This program implements a service that is run continuously on the video acquisition computers. It monitors the system, periodically gathering info on disk space consumption, system load, memory utilization, etc and then sends that information to the JAX MBA webservice. It will also perform video acquisition on request from the webservice.

This software only supports Linux.

Windows and Unix (including but not limited to BSD and Darwin (OS X)) are not currently supported.

A C 11 compliant compiler is required. Any recent version of gcc or clang should be sufficient.

Before you can compile this program, you must initialize git submodules. This pulls in a 3rd party library that we depend on for reading ini config files. After cloning this repository, running git submodule update --init will add submodules to your git config and clone them.

This software uses the Microsoft C REST SDK: https://github.com/microsoft/cpprestsdk

For Ubuntu systems, sudo apt install libcpprest-dev is sufficient for installation of the Microsoft C REST SDK and its dependencies (such as Boost).

The Basler pylon SDK, which we use to control our camera, is also required. It can be obtained from the Basler website: https://www.baslerweb.com/en/products/software/. Our Makefile assumes Pylon is installed into /opt/pylon5. If this is not the case for you, you will need to modify the PYLON_DIR variable in the Makefile.

Pylon can be placed into /opt via the following commands after downloading the appropriate package:

tar -xvf pylon-5.1.0.12682-arm64
cd pylon-5.1.0.12682-arm64
sudo tar -C /opt -xvf pylonSDK-5.1.0.12682.tar.gz

You will also need several ffmpeg libraries, and their development header files. We recommend installing ffmpeg from source rather than depending on the older versions provided by the OS package manger. The Makefile assumes ffmpeg has been installed in /opt/ffmpeg-n4.0. If this is not the case, edit FFMPEG_DIR to point to the correct location. ffmpeg depends on other system libraries that can be installed via sudo apt install libx264-dev libvdpau-dev libbz2-dev liblzma-dev

We have tested compiling ffmpeg with the following configuration v n4.0:

tar -xvf FFmpeg-n4.0.tar.gz
cd FFmpeg-n4.0
./configure --enable-libx264 --enable-gpl --enable-gray --prefix=/opt/ffmpeg-n4.0/
make
sudo make install

The final dependency is libsystemd-dev, which can be installed with sudo apt install libsystemd-dev on Ubuntu.

Once the dependencies are installed, running the make command in this directory will compile the JAX-MBA client. Running sudo make install will install the binary in /opt/jax-mba/bin/ and a config file template in /opt/jax-mba/conf/jax-mba.ini.example. This config file will have to be completed with system-specific settings and renamed /opt/jax-mba/conf/jax-mba.ini before the service can be started. make install will also copy a Systend Unit file into /etc/systemd/system/

This program is intended to be run as a 'new style' daemon (managed by systemd). It uses sd-notify to let systemd know when it is finished initializing and is ready, therefore it can be configured using Type=notify in the [Service] section of its systemd Unit file.

A basic systemd service file will be copied to /etc/systemd/system/mba-client.service by make install. It can be started with sudo systemctl start mba-client. Run sudo systemctl enable mba-client to have it started automatically at boot. This file assumes the binary is located at /opt/jax-mba/bin/mba-client, the config file is at /opt/jax-mba/conf/jax-mba.ini, and the name of the user the service will run as is nvidia. If these assumptions are not true, then you will need to modify this file.

The program can also be run directly outside of the control of systemd, in which case sd-notify is a no-op. All stderr/stdout lines are prefixed by a loglevel, which is represented by a string of the format<LOG_LEVEL>.

#define SD_EMERG   "<0>"  /* system is unusable */
#define SD_ALERT   "<1>"  /* action must be taken immediately */
#define SD_CRIT    "<2>"  /* critical conditions */
#define SD_ERR     "<3>"  /* error conditions */
#define SD_WARNING "<4>"  /* warning conditions */
#define SD_NOTICE  "<5>"  /* normal but significant condition */
#define SD_INFO    "<6>"  /* informational */
#define SD_DEBUG   "<7>"  /* debug-level messages */

The recording software expects ethernet cameras and will attempt to use an MTU value of 9500 (most systems default to 1500). To adjust this value, you can run this command (adjusting "Wired connection 1" to the ethernet port connected to the camera): sudo nmcli c modify "Wired connection 1" ethernet.mtu 9500