What is a Flussonic Watcher / Erlivideo Company Blog

If you have ideas about how to make a story that will have a lot of users, a lot of IP cameras and a lot of profit from this, then do not pass by - we will talk about how we help to launch mass video surveillance services on our Flussonic Watcher

Flussonic Watcher is:

a ready-made carrier-grade software package that provides multi-user access to video and archives from thousands of IP cameras via browsers and mobile devices.

The Flussonic Watcher includes:

1. video streaming core - Flussonic server;
2. A web portal that provides administrators and users access to cameras and video archives without using plug-ins;
3. mobile applications;
4. agent on the camera to access it due to NAT without forwarding ports, miraya and SMS;
5. integration system with external billing, authorization servers;
6. a set of ready-made business processes and technical regulations for the preparation and sale of cameras for client video surveillance.

Why do you need Watcher?

We developed Watcher as a response to the requests of our customers, so our new complex will be useful in the following cases:

1. creation of a subscription video surveillance service based on an Internet provider or OTT, i.e. without base;
2. solutions for municipal chambers: safe region, city, village, etc .;
3. creating a service for online access to cameras for customers of a camera manufacturer;
4. internal corporate remote access to surveillance cameras with the ability to access a wide range of people;
5. audio-video fixation of technological processes in production.

We will gradually tell you about interesting implementation stories, but for now, we’ll talk about the details of the Flussonic Watcher organization.

Flussonic inside

Watcher is not a new tool for transmitting video: the video streaming server is the Flussonic video streaming server, on which many have already launched their services working with IP cameras.

Flussonic perfectly copes with the task of video transport, and the entire structure of Watcher is built so that heavy video traffic gets only to the servers where Flussonic stands. No proxying through the balancers is and is not necessary. Moreover, it works like this even for an agent on cameras, but more on that below.

Of the nice features for local networks: we added Onvif (and six other special protocols) to Flussonic camera search and you can try to search all your cameras.

Watcher has two modes of operation: “I can only try” and “I have everything here seriously”, i.e. plugin mode and service mode.

In the first case, the entire complex of one Watcher and Flussonic work only on one server, the watch itself does not store information about streams in its database and completely trusts this information to the fluxonics with which it works. The peculiarity of this convenient, albeit limited option is that you can tweak the flow settings in the fluxonic interface and these changes will immediately be visible in the watch.

In the second case, there is no video traffic on the server where the watch works, there is only an instance of fluxonic (control server), which provides interaction with a cluster of streaming fluxonics. In this case, liberties with self-editing the config on the streamer will not work: the watcher will quickly rewrite this all. But automatic migration of cameras from one server to another is possible.

Users at Watcher

Before we created Watcher, users had to develop their own website (on top of Flussonic or another video core), which users log into, log in and see cameras. The development of such a frontend is always expensive and is associated with big problems with optimization and the correct delivery of video from a media server to a browser or mobile application. We have made it easier for our customers many times and made a turnkey end-user solution on top of Flussonic Media Server.

Watcher is a python web application launched by fluxonik himself. It can store its data in sqlite or postgresql database. SQLite in order to make it easier to try, and postgresql in order to be able to work fully, incl. expand the cluster. The cluster mode of working with SQLite will not work, it's all the same frankly, a bad idea.

We tried to implement the necessary set of functions that are needed for a modern online video surveillance service. There is not only video analytics, but plans to start working with it are at the beginning of the 17th year.

Groups of users

Instantly there is a need for grouping users and cameras. In the general case, the task of grouping cameras, users and restricting access can be monstrous and have a terribly complicated solution.

Those. in a bad version, there may be tree-like user groups, tree-like camera groups, and some interesting relationships between users, cameras, user groups, and camera groups.

We thought of all this, drew a marker on the wall and made the option simpler: cameras, groups and users. The big scary scheme on the wall remained, because it did not fit on a white board, and the flight of fantasy could not be stopped, so it would be necessary - we will return to the monstrous version.

Integration

The small operator has several thousand users. Driving them from one web interface to another with your hands is very interesting, but we are not a bank to mock our customers in such a way.

We have an integration mechanism with billing, external user bases, etc. and it looks very convenient: an unpretentious IDL from which you can generate CORBA stubs for access through OLE.

Don’t worry, everything is much simpler: two addresses where you can fill in the CSV with the curl with a list of users and a list of cameras.

In some cases, cameras can be stored in operator billing as units of inventory control, and the binding to users can also be stored there. More often, however, we are faced with a situation where we are made clear: operator billing is so flexible and modifiable that we can only pick up the balance by login and write off.

For these cases, we are already making our own tariff system and will soon be able to please it.

Branding

If you are going to launch a service for people from the street, then of course you will need your logo in the upper left corner.

In Watcher, it is possible to change a number of interface elements so that the entire site looks like yours.

We can even give you the opportunity to add a logo to mobile applications. Speaking of mobile applications: we made them and uploaded them too.

Mobile applications

We laid out mobile applications for Android and iOS under the name peeklio (this is the code name for our hosting for IP cameras). They can be used with your own Watcher installation.

They are made using React Native (such a javascript, but without a web browser), so we can share a fascinating experience with this technology.

View video from cameras, access to the archive, favorites, etc. - it already exists and can be used.

However, for complete happiness and completeness of the OTT service, there is not enough cherry on the cake: the ability to hang the camera on the wall, turn on and immediately see the video on the cell phone. We also thought about this and made an agent for installation on the camera.

Agent on camera

And we have a solution for such a problem. We wrote and learned to upload the agent to the camera. This agent goes online, connects to your Watcher, and then connects directly to Flussonic.

Our way to take video from the camera is better than OpenVPN, because it does not create any virtual interfaces, it does not require doubling the hardware fleet. Our agent is very small: a kilobyte of 200, so it can fit on any Linux camera, can encrypt video, but at the same time
it improves delivery quality: wherever the picture gets streamed on OpenVPN, everything will be better with our agent.

Banquet Continuation

In the upcoming articles, we will try to tell you about what we came up with the processes of preparing cameras, what can be the procedures for selling these cameras, their accounting.

We will also share plans for the future and will be glad to any feedback. You can try Flussonic Watcher today, taking the trial from us: http://erlyvideo.ru/watcher