IT IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR THE BUILDING OF A CAMERA FROM SCRATCH

Ahoj! In this section, you will configure camera, cable the camera for the first time, do the preliminary focusing and test the whole system. 

Testing and Focusing

At this point, your camera must be tested and focused. There's no point sealing up the housing and screwing it to the wall if its not working or isn't focused !

Testing the Camera

• If your camera came with a single PoE cable, connect this to a netork cable and plug the other end of the network cable into your PoE injector.

• if your camera came with a cable with separate network and power sockets, plug the "output" PoE adapter into the camera cable and plug a network cable into the PoE adapter, then connect the other end of the network cable into the other PoE adapter.
• . Connect the PoE adapter or injector into a spare socket on your home router and connect the camera power supply to it.

The Camera PoE cable lights should come on, indicating traffic is flowing. After a few seconds, it should steady down to irregular flashing. If you don't see flashing lights then check the cable connections to make sure everything is plugged in properly.

Find its IP Address Finding the Camera Address The camera should now appear as a device on your network and to test it properly you will need to find its IP Address. The easiest way to do this is using a free piece of software called [IP Scanner]. Download and run it (no need to install). Click "Scan" and wait till it finishes. The camera can usually be identified by Manufacturer 'ICP Internet Communications' or 'Motion Control Systems', though other vendor names are possible such as 'Koenig & Bauer AG' and 'Metrohm AG'. If none of the names look right you may need to experiment by trying to connect to each candidate in turn. Checking the Connection VLC Network Stream Once you have the IP Address, open VLC on your Pi, Mac or Windows machine, and from the "Media" menu, select "Open Network Stream". Enter the following into the address box, replacing 1.2.3.4 with the address you got in the previous step rtsp://1.2.3.4:554/user=admin&password=&channel=1&stream=0.sdp After a second or two, you should get a view through the camera. If nothing comes up, check you have got the right IP address, and that the cables are secure. You can now double-check that you installed the camera the right way up. If the image is upside down in VLC, turn it through 180 degrees in the housing. do not be tempted to use firmware settings to flip or mirror the image. These cameras have a 'rolling' shutter and to work out precise timings of meteors, the RMS software compensates for the shutter movement. If the camera is upside down and the image then flipped, the shutter is working in the opposite direction to that expected by RMS and timings will be wrong. You must physically rotate the camera. Note that its entirely normal for the image to be very red and overexposed in daylight. We've removed the IR Block filter so the camera picks up a lot of red light. This is exactly what we want.

Checking for Obstructions Obstructions Temporarily close the housing case up and check if it can be seen obstructing the view anywhere. Move the camera around on the mount to minimise the obstructions, and if necessary bend or tilt the bracket to angle the camera down a bit. However, don't worry if you can't eliminate all obstructions. Later on you will create a software mask to prevent these areas causing false detections.

Focusing the Camera There's a whole separate section of the Wiki on focusing, but here's the short version !! connect the camera to your network as above. Open VLC. Aim the camera at something at around 30-50 metres away. Screw the lens in and out slowly to get best focus. You can usually do an initial focus with the camera assembled on a desk. Point it out a window during the hours of darkness and focus on a building at least 50m away. You can do this using the RMS utility ShowLivestream instead of VLC, if you have already fully configured the camera and Pi as explained in the next step. Note that there's a short lag due to the network, so you should wait a second or two after each adjustment to allow the change to be reflected in VLC. Important note: if your camera came with an electronic filter, and you have left the 'daytime' filter in place you MUST finalise focus at night. The filters slightly alter focus.

Camera setup & configuration

To operate at night, the camera must be reset to the correct gain, colour mode and video mode. There are two ways you can do this: This is mean the IP configuration of the camera and setting up the parameters of the camera needed for its night operation. Instead of text, you will now watch a video with detailed hands-on instructions:

Camera setup & configuration - Youtube video method

If you have a Pi3, you will currently have to use CMS. CMS is a security camera software package you can download from the internet. You can use the software as explained in this video by Denis Vida. Note however that you should reset the network as the LAST thing you do. The video does it a bit soon.

Camera setup & configuration - RMS Script method Making sure the Pi can see the Camera Note that all RMS scripts MUST be run from the source/RMS folder as the Pi user. Don't be tempted to cd into a different folder! It won't work. If you have a Pi4, you can use a utility that's part of RMS, as follows: If you're not using the pre-built image, first install RMS on the Pi as explained here. Now plug the camera into your router, open a Terminal window on the Pi and, using the address of your camera, make sure the Pi can ping the camera: ping a.b.c.d If you get any errors or timeouts, check the camera IP address, and check that the Pi is connected to your home network. Next open a terminal window and run this script to reset the camera IP address. python -m Utils.SetCameraAddress a.b.c.d 192.168.42.10 You will lose connection to the camera and see a bunch of error messages. Thats normal. Once you see a timeout message, unplug the power and network from the camera. Now plug the camera directly into the Pi's ethernet port, open a Terminal window and run the following script to update the camera gain, video mode, and other settings. Setting Camera Params Scripts/RMS_SetCameraParams.sh Note: If you have RMS installed on your PC then you can change the camera address from your PC instead, then connect it to the Pi and run the 2nd script.

You are now done with this section and now you are going to install your camera into the position. Drilling holes into the wall is fun, right? Back to the signpost page.