Camera Tag

Before displaying a camera’s image feed on a page, you must create a connection to the camera. As with all I/O, this is the job of a tag.

Create a Camera tag for each camera that you intend to monitor. Each must be accessible on your network using a URL (uniform resource locator). Note that the video feed must be provided as a motion JPEG.

Limits:

Camera limits and VTScada to camera connection sharing are done on a per-VTScada server / thick client basis. If two thick clients connect to a camera, they make separate connections and enforce limits separately. Any limit on a thin client refers to the case when a VTScada Internet Server's local user-interface (the thick client) and one or more thin clients connected to that server, are viewing the same camera feed.

  • Where a specific camera is being viewed multiple times simultaneously (for example, on a thick client and one or more thin clients) there is no limit. VTScada makes a single connection to the camera.

  • There is a default limit of 15 connections to a single host (or more specifically a scheme + host + port combination). This limit would apply where the camera streams come from a single source, such as a Network Video Recorder. Exceeding the Camera Tag default connection limit may slow VTScada.

  • Where the streams are from unique sources, such as individual camera IP addresses or host names, no limits are applied to the number of unique streams retrieved by VTScada.

Overriding the Camera Tag Connection Limit

The maximum number that can be set is 50 as the HTTP client also has a maximum 50 connection limit. The maximum connection limit cannot be exceeded. When exceeding the default limit of 15 connections, run test values to ensure that system performance is not impacted.

CameraTagConnectionLimit

Camera tag properties - Communications tab

URL

The address where the camera can be found. This must start with "http://" or "https://". Note that the feed must be provided as a motion JPEG.

Username and Password

If your camera is secured, provide the username and password as assigned. Configure these only if required by your system.

Camera Tag Widgets

The following widgets are available to display information about your tags:

Camera Viewer Widget

Camera Tag API

This function is for advanced users only.

The function GetLiveMJPEG is an API that provides access to the motion JPEG data in real-time. As the camera tag receives each frame, the data is converted to text and stored within the function variable. The text stored within the variable is continuously refreshed with each subsequent frame.

If the URL or credentials in the camera tag are irretrievable or if the camera is down the reference value will be invalid.