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What IP camera should I use in order to publish audio back to the camera

I have a project that will be using IP cameras with Wowza. The requirements of the project are to have low light capable IP cameras that also have speaker output on them so that we can send audio back to the cameras as well as stream the RTSP stream from the camera to other users.

The current camera that I’m testing with is a GeoVision camera. I’m able to grab the rtsp stream and then view the stream in all the test players and on ios with Wowza 4 just fine.

The client has requested that we grab audio from the User that are viewing the IP stream and send audio from the user back to the IP camera. After speaking with the manufacture of the GeoVision camera, the only support they have audio in is by using some LiveX component that needs to be programmed in C# and run on a Windows computer. Supposedly this component will communicate with the camera and push the audio back to the camera.

Basically I’m looking for recommendations on IP cameras that I can easily control and communicate with using Wowza / Java. I’d like to be able to create an audio stream on the Wowza server and then tell the camera where to grab the audio from.

Hi Matthew,

It sounds like you’re seeking a solution to send audio from the end-user/client back to the camera. It seems plausible, however, in order to support properly, we will require the streaming protocol requirement for audio streaming back to the camera, regardless of the device you select.

It would seem that unless the camera can actively monitor for an incoming connection, this will require custom code.

-Tim

The client has requested that we grab audio from the User that are viewing the IP stream and send audio from the user back to the IP camera.

Matthew,

The best way to get audio from the user that is playing back the stream is with a Flash RTMP application that uses the client computer’s microphone. On mobile devices you can use GoCoder but it would not be in-line, on the same page, which I think is what you would require. But for desktop playback a Flash RTMP application is the best and only practical option. You could embed the Flash application separately from whatever player you are using. Take a look at the webcamrecording example that is the in the /examples that ship with Wowza as a starting place.

However, having said that, I’m not sure what you mean by sending the audio back to the IP camera. If the IP camera has a microphone, it will already have an audio channel. There is a way to add an audio channel to a live stream that does not have one, and it might work to add audio channels to a stream that does already, but that is using a file source, and I don’t think it would be useful to add audio tracks. Perhaps what you really want is audio chat? Where each user can add audio that every other user can hear?

Richard

Hi Matthew,

It sounds like you’re seeking a solution to send audio from the end-user/client back to the camera. It seems plausible, however, in order to support properly, we will require the streaming protocol requirement for audio streaming back to the camera, regardless of the device you select.

It would seem that unless the camera can actively monitor for an incoming connection, this will require custom code.

-Tim

I’m looking for recommendations of cameras. I’m not sure of the protocol for the existing camera that I’m using. I was hoping someone on here that has experiance using IP cameras would be able to suggest one that would work well with Wowza and also have some sort of REST API that I can use to communicate with the camera.