Palantir 2.6

Hi all,
Palantir 2.6 has been released.
All issues with pan/tilt facilities of the Quickcam Sphere/Orbit cams should be gone.
Besides, building the server for the Asus platform is now very easy (provided the toolchain/source base is installed, "make mips" is all you need).
As a bonus, the kernel driver for the Logitech Quickcam Messenger (in my opinion, one of the highest quality/price ratio cameras around) and the "qcset" companion utility are included in the binary distribution.

As the developer of Palantir, I'm posting this announce here because of the interest this software seems to have gained among the wl500g community.
I'd be glad to receive feedback about Palantir. Although the mailing list should be the channel of choice, I'll do my best to answer messages in this forum as well.

Happy camming!
David

The Palantir home page: http://www.fastpath.it/products/palantir/

Welcome to our forum. Have you bought wl500g already? :)
Perhaps, you could make an ipkg version to ease installing palantir for our community.

Keep up your good work. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Oleg

Welcome to our forum. Have you bought wl500g already? :)

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Yes, actually I like them so much I have bought two wl500g deluxe. :-)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Oleg

Perhaps, you could make an ipkg version to ease installing palantir for our community.

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Sure. Just let me find out how it works...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Oleg

Keep up your good work. :)

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Same to you!

Cheers
David

I cross-compiled the Palantir 2.6 server, and it is running on my Asus WL500gx now. I use the Palantir Windows client. The server works on my LAN, but when I try to connect to it from the WAN side I cannot make a connection. The firewall on the wl500gx is disabled.

My setup is as follows: ADSL2 modem>>>Linksys router>>>Ethernet cable>>>Linksys WiFi AP

>>>wireless connection >>>

>>>WL500gx acting as WiFi access point client>>>QuickCam Sphere

I am using Oleg's firmware.

The Linksys router (192.168.1.1) is the gateway to internet. In this router I have forwarded port 3000 and 3001 packets to the WL500gx (192.168.1.247). The WL500gx has the gateway address in its route table (route add default gw 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0).

Before I used Palantir I used the Asus surveillance camera program in the above setup. I was able to connect from LAN and WAN without any problem. This makes me think that there is something in Palantir. It seems as if Palantir does not know the gateway address, but …? Or, perhaps, the firewall is messing something up even though it is "disabled".

In any event, the Palantir pictures are great, especially full screen, and pan and tilt work beautifully. Palantir is great.

Thanks for any help,

I have set the IP address wl500gx to 192.168.1.247. Part of the output of "nvram show" is as follows:

usb_webremote_x=0
lan_gateway_t=192.168.1.247
qos_maxbw_x=

That is, the lan gateway address in the nvram is set equal to the IP address of the wl500gx automatically.

The wl500gx is set up to be a bridge, br0.

I have also used the route command to set the LAN gateway to 192.168.1.1 in the route table shown below.

[admin@(none) /]$ route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
default 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0 UG 0 0 0 br0
192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 br0
127.0.0.0 * 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo

So I seem to have two LAN gateway addresses, and that obviously doesn't make sense.

However, with exactly that setup I was able to use the Webcam utility in the Asus: it used 192.168.1.1 as the gateway. The utility worked correctly.

Question 1: Does the route table lan gateway address take precedence over the nvram lan gateway address?

Question 2: Could the existence of two gateway addresses be the cause of my problem with Palantir.

Question 3: If I try the following script

nvram set lan_gateway_t=192.168.1.1
nvram commit
reboot

will bad things happen? Will the IP address of the wl500gx be changed automatically to 192.168.1.1? What does the "t" in lan_gateway_t mean?

Thanks for any help.

This sure is a lot of work to get a surveillance camera!

I finally was able to connect to Palantir 2.6 from the WAN side. The problem was my fault: I don't know enough about Linux yet. After reading some more in my brand new Linux books I saw my silly mistake: I set the gateway up incorrectly.

