Android: Can't set H264 decoder

S.L.P. image questions, stereoscopic video livestream and recording, stereoscopic photo capture etc.
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gtoal
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Joined: Thu Apr 25, 2019 8:58 pm

Android: Can't set H264 decoder

Post by gtoal »

I'm having real problems getting the stereopi to make and maintain a wifi connection. (I don't know if this is a factor, but my wifi system is a pi3 running a wireless bridge - this has the advantage that I can tcpdump all the traffic to any device, which isn't possible with an off-the-shelf NAT wifi router, which hides the real IP addresses from the main router)

What is making it especially difficult is that it is impossible to do a console login to see what the problem is and fix things, and of course when the wifi is broken you can't log in over wifi.

(It would be really helpful if you could press alt-f2 to bring up a second console with a login prompt.)

Whenever I start the cell phone android app, I see a message for a short time that says "Can't set H264 decoder". Then I either get a black screen, or the white screen with the two raspberries and a cycling indicator that it is still trying to contact the stereopi. I haven't managed to get any video anywhere other than on the stereopi console yet.

At one point I had both my stereopi and my cell phone online, but as soon as the cellphone tried to contact the stereopi, the stereopi would repeatedly put out arp requests for the phone (Galaxy-J3-Prime) which were never answered. I finally inserted a manual arp entry so the stereopi could ping the cellphone but there was still no connectivity in the app. netstat -na has *never* shown a connection of any kind from the stereopi to the cellphone.


Graham

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Realizator
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Re: Android: Can't set H264 decoder

Post by Realizator »

Hi Graham,
gtoal wrote:
Thu Jun 06, 2019 11:51 pm
I'm having real problems getting the stereopi to make and maintain a wifi connection. (I don't know if this is a factor, but my wifi system is a pi3 running a wireless bridge - this has the advantage that I can tcpdump all the traffic to any device, which isn't possible with an off-the-shelf NAT wifi router, which hides the real IP addresses from the main router)
Yep, your bridge theoretically might be the reason of your issues. Our discovery broadcast mechanism can be broken by this MiM solution.
gtoal wrote:
Thu Jun 06, 2019 11:51 pm
What is making it especially difficult is that it is impossible to do a console login to see what the problem is and fix things, and of course when the wifi is broken you can't log in over wifi.
Actually you can. If your StereoPi is connected to WiFi, and you can find it's IP address, you may connetct over SSH. User credentials is root/root
gtoal wrote:
Thu Jun 06, 2019 11:51 pm
(It would be really helpful if you could press alt-f2 to bring up a second console with a login prompt.)
As we mentioned, S.L.P. image is not designed for keyboard and mouse. You can consider it as a router, which is not designed for monitor, keyboard and mouse. You can have a console on your monitor, using one of these tricks:
- Rename "run.sh" script, so system will not start stream.
- Disconnect cameras - this way scriptw will not start preview overlay, and you can see your console.

But, actually, network SSH is a better option.
gtoal wrote:
Thu Jun 06, 2019 11:51 pm
Whenever I start the cell phone android app, I see a message for a short time that says "Can't set H264 decoder". Then I either get a black screen, or the white screen with the two raspberries and a cycling indicator that it is still trying to contact the stereopi. I haven't managed to get any video anywhere other than on the stereopi console yet.
Please try to connect all equipment to one router without MiM solution. Or create access point on your phone, and put your phone's access point name and password to stereopi.conf. This way you can check, either the problem is in your network configuration, or in a software part.
Also, one more question: when your Android app is in this mode, can you tap a screen? Can you see popup hint with StereoPi IP address?
gtoal wrote:
Thu Jun 06, 2019 11:51 pm
At one point I had both my stereopi and my cell phone online, but as soon as the cellphone tried to contact the stereopi, the stereopi would repeatedly put out arp requests for the phone (Galaxy-J3-Prime) which were never answered. I finally inserted a manual arp entry so the stereopi could ping the cellphone but there was still no connectivity in the app. netstat -na has *never* shown a connection of any kind from the stereopi to the cellphone.


Graham
Eugene a.k.a. Realizator

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