HDMI video stream unreliable in QGC4.4.3

HereLink
1

Hi all, hoping someone can help with some issues I’m having.

I recently installed the latest QGC on my herelink V1.0 to be able to use newer releases of Arducopter as the standard QGC is missing support for multiple mounts, so loses camera controls.
I’m using a Sont RX0ii on the canrea front.

In the new version I’m seeing my video feed dropping out 70% of the time when I use the camera. The sequence of events is as below.

  • Start up Herelink
  • Start up drone and allow to boot and connect
  • Start up QGC - 4.4.3
  • Start up camera
  • At this point I can see my screen on the camera start to flicker as if the video is trying to connect, but it never does, instead just contimues to flicker on and off. The video never streams in QGC

If I slighly modify the sequence I can get a video streaming

  • Start up Herelink
  • Start up drone and allow to boot and connect
  • Start up QGC - 4.0.8
  • Start up camera
  • Wait for video to stream - usually only takes a few seconds
  • Close down QGC 4.0.8
  • Start up QGC - 4.4.3
  • Video streams OK in 4.4.3

After this I can use the camera to trigger photos with no problems, but if I start recording video probably 70% of the time the video drops first time. The other 30% of the time it comes back OK, but then either when I stop recording, or start a subsequent recording the video drops.

When using the camera manually I can see the screen does go black for a moment when recording is triggered, and again when it’s stopped. It appears this is what is causing the issues, but I don’t know why this would be an issue in 4.4.3 and not in 4.0.8.

It seems like in the video stream re-connection there is a retry or max time it will try to connect which has changed between the two versions, and in the shorter time limit is too short for my camera, but I don’t know the code so this is bit of guess?

If anyone can point me something to try, or if more info is needed then please let me know, and I will give it a try.

Thanks for any help

2

I did some more testing today on this and managed to grab some logs from my tests.

CameraErrors.ulg (3.6 MB)
CameraErrors2.ulg (35.8 KB)
VideoErrorLog.ulg (3.6 MB)

If someone has an pointers on anything I could try next that would be greatly appreciated.

Something I did notce too is the QGC version shows as 4.4.2.1 in the app, but when I downloaded the APK it said it was 4.4.3. Not sure if that would have much of an impact, but it was unexpected as I thought it should be 4.4.3

3

Grabbed another log file today that looks was from what started out as a successfull connection, but after starting and stopping my video recording the connection dropped out again.

VideoErrors3.ulg (44.6 KB)

I noticed the message “Stream timeout, no frames for 3 …” in the logs too. Is this a number of retries that is allowed, and if so can this number be changed anywhere? The reason I ask is that I with my RX0ii starting a s stopping recording tends to result in a black screen for around half a second, and I think this may be what is contributing to the video issues. I was hopin there is somehwhere the retries could be altered to help get around this?

4

As this is stopping me flying at the moment, I’ve been trying to find more info about the issues I’m having.

While I’m no expert, it does look a lot like the issue that should have been fixed with this commit in 4.4.3.

@JulianOes, is it possible this somehow didn’t make it into the 4.4.3 apk, especially as the version is showing 4.4.2.1?

Thanks for any light anyone can shed on this.

5

Just a quick update on this. After more digging through the logs, I found the video stream was trying to use rtsp:\192.168.0.10:8554\H264Video

I changed the video source to be using RTSP as a source and set the above address for it. This seems to get around the errors I’ve been seeing. It’s all worked in testing on the , but it’s been too windy to get flying for a full in flight test.