An extensible cross-platform camera server built on top of GStreamer and Rust-MAVLink

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Key Features

• Create and manage streams:
  • from local devices, like most USB cameras (using video4linux)
  • from remote devices, like most IP cameras
  • with supported encodings: H264, MJPG, Raw (YUYV)
• REST API for full control over streams and easy integrations
  • With Swagger UI always available for easy development ^{(What is this?)}
• Configure video4linux camera controls, like brightness, saturation, etc.
• SDP files available, allowing easy access from video players like VLC
• Redirect 3rd party streams, advertising them via MAVLink protocol
• MAVLink protocol using rust-mavlink:
  • Work with multiple cameras
  • Interface video4linux camera controls
• WebRTC-ready, for modern control stations, available from any H264 source.
• Remember configured streams
• Rotated logs with configurable path and verbosity level
• Generate thumbnails/snapshots for streams from local devices
• Configurable via CLI arguments
• Cross-platform, deployed for x64 and armv7 Linux

Table of Contents

• Key Features
• Table of Contents
• How to use it
  • 1. Downloading
  • 2. Installing
  • 3. Running
• Quick test guide
  • Receiving a stream from a MAVLink ground control station like QGroundControl
  • Receiving a stream from a GStreamer pipeline
• How to build it
• License
• Project origins

How to use it

1. Downloading

Download the mavlink-camera-manager binary for your architecture from our releases, or build it from sources as described here

2. Installing

• First, install the required runtime dependencies (assuming a Ubuntu-based distro):

sudo apt update -y && \
sudo apt install -y --no-install-recommends \
   libgstreamer1.0-0 \
   libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-0 \
   libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0 \
   libgstrtspserver-1.0-0 \
   gstreamer1.0-x \
   gstreamer1.0-nice

note: We recommend GStreamer 1.24.0 or above. Previous versions have thread leaks when using WebRTC. You can check it by running gst-launch-1.0 --version.

• Extract the zip
• optionally, put the folder to your Linux PATH

3. Running

After the installation, the binary can be run by calling it from the terminal, as simple as:

mavlink-camera-manager --mavlink=tcpout:0.0.0.0:14000 --verbose

At this point, the API should be ready. By default, it's accessible from any computer in the same network at port 6020, but it is customizable using the --rest-server CLI argument.

For more information about the CLI arguments, mavlink-camera-manager --help will give a list of accepted parameters for your version.

• Along with the REST API, a simple management interface is available at http://localhost:6020, in which streams can be created and managed:

• For developers, the Swagger UI with documentation for the entire REST API can be found at http://localhost:6020/docs

Quick test guide

The short clip below shows how an H264 UDP stream can be configured using the management interface, and how it can be accessed as a WebRTC stream.

Receiving a stream from a MAVLink ground control station like QGroundControl

The video should automatically popup if you are using any modern GCS, like QGroundControl, that has support for MAVLink camera messages.

1. Start mavlink-camera-manager
2. Start mavproxy or sim_vehicle with a TCP server at 5777 (mavlink-camera-manager's default can be changed via the CLI argument --mavlink)
3. Open your Ground Control Station
4. Done

Receiving a stream from a GStreamer pipeline

1. Start mavlink-camera-manager
2. Run the following pipeline:

• If RTSP (any encoding):

gstreamer-launch-1.0 rtspsrc location=$RTSP_ADDR latency=0 \
   ! decodebin
   ! fpsdisplaysink sync=false

• If UDP (H264 only):

gstreamer-launch-1.0 udpsrc port=$PORT \
   ! application/x-rtp,payload=96 \
   ! rtph264depay \
   ! avdec_h264 discard-corrupted-frames=true \
   ! videoconvert
   ! fpsdisplaysink sync=false

How to build it

This section assumes a Ubuntu 24.04, adaptation will be necessary for other distros.

1. Install the development dependencies:

sudo apt update -y &&\
sudo apt install -y --no-install-recommends \
   libunwind-dev \
   libclang-dev \
   pkg-config \
   build-essential \
   curl \
   gnupg \
   ca-certificates \
   git \
   libmount-dev \
   libsepol-dev \
   libselinux1-dev \
   libglib2.0-dev \
   libgudev-1.0-dev \
   gstreamer1.0-tools \
   gstreamer1.0-nice \
   libgstreamer1.0-dev \
   libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev \
   libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-dev \
   libgstrtspserver-1.0-dev

2. Install cargo if not available ^{(official instructions here)}

3. Install NodeJS greater or equal to 19 ^{(official instructions here)}, and the latest Yarn ^{(official instructions here)}, as shown below:

curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/gpgkey/nodesource-repo.gpg.key \
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/nodesource.gpg &&\
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/nodesource.gpg] https://deb.nodesource.com/node_20.x nodistro main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nodesource.list &&\
curl -fsSL https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg \
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/yarnkey.gpg &&\
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/yarnkey.gpg] https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian stable main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list &&\
sudo apt-get update -y &&\
  sudo apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
  nodejs \
  yarn

4. Clone this repository and enter it

git clone https://github.com/mavlink/mavlink-camera-manager.git &&\
cd mavlink-camera-manager

5. Build it with cargo:

cargo build --release

note: If the compilation fails to find one of these packages, make sure that they are visible for pkg-config, which may be necessary to set PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Project origins

The Mavlink Camera Manager project originated as a personal experiment by @patrickelectric, driven by the need to address a critical challenge in remotely operated vehicles – effectively managing and providing camera streams to the topside computer. At the time, there was a noticeable absence of open-source alternatives, which motivated the project's inception.

Over time, the project gained recognition and was officially embraced by Blue Robotics as a core development effort. It became an integral part of their operating system, BlueOS, and was widely distributed worldwide. The adoption of the Mavlink Camera Manager by Blue Robotics served as a testament to its capabilities and value.

Due to increasing interest from other developers and integrators, the project was transferred to the MAVLink organization on May 25, 2023.