Translate RTSP over UDP stream into ROS messages

Question

Hi everyone! I have searched the Web in order to find out whether a cheap IP camera stream, which sends data using RTSP over UDP (it is an ONVIF camera), can be read and translated into ROS message, that will be somehow processed (e.g. for object recognition etc.)

• My first search was related to OpenCV but it turned out that OpenCV does not support RTSP over UDP. I'd like to work using Python programming language but I cannot manage to understand if there is a way to connect to my camera.
• Many solutions I have found are RTSP/TCP based so the error which pops-up is the typical "Nonmatching transport in server reply".
• I also was wondering if the axis_camera package can be used for controlling any ONVIF compliant IP cameras.

Are there any ideas?

Thank you,

Fiorella

(I am working with ROS Kinetic on Ubuntu 16.04)

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Originally posted by fiorellasibona on ROS Answers with karma: 131 on 2018-05-24

Post score: 1

Answer 1

I believe gscam can do this. GStreamer supports rtsp and can open those streams (it claims to also be able to open UDP streams).

gscam is not necessarily easy to get to work, but it's one of the few pkgs that I know of that can do this.

Tip: get things working with plain gstreamer first. Then transfer the working config to gscam.

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Originally posted by gvdhoorn with karma: 86574 on 2018-05-24

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by fiorellasibona on 2018-05-24:
Thanks for the tip, indeed I excluded gstream as a solution since I hoped there was an easier/off-the-shelf solution. Anyways I'll give a try and in case of success I'll certainly share my solution!

Comment by gvdhoorn on 2018-05-24:
Negative results are also results, so please let us know in either case.

Comment by fiorellasibona on 2018-05-24:
You're right...as soon as I'll get any kind of result I'll be happy to share it!