live wireless camera

[agermich]

Hi Folks.

 

I am on the hunt for a reliable and compact wireless video camera solution.

 

The background is that we have a theatre production that has been up at the Edinburgh festival and is currently back with us, but is also looking to go out on a world tour next year. We are currently using a ipod touch running AirBeam, with a number of wifi repeaters streaming the live video from the ipod camera back to a mac with AirBeam pro outputting a Syphon Stream into Qlab.

This system is good for us as the camera is tiny and the system was cheap and easy to set-up. Unfortunately it is not without it's quirks. The ipod gets very hot and has to have a

backup battery attached as it eats through the battery during a 1hr 15m show. The bigger problem though is the occasional freezing, usually for no longer than a few seconds, but it can be pretty nerve-wracking for the performers. We have good coverage with the wifi and the glitches don't seem to be related to the wifi signal strength as that is always at full. We have set up the wifi network specifically for AirBeam to ensure that there are no other devices on it and have surveyed the building wifi to ensure that it is on a different channel from anything else.

 

We are working on the networking to see whether we can get rid of the glitches but I am also on the hunt to see whether there is a rock solid system that we could invest in for the tour. Cost was previously an issue but "might" now be less of an issue as there is a lot of interest in the show. The other issue is size. The ipod touch is tiny, and while we din't mind going bigger, a full size SDI camera with a teradek bolt (or similar) is going to be too big.

 

If anyone has any suggestions for alternative systems (or any companies that I should be having a chat with at PLASA) I would love to hear them.

 

Cheers

Michael Ager

Production Manager

Bush Theatre

[agermich]

I have been having a look into other options for this and one of the potential options that has come up is to continue using an ipod touch (or maybe move over to a gopro) as the camera, but then instead of relying on an app and wifi for the video transmission, use some kind of dedicated wireless HDMI hardware. We are looking at professional hardware, but there is quite a range of different priced kit. Is there anyone on here who has any experience of this kind of kit? Some of the options are:

 

Teradek Bolt - there is a range of different priced variants of these, the more expensive ones claim better range

Paralinx PAR-DARTH - Much Cheaper than the Teradek claims 300m range

Eclipse 500 - Another Cheaper option claims 150m range

Paralinx Arrow-X HDMI - Good range, mid priced

 

To be honest, the range isn't a problem as it is never going to be that far, but there is always going to be a wall or two in the way. This is why we thought the the original Air beam solution was a good option, as we could link wifi routers through the building Ethernet patch and always ensure that a router is in range. Unfortunately we are still having ongoing issues with random freezing in airbeam, that we have yet to get to the bottom of.

 

There are camera hire places around west London that have various options in their hire stock, so it might just be a case of spending some money to hire a few options to test out.

 

Cheers

 

Mike

[henny]

Have a look at some of the products aimed at the Drone Racing market for POV - https://hobbyking.com/en_us/fpv-aerial-video-telemetry-1/fpv-1/video-tx-rx.html

[Dave m]

Any cheap wireless is going to have the hell of a delay You can buy a wireless broadcast set up for GoPro but it costs $7k Have you considered cables from the sky or very cheap analogue transmitting to a point very close by and cables to wherever?

[agermich]

I suppose that the thing with this is that we have cheap wireless at the moment and it works but can be un-predictable and does have a fair amount of latency (although that isnt a huge problem). We would prefer to spend some money on it and get a rock solid solution. We want to keep the actual camera small, so would ideally stick with the ipod touch or a gopro, but we need a decent back-end to do the wireless. Spending a few £K on a solution will probably be fine if we know that it works. Unfortunately none of us have a broadcast background so don't have any experience with that kind of kit. BBC Studioworks are moving back into Television Centre over the road from us soon, maybe I need to make friends with their technicians and see if they have any ideas!

[henny]

That's why I said to look at the drone POV market it has to be low latency otherwise they wouldn't be able to use POV race drones

[mac.calder]

Walls will be your enemy. A _LOT_ of these solutions are in 2.4Ghz and 5GHz. 2.4 is pretty good with walls, but is a very crowded bit of spectrum - most manufacturers have given up on 2.4 for that reason. 5 - generally less okay with walls - distance takes a huge hit from obstructions. If you can get a cable past all the obstructions then any of the solutions linked will work really well. (I am not sure on the eclipse having never used it, but Paralinx and Teradek are both very good manufacturers).

 

Fibreoptic HDMI extenders can be got for a couple of hundred pounds. Fibre cable, about a pound meter. Cat6 extenders are another option too, however I would suggest against patching most HDMI over Cat6 extenders through patch bays etc.

[Tom_M]

agermich please can you clarify what you mean by "wifi repeaters" - are you meaning Wi-Fi range extenders, individual cheap access points that don't talk to a central WLAN controller or something else?

 

If they are Wi-Fi range extenders then they usually work by receiving the signal and just retransmitting it on the same channel thereby effectively halving your available bandwidth each time you do this. They also suffer from the same issue as controller less APs when a device has to transfer it's connection between APs.

 

If they are cheap individual access points that don't talk to central WLAN controller then you can get a couple of seconds delay when the device (in this case an ipod touch) has to stop talking to one AP and build a whole new connection to another AP as it has a much stronger signal from the new AP than the previous AP.

 

 

You could also have something else in there causing intermittent interference that you cannot spot without the right kit. You need a spectrum analyser looking at the right band for your network. To do this I use a Wi-Spy DBx from MetaGeek and their Channalyzer software as it lets me record the entire 2.4Ghz or 5GHz Wi-Fi spectrum, if I have two plugged in to my laptop at once I can record both spectrums at the same time. I can then look back at it during a less rushed time to see what went on. I use this as it highlights devices that are present (e.g. wireless security cameras) but do show up when looking at the spectrum with a normal Wi-Fi app such as NetStumbler or InSSIDer which rely on the Wi-Fi card in the laptop.

 

 

Hopefully your ipod touch is at least a 5th generation (this is when they started using the lightning connector) one otherwise you will be stuck in the 2.4GHz band, with the 5th and 6th gen you can use the 5GHz band. The 6th gen improves this even further as it supports 802.11ac.

 

 

To give you a fast and reliable Wi-Fi with no drop when handing devices between APs you need a WLAN controller based system from one of the big vendors - HPE Aruba, either flavour of Cisco, Ruckus, Aerohive, etc. using APs that support 802.11ac.

 

 

[Joe Fernand]

If the Camera position is fixed I'd be considering CAT6 or Fibre as Mhm.suggests - it is a pity we missed your production whilst it was in Edinburgh, could have stopped by with a couple of options for you to try out.

 

In addition to HDBT over CAT6 Extenders we now also have Hybrid Fibre HDMI cables at fixed lengths up to 100m (and custom options too) - if you can go for a wired solution it is going to take a lot of hassle out of the connection.

 

Joe

[lite_lad]

for any of the cheaper wireless solutions you are going to struggle with walls (as has been mentioned) and by cheaper, I mean up to ~£5K!

 

Microwave links are the only thing that is really going to guarantee you a rock solid signal, but it sounds like they would be too expensive and bulky to suit your show.

 

We've recently had good success with the BOXX products on another show which relies on a lot of live camera and it was pretty solid for the 3 month run. The difference for us was that we were able to roughly get line of sight, the most it ever needed to go through was a flat made of box steel and faced with ply.

 

Something you could do with some of these systems though is to have multiple receivers which you would switch between as you move along and may be a solution which fits the bill.

 

I'd recommend hiring some kits and seeing which works best for you, there isn't a go to solution for this.