Following the death of rossa, which was hosting the only working environment for the GigE camera software, I've set up a new dedicated rackmount camera server: c1cam (details here). The Python server script is now configured as a persistent systemd service, which automatically starts on boot and respawns after a crash. The server depends on a set of EPICS channels being available to control the camera settings, so c1cam is also running a softIOC service hosting these channels. At the moment only the ETMX camera is set up, but we can now easily add more cameras.

Usage

Instructions for connecting to a live video feed are posted here. Any machine on the martian network can stream the feed(s). The only requirement is that the client machine have GStreamer 0.10 installed (all the control room workstations satisfy this).

Code Locations

As much as possible, the code and dependencies are hosted on the /cvs/cds network drive instead of installed locally. The client/server code and the Pylon5, PyPylon, and PyEpics dependencies are all installed at /cvs/cds/rtcds/caltech/c1/scripts/GigE. The configuration files for the soft IOC are located at /cvs/cds/caltech/target/c1cam.

Upgrade Goals

The 40m GigE camera code is a slightly-updated version of the 10+ year-old camera code in use at the sites. Consequently every one of its dependencies is now deprecated. Ultimately, we'd like to upgrade to the following:

• Python 2.7 --> 3.7
• Basler Pylon 5.0.12 --> 5.2.0
• PyPylon 1.1.1 --> 1.4.0
• GStreamer 0.10 --> 1.2

This is a long-term project, however, as many of these APIs are very different between Python 2 and 3.