Hi,
is it possible to connect and stream using USB cameras or is it only ONVIF cameras. If it is possible, how may I do it?
Regards,
Charlie
Yes, the EKH01 comes with support for standard USB cameras (and they could even work with ONVIF; the standard RPI camera is not ONVIF, we merely run an ONVIF server on the EKH01). Plug them in and they should be detected/usable.
Of course, being ‘available’ is different from ‘automatically providing a stream’. Our devices ship with MediaMTX and ffmpeg, so you may want to look into that:
You can stop the existing mediamtx service with service mediatmtx stop if you want to configure your own. Note that the version of mediamtx currently on the devices is earlier than that, so some doco may differ.
If you want to support ONVIF with USB cameras, you’d need to make some minor modifications to:
(copy the approach in rtspserver_mediamtxrpi.* and adjust for generic USB cameras)
If you let me know exactly what you’re trying to achieve with USB cameras, I can give further advice.
Hi James,
Thank you for your response. I have decided to use IP security cameras for my project, where I am working on establishing two-way audio and video transmission between an AP and a STA. If you have any advice or suggestions, I would greatly appreciate it.
I am a university student currently completing a final-year project that centres on your technology.
If you are using IP security cameras, this is very straightforward. You should just configure the EKH01 devices to bridge mode, and they’ll effectively act like an ethernet cable. Once you’ve done this, plug the AP end into your router, and the STA end into your camera, and it should work the same way as if you plugged the camera directly into the router. You won’t need to run any custom software on the EKH01 itself.
I was planning to have a camera on both ends. So, connection wise it would go laptop + IP camera (using Ethernet switch) to EKH01 on both ends. Configuring both EKH01 as a virtual wire. I want to have some kind of button relay to dictate which side is transmitting and then simply just have the EKH01 transmit from one side’s camera to the other side’s laptop.
I know the EKH01s include an RPI4, but IMO you should think of the EKH01s as just providing an ethernet cable. Any software should be run on the laptops, and can be developed entirely separately of the networking (i.e. do all your work with everything plugged into the same switch 
).
If you want, you can then figure out how to move that software onto the EKH01 if necessary.
I see, so if I understand correctly you are suggesting to connect the camera to my laptop and connect my laptop to my EKH01, run any software I have in regards to the video streaming there on my laptop, and then just use the EKH01 as my network link to transmit the output?
Can I ask why you suggest not running the software on the pi?
It’s easy to get caught up in ‘how to run the software on the pi’. Since the Rpi4 is relatively capable, this is almost certainly true. It’s just a bit annoying.
I think the interesting part of your project is getting the software running over some distance; where the software runs is the least interesting part. Since you already have ‘easy’ places to run the software (i.e. the laptops), I’d start there. I always like to do the most interesting (and risky!) stuff first
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Thank you so much for the guidance James!