THE WRONG WAY:

route add default gw 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0

which yields the following routing table:


Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
default 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0 UG 0 0 0 br0
192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 br0
127.0.0.0 * 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo

THE CORRECT WAY:

route add default gw 192.168.1.1 (that is, do not enter the netmask)

which yields the following routing table:

Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 br0
127.0.0.0 * 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
default 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 br0

IN THE CORRECT WAY THE GATEWAY IS THE LAST IN THE LIST! IN THE WRONG WAY IT IS FIRST. MOREOVER, THE Genmasks are different.

Since the way the routing table is used is well documented (I now know!), I will just state a couple of key points. Suppose that I am trying to connect to Google (66.249.93.104). The routing table will be inspected line by line from TOP TO BOTTOM. In the wrong setup the first line, the gateway, will be rejected (I am not explaining the details here), and so will the remaining two lines. In the correct setup the first two lines will be rejected, but the last line, the gateway, will be accepted. The result is a correctly functioning gateway.

A real beginner's mistake!

A final remark: I went on a long wild goose chase with the nvram. Again not going into details, every place where it mentions the lan gateway I fixed things so that it said 192.168.1.1. This did not solve my problem nor did it seem to hurt the functioning of the wl500gx. I WOULD APPRECIATE KNOWING WHAT THE CONNECTION IS BETWEEN THE nvram AND THE routing table.

The video of Palantir 2.6 works well, I get a frame rate between 3 and 4 fps. Using the top command I see that Palantir video is using about 95% of the cpu time.

However, there is a serious problem with the audio. When I check the audio box the frame rate drops to about 1, and the audio is just one-second bursts every five seconds. Top shows that the video and audio are now each using about 45% of the cpu. Naturally, I just assumed that that was the best that the wl500gx could do: 200Mhz apparently was not enough. Memory was not a problem.

To check I ran Palantir with audio only. I used the -f option to display a fixed jpeg frame. I expected that when the audio had the entire cpu to itself it would work. It did not. Although the audio took about 95% of the cpu, it was still periodic bursts.

Since many here have reported using audio with programs other than Palantir, it is clear that the wl500gx can handle audio.

Either I am again making a beginner's mistake or there is something wrong with the audio.

Has anyone compiled Palantir 2.6 and then satisfactorily run the video and audio simultaneously?

Thank you in advance for any ideas.

I have run

killall waveserver
killall waveservermain

Quote:

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Originally Posted by arch

Has anyone compiled Palantir 2.6 and then satisfactorily run the video and audio simultaneously?

Thank you in advance for any ideas.

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I did with my self compiled version and as you can read in that palantir thread by me, it does not work. Video only i had around 6 frames, audio was like you experienced, short slives every dosend secounds. This was on wl500g, i expected the 500gx to perform better, but i have none so i cant test myself.

After all, GSM Codec used for the audio and mjpeg for the video are not well performing on none-floatingpoint hardware. I dont know if at least the jpeg libary can be replaced with a integer-only flavor...

Greets
Wlanman

Hi All,

Sorry for my poor english, and tell you the truth, I'm totally noob on Linux.
Can somebody explain (step by step if possible) how to start Palantir automatically if the router (WL500g Deluxe) reboots? I mean, let start Palantir on startup.

Thanks in advance

I have run several tests of Palantir whose results may be of interest. I wanted to see how Palantir functioned when I was NOT using a wl500gx. That way I hoped to tease out how wl500gx affects Palantir.

I used an old 450Mhz PC that I have converted to a pure Linux box (Fedora FC4) as a Palantir server. Microphone and speakers were connected directly to the sound card. The QuickCam Orbit was connected to the USB port, but I was not using the webcam's microphone. More on the microphone later. I used the Windows Pclient running on my laptop which was connected wirelessly through this and that to the server. The laptop is running Windows XP SP2.

