WebRTC VC, Chromium and Logitech C920

[rainbowbreeze]

I'm assembling a solution to use my parent's big flat TV as screen for a WebRTC videochat: I want to talk with them while they're sitting on their couch.
The idea is to use a RasPI 2B connected to their TV, a Logitech c920 camera connected via USB to the RasPI, and appr.tc or jitsi.org as WebRTC server for the chat. Using this setup, I can simply open an url in the RasPI browser, like https://meet.jit.si/TestCall, and connect them to a WebRTC room, while I can use my PC or any other client as the other side of the chat.

Why Logitech c920? Because it's supported out of the box on Raspbian Jessie, has a wide-angle len very good for videocalls, has a good directional mic and can produce an hardware encoded H.264 video stream, so no CPU overload.

Regarding the browser to use, I tried Iceweasel first, but is not working well on appr.tc and version < 40 is not supported by jitsi.org (Jessie has v38 on the repo).
So I installed Chromium using the Ubuntu repository and this link or this link, both very similar.

With this setup, the WebRTC videocall starts correctly, I have both sides connected, audio and video working and I'm an happy man!!!!
Unfortunately, after 30 to 60 secs, audio from the RasPI side stops working, and only the video is transmitted. I can see video from the RasPI side, but I cannot hear the audio. Instead, on the RasPI side, it's possible to see and hear my stream.

I don't know where the problem can be...
* Browser side? I tried Iceweasel, Chromium v43 and v45 (because v47 has a very bad bug that influence video render), bot nothing has worked properly.
* WebRTC server side? Tested appr.tc, jitsi.org, opentokrtc.com and others: when I was able to connect, I always had the same audio problem, as soon as connected or later during the call.
* RasPI OS side? Tried Jessie with latest drivers, as soon as I've time I want to try also Ubuntu Mate, but I feel this is the wrong way.

In any case, very sad about the experience with WebRTC implementation on different browsers: it should have been the "best of new portable web experience", right now I feel back to "work on my pc" era....

If not WebRTC, what other videocall solutions do you suggest? Please consider that no user interaction should be required RasPI side to start the call.

[fruitoftheloom]

Alternative

viewtopic.php?f=63&t=130007


Regards the IceWeasel v38 it is up to date as it is an ESR Firefox, Debian always base of ESR release:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations

[rainbowbreeze]

Alternative
viewtopic.php?f=63&t=130007

Thanks for the quick reply. I didn't understand what is the alternative you suggested in the linked post: use CommuniGate Pro? Use UV4L (and their uvc driver to use the Logitech c920)?

[fruitoftheloom]

Alternative
viewtopic.php?f=63&t=130007

Thanks for the quick reply. I sidn't understand what is the alternative you suggested in the linked post: use CommuniGate Pro? Use UV4L (and their uvc driver to use the Logitech c920)?

UV4L

[rainbowbreeze]

Clearer now

Any particular reason you're suggesting to use a user-space driver that creates a V4L-compatible layer, mapping a kernel driver in my particular case (the one for the C920 camera), rather than a kernel driver directly, considering it's already V4L-compatible?

Or maybe I'm missing something regarding UV4L...

[RpiName]

Any particular reason you're suggesting to use a user-space driver that creates a V4L-compatible layer, mapping a kernel driver in my particular case (the one for the C920 camera), rather than a kernel driver directly, considering it's already V4L-compatible?

Or maybe I'm missing something regarding UV4L...

UV4L does not map any kernel driver. To use it with Jitsi Meet without user intervention, follow these instructions:

http://www.linux-projects.org/modules/s ... #example16

[jesup]

Neither Chrome nor Firefox (or iceweasel) makes use of the H.264 encoder in a C920 at this time.

I advise using Firefox 43 (or even better, 45 aka Developer Edition) instead of IceWeasel, however it's unclear what your problem is.

In Firefox/Iceweasel, set NSPR_LOG_MODULES=mediamanager:5,getusermedia:5,webrtc_trace:65535 and WEBRTC_TRACE_FILE=nspr and NSPR_LOG_FILE=whatever and run Firefox. This will create a LARGE log file with lots of data.

Go to discuss-webrtc or the mozilla dev.media mailing-list/newsgroup, or IRC (#webrtc on freenode, #media on moznet)

[jthornton]

I wonder if you ever found a solution that worked for you, since I am experiencing basically identical audio stop symptoms with same webcam (for same application) using current Chromium but with Skype WebRTC.

I have found one issue that might identify a fix just recently, since I am seeing the retire_capture_urb: messages about callbacks suppressed in kernel log as reported there. I don't know if this is indeed the root cause for this audio stop problem.

[jthornton]

For the record, I applied the fix proposed in the previously linked thread and it did suppress the callback messages (as it was supposed to do) but that did not fix the problem of audio stopping after some time for me.