CCTV Cameras

EVA ICS has built-in tools to put image from CCTV cameras on HMI dashboards.

Uploaded images

Consider there’s a camera in a local network, which continuously uploads images to local folder on the host where SCADA Final Aggregator is installed.

You can insert newest uploaded image into web interface via SFA PVT:

Step 1: Setup source

Setup CCTV camera to upload images via FTP or SCP to pvt folder e.g. /opt/eva/pvt/camera1 or make there a symlink to the folder where images are located.

Step 2: set API key permissions

E.g. you want to obtain camera image from pvt folder with API key operator or with user this API key is assigned to:

eva -I
sfa
key set operator pvt "camera1/#" -y

Step 3: insert image into web UI

Let’s insert image, compress it to 90% and resize to 640x400. Camera image URL will be:

/pvt?k=APIKEY&f=camera1/*.jpg&c=newest&ic=resize:640x400:90:jpeg&nocache=RANDOM

If you are using EVA ICS JS Framework or ready-made HMI application, the parameter k=APIKEY is not required. Parameter nocache should always be present to let JavaScript reload image into web browser.

Image in local network

Consider there’s a CCTV camera in local network on IP address 192.168.1.110, which provides current image at (e.g.):

http://192.168.1.110/axis-cgi/jpg/image.cgi # old AXIS cameras
http://192.168.1.110/onvif/snapshot/pic.jpg # modern ONVIF cameras

You can insert image into web interface with SFA RPVT tool:

Step 1: set API key permissions

E.g. you want to obtain camera image with API key operator or with user this API key is assigned to:

eva -I
sfa
key set operator rpvt "192.168.1.110/onvif/snapshot/#" -y

Step 2: insert image into web UI

/pvt?k=APIKEY&f=http://192.168.1.110/onvif/snapshot/pic.jpg&ic=resize:640x400:90:jpeg&nocache=RANDOM

As well as for pvt, if you use EVA ICS JS Framework or ready-made HMI application, parameter k=APIKEY is not required.

Image in 3rd party network

Consider SCADA Final Aggregator is installed in Cloud or in the network A, which doesn’t have direct access to CCTV camera in network B.

If Universal Controller or Logic Manager is installed in network B and connected to SCADA Final Aggregator, we can ask controller in network B to be our agent and provide camera image (as well as any other resource from network B) for SFA.

CCTV agent schema

The task we are going to solve is pretty complex but it allows to transfer image from camera without VPN, port-forwarding. But keep resources in network B secure and avoid any unauthorized access.

Step 1: prepare agent controller

Put sysapi/rpvt: yes field in config/uc/main registry key (for UC or config/lm/main for LM PLC) to enable rpvt agent feature. Restart the controller to activate it:

eva uc server restart

Step 2: configure access from SFA to agent controller

Consider SFA is connected to UC with API key named default. Set up API key permissions on a node in network B:

eva -I
uc
key set default rpvt "192.168.1.110/onvif/snapshot/#" -y

Now remote SFA in network A can call agent controller in network B to get image from http://192.168.1.110/onvif/snapshot/pic.jpg. As well as ask agent controller to resize and compress it before transferring.

Step 3: set SFA API key permissions

E.g. you want to obtain camera image from SFA in network A with API key operator or with user this API key is assigned to:

eva -I
sfa
key set operator rpvt "uc/controller_id:129.168.1.110/onvif/snapshot/#"

Where controller_id - ID of agent controller in network B, as it seen by SFA (verify it with command eva sfa controller list).

Step 4: insert image into web UI

/rpvt&k=APIKEY&f=uc/controller_id:192.168.1.110/onvif/snapshot/pic.jpg&ic=resize:640x400x90:jpeg&nocache=NOCACHE

Note that image is resized and compressed on the agent controller, which reduces network bandwidth and speed up resource loading. Make sure agent controller host as enough CPU resources to serve the image.

Image from password-protected camera

Camera image URL can be password protected, usually with basic authentication. As SFA PVT can not obtain resources from password-protected URLs, you need to proxy camera image to SFA or agent controller host.

We recommend to use a tiny tool called CCTV proxy which can easily solve this problem. Note that image from camera will be available for anyone who’s logged into the host where SFA or agent controller is installed, so it’s highly recommend to check shell permissions for all users and set up CCTV proxy to listen on 127.0.0.1 only.

Video streams

Video stream from modern cameras can be inserted into web UI with <video /> HTML5 tag. However as video stream (and possible required transcoding) eats a lot of resources, we strongly recommend to insert static images only, refreshing them with the required period, unless you have a dedicated server for CCTV and video stream is really required on HMI dashboard.

EVA ICS doesn’t provide any tools for video stream proxying/transcoding.