COMPUTATION LOAD ON THE SERVER: Video at 15 fps with audio from server to client worked fine. Top showed Palantir using about 84% of the cpu. At 5 fps this dropped to about 31%. When I disabled video and/or audio at the client these percentages dropped a bit, but since the video is calculated by the server whether it is sent or not, the drop was small. I do not know if this is true for the audio also. In any event, I assume that most of the server's calculations go into the video. It might seem, then, that the 200Mhz wl500gx should allow about 5fps with audio; however, I have been told that the lack of floating point hardware in the wl500gx makes a difference. We shall see; I have hopes for a newer version of Palantir.

NO FULL-DUPLEX: As I said, the audio from the server to the client was fine. However, I have never (ever!) had audio from the client to the server. I have tried my tests, nothing works.
HAS ANYONE EVER HAD AUDIO FROM THE CLIENT TO THE SERVER?

THE WEBCAM'S MICROPHONE: The microphone in the webcam is treated by Linux in the server as a second sound card. The original sound card is listed as full-duplex, and appears as /dev/dsp. The webcam's microphone appears at /dev/dsp1 and is listed as half-duplex. If I want to use the microphone in the webcam, I tell palantir.conf to use /dev/dsp1. Although this works fine for sending audio from the sever to the client, I have given up full-duplex (which is not working anyway :) ). If I tell palantir,conf to use the full-duplex sound card at /dev/dsp, the webcam's microphone does not work, and I have to plug another microphone directly into the sound card. There is obviously a fix for this problem; I just have not figured it out yet. To me the complete lack of full-duplex is more important.

The same microphone problem is present in the wl500gx. When I connect the QuickCam Orbit its microphone appears as /dev/sound/dsp, and when I add the USB speaker it appears as /dev/sound/dsp1. To get full-duplex these two have to work together.

I forgot to say that my packet sniffer shows that the video frame rate is far higher than the audio frame rate. This is objective evidence that the cpu spends most of its time on video, just as one would expect.

HOW CAN i ACCESS THE MIXERS IN MY WL500GX AT /dev/sound/mixer AND /dev/sound/mixer1? I have tried a number of things and searched this site, but I have not found the trick. I need to know this to be sure that I am interpreting the results of two new experiments correctly. Let me explain.

EXPERIMENT ONE, in my wl500gx: I use the microphone in the QuickCam Orbit and speakers are connected through a USB-to-audio adapter. I enter the command cat < /dev/sound/dsp1 > /dev/sound/dsp to connect the microphone to the speakers. I hear a low "motorboat sound", but when I tap the microphone or speak into it I hear nothing from the speakers.

EXPERIMENT TWO, with my Linux desktop: I conduct the same experiment. I still hear the low "motorboating sound" but now tapping and speaking in the microphone can be heard from the speakers. I have access to the mixers through the Fedora desktop. When I reduce the volume to zero the audio AND! the "motorboating sound" stop.

My tentative conclusion, then, is that the mixers in the wl500gx are NOT the source of the audio problem in Experment One, but I am not sure.

My desktop uses ALSA for audio. WHAT IS THE AUDIO SETUP IN THE WL500GX? I am guessing that ALSA and OSS would be too big.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by arch

HOW CAN i ACCESS THE MIXERS IN MY WL500GX AT /dev/sound/mixer AND /dev/sound/mixer1?

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Hi

Did you tried Smixer to view and alter the mixer settings ??

Greets
Wlanman

Thanks for the reply.

I have seen smixer discussed here in the forum, but it seemed that it was something extra that I would have to install. So I was first trying to understand the audio support that was already installed. In particular, i felt that if /dev/sound/mixer exists, and it does, I should be able to do something with it.

I have been reading about USB audio, OSS, and Alsa, but much of that seemed "advanced" with respect to the existing wl500gx. Waveserver plays a role, but I have not been able to find documentation or the source code for it.

All of this, of course, is motivated by my mad desire to see full-duplex audio working with Palantir 2.6 on the wl500gx. I know, I know ...

Anyway thanks again for the thought. As soon as I understand what is already there, I may try smixer.