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Computer controlled TV station and cameras

Extra TV channels for a retirement home's MATV network, with automated playback control of internal event camera streams and video library.

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Working in an aged care home, it's quite common for residents to not be able to, (or not want to) come out of their rooms to the organised events/performances. Examples of this are that we commonly have many residents who are bed bound or live in a separate secure dementia wing.

Our biggest and most popular event is our weekly "Happy Hour" show on Friday afternoons, when we have a paid musical performer play for about 1 hour with food and drinks.

Our facility was also built with 2 extra TV channels (in additional to the FTA channels) both connected to DVD players, initially used to manually play DVDs at set times each day.

This situation led to the inspiration to try and manually live stream this weekly event into the TV network video input instead of a DVD player.

From this initial successful experiment, the project grew over several years with more ideas and experiments and added equipment and TV channels.

Ive just made this project open source !

The project has gone through numerous revisions and expansions to now consists of:

  • Now open source for the 2023 Hackaday Prize
  • Integration with existing MATV network feeding 1080p video to 170 rooms/tvs.
  • Scheduled live stream PTZ HD camera in the main lounge with OpenCV powered tracking and zoom.
  • On demand portable live stream capability from iPad tablet.
  • 7 extra TV channels via High Definition RF Modulators:
    • "Live Events" channel featuring scheduled and on-demand camera live streams from inside the facility as well as other scheduled content from our media library.
    • "DVD Channel" dedicated to manual DVD playback as initially intended.
    • "TV Shows" channel featured playlist with weeks+ worth of 24/7 old TV shows, Performances and Documentaries
    • "Relaxation" channel with calming animal/nature content to music 24/7
    • 3x more channels currently used for playback of resident selected cable TV channels.
  • Web based playlist manager for curating the playlists for TV Shows & Relaxation channels
  • Web based remote control of Live Events channel to manually override standard schedule.
  • 3x Linux PC's for generating HDMI video play-out for the Live Events, TV Shows & Relaxation channels.
  • Recording of "Live Events" channel streams are saved, re-encoded and sent to NAS for later playback.

I have use project logs as chapters of the project development.

  • Future Plans

    hayden05/30/2023 at 04:50 0 comments

    Going forward I would like to improve the OpenCV tracking system, as CV and AI has come along way in the time since I first wrote it.

    Also I would like to improve the playlist manager web app such that a schedule can be printed out to give residents some idea of what is on at what time.

  • Modulator replacements, system relocation and even more channels !

    hayden05/30/2023 at 04:45 0 comments

    In the final revision to our system I relocated all the equipment to our comms room and replaced the 4 channel modulator with individual modulators per channel. As we had one of the cards in the 4 channel mod go bad and take years to get sent back to china for repairs due to covid, its also cheaper to use individual mods rather than a 4 in 1 and if one channel goes bad you can replace just that channel rather than the whole unit. We got a great deal on 8 used single channel HD modulators, so switched over to them.
    With the extra modulators we got to add 3 extra channels, and for now, connect them to 3 cable tv boxes (foxtel) set on resident chosen channels, similar to how hotels operate.
    The system is much easier to work on now and runs cooler with less dust, as the comms room is climate controlled cool, compared with the dusty cupboard in the reception.
    One modulator and DVD player is still connected in the reception cupboard.

    satisfaction: on the left white wall my system, on the right wall the original MATV headend, which takes 1 TV antenna and distributes its signal to all TV's
    the rack where every thing used to be installed in the reception, but now just one modulator and dvd player

  • Scheduled video library content on "Live Events" channel

    hayden05/30/2023 at 00:50 0 comments

    So after some time it was realised it would be good to put some extra content on the "Live Events" channel when there were no live events being streamed (which is most of the time).

    So i had to make a playlist system to play the media we wanted at set times, as well as the lounge camera stream when a scheduled event was there.

    Only problem was that now the lounge stream camera only came on at set times (rather than being on 24/7) we had to have a way to manually activate that stream playback for 1-3 hours when needed and interrupt any media playback that might be happening.

    I made it so you can pause the schedule for a chosen time if you want to show a youtube video, as you can also remote desktop into the computer with anydesk and what ever content you open people will see, such as youtube website.

    So I made a web interface for remote controlling this: (note while we do have provision in the copyright legislation for using media transcoded from dvds we own for accessibility reasons, i have blurred to avoid confusion)

  • Portable on-demand streaming via tablet and covid.

    hayden05/30/2023 at 00:43 0 comments

    So covid happened, and it really impacted us, not so much the disease itself but all the precautions and increased workload which we are still dealing with today in 2023.

    For a long time we could not hold our weekly happy hour event, so I made a way to use off the shelf tablet and rtsp streaming app to stream an entertainer from a room other than the main lounge to all our residents rooms who where now all stuck in their rooms !

    I wrote a python script to via cron check the ip of the tablet for an active stream, and play it via vlc. and when not active close vlc.

    This is still a useful feature for if we have events not in the main lounge.

  • Upgrade to High Definition 1080p and 2 more channels

    hayden05/30/2023 at 00:32 0 comments

    For the first couple of years we used the existing 2 channel standard definition rf modulator, one channel for live stream and one channel for dvd playback.

    Then we got a good deal on a professional used 4 channel HD modulator, so we could now see the full quality of our camera footage as well as add 2 more channels !

    Our (now retired) 4 channel modulator
    Where the 4 channel modulator and all equipment used to be housed. This is where DVDs are played back from.
    examples of the 3x tiny pc's we bought to run/output each channel (apart from dvd)

    my simple web based playlist editor to manage what is played on the 2 new channels: "TV Shows & Relaxation"

  • OpenCV automated PTZ camera control

    hayden05/29/2023 at 10:39 0 comments

    The next stage was to develop the software and hardware solution required to automate the use of the cameras PAN/TILT & 20x Optical ZOOM features via its IP control API/Interface

    It was decided to use a dedicated second camera that could always see the full scene, rather than running CV/Image recognition on the main camera, because if the main camera was zoomed in on a performer it would not see some action outside of its vision to zoom out to capture.

    I set up a raspberry pi 3 and camera running openCV software and a simple python change/movement detect loop to watch a chosen section of the pi camera (excluding audience at bottom of screen) . This then calculated a target and zoom level to command the PTZ camera to focus on.

    There was also a time sequence to for example every 5 minutes zoom right at and do a slow pan left and right to 'look around' before resuming focus on the main action.

    The Pi had a calibrated conversion table to convert its pixel coordinates into corresponding tracking commands and zoom levels for the PTZ camera.

    Ive since switched the pi and camera combo for a ip camera, and made it that the opencv script is run by the "Live Streams" computer that receives the PTZ stream.

    test of pi and pi camera
    vnc into pi to monitor it
    prev image zoomed in, showing bottom right screen of vision from opencv camera and movement detect, vision from ptz camera top left

    after successful test, pi put in roof, and camera mounted on stand

    pi & camera combo replaced with ip camera

  • Dedicated equipment purchase & install.

    hayden05/29/2023 at 10:31 0 comments

    After the successful proof of concept streams, and manually broadcasting several key events for the residents it was approved to fund and permanently disconnect one of the (less used) DVD players and plug a spare computer into this modulator input permanently and have it just constantly play a live stream from a new PTZ camera and mic mounted on the roof in the lounge room.

    Testing the newly purchase HD PTZ camera, Microphone and Preamp
    The camera only has RJ45 network, so an old router running DD-WRT acted as a wifi bridge for the camera. The microphone also required a pre-amp with phantom power to convert the audio into 3.5mm jack line level for the camera.

    The microphone was quickly swapped for a long range shotgun mic.
    Pre-Amp and Router stored in roof cavity, accessed by added door.

  • Where it all began..

    hayden05/29/2023 at 10:12 0 comments

    As a proof of concept and by spending as least amount of money as possible, I lugged my home computer, DSLR, and microphone to one of our weekly work performances. The computer ran CasparCG playout software, and had a decklink HDMI capture card, for video input from the camera. This computer streamed the video via UDP over the facility wifi to another office computer that had a cheap ATI graphics card added to it to give S-Video output which fed into the existing SD modulator instead one of the DVD players, and from there into the buildings tv network and every TV.

    LAN party style
    LAN party style

    CasparCG, very neat but overkill
    The output / end result, featuring our Christmas party event.

    Australia day performance stream

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