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ONVIF for IP Cameras

Background

ONVIF is a standard used by many IP cameras and defines discovery and access for RTSP camera streams. Along with an ONVIF Discovery Handler, Akri has provided a generic ONVIF Configuration for initiating ONVIF discovery. Akri has also provided a sample broker (akri-onvif-video-broker), which acts as a frame server.
Using Akri's default ONVIF Configuration to discover and utilize ONVIF cameras looks like the following:
  1. 1.
    An operator applies the ONVIF Configuration to the cluster (by enabling ONVIF when installing the Akri Helm chart). They also specific a broker image -- akri-onvif-video-broker in the figure.
  2. 2.
    The Akri Agent uses the ONVIF Discovery Handler to discover the IP cameras and creates Instances for each discovered camera.
  3. 3.
    The Akri Controller sees the Instances and deploys akri-onvif-video-broker pods, which were specified in the Configuration. The Controller also creates a Kubernetes service for each ONVIF camera along with one service for all the ONVIF cameras.
All of Akri's components can be deployed by specifying values in its Helm chart during an installation. This section will cover the values that should be set to (1) deploy the ONVIF Discovery Handlers and (2) apply a Configuration that tells Akri to discover devices using that Discovery Handler.

Deploying the ONVIF Discovery Handler

In order for the Agent to know how to discover IP cameras an ONVIF Discovery Handler must exist. Akri supports an Agent image that includes all supported Discovery Handlers. This Agent will be used if agent.full=true. By default, a slim Agent without any embedded Discovery Handlers is deployed and the required Discovery Handlers can be deployed as DaemonSets. This documentation will use that strategy, deploying ONVIF Discovery Handlers by specifying onvif.discovery.enabled=true when installing Akri.

ONVIF Configuration Settings

Instead of having to assemble your own ONVIF Configuration yaml, we have provided a Helm template. Helm allows us to parametrize the commonly modified fields in our configuration files, and we have provided many for ONVIF (to see them, run helm inspect values akri-helm-charts/akri). More information about the Akri Helm charts can be found in the user guide. To apply the ONVIF Configuration to your cluster, simply set onvif.configuration.enabled=true along with any of the following additional Configuration settings when installing Akri.

Discovery Handler Discovery Details Settings

Discovery Handlers are passed discovery details that are set in a Configuration to determine what to discover, filter out of discovery, and so on. The ONVIF Discovery Handler, supports the following discovery details:
Helm Key
Value
Default
Description
onvif.configuration.discoveryDetails.ipAddresses.action
Include, Exclude
Exclude
filter action to take on a set of IP addresses
onvif.configuration.discoveryDetails.ipAddresses.items
array of IP addresses
empty
IP addresses that the filter action acts upon
onvif.configuration.discoveryDetails.macAddresses.action
Include, Exclude
Exclude
filter action to take on a set of mac addresses
onvif.configuration.discoveryDetails.macAddresses.items
array of mac addresses
empty
mac addresses that the filter action acts upon
onvif.configuration.discoveryDetails.scope.action
Include, Exclude
Exclude
filter action to take on a set of scopes
onvif.configuration.discoveryDetails.scope.items
array of scopes
empty
scopes that the filter action acts upon
onvif.configuration.discoveryDetails.discoveryTimeoutSeconds
number of seconds
1
max amount of time the Discovery Handler should search before reporting any (newly) discovered devices

Broker Pod Settings

If you would like workloads ("broker" Pods) to be deployed automatically to discovered cameras, a broker image should be specified in the Configuration. Alternatively, if it meets your scenario, you could use the Akri frame server broker ("ghcr.io/project-akri/akri/onvif-video-broker"). If you would rather manually deploy pods to utilize the cameras advertized by Akri, don't specify a broker pod and see our documentation on requesting resources advertized by Akri.
Helm Key
Value
Default
Description
onvif.configuration.brokerPod.image.repository
image string
""
image of broker Pod that should be deployed to discovered devices
onvif.configuration.brokerPod.image.tag
tag string
"latest"
image tag of broker Pod that should be deployed to discovered devices

Disabling Automatic Service Creation

By default, if a broker Pod is specified, the generic ONVIF Configuration will create services for all the brokers of a specific Akri Instance and all the brokers of an Akri Configuration. The creation of these services can be disabled.
Helm Key
Value
Default
Description
onvif.configuration.createInstanceServices
true, false
true
a service should be automatically created for each broker Pod
onvif.configuration.createConfigurationService
true, false
true
a single service should be created for all brokers of a Configuration

Capacity Setting

By default, if a broker Pod is specified, a single broker Pod is deployed to each device. To modify the Configuration so that a camera is accessed by more or fewer nodes via broker Pods, update the onvif.configuration.capacity setting to reflect the correct number. For example, if your high availability needs are met by having 1 redundant pod, you can update the Configuration like this by setting onvif.configuration.capacity=2.
Helm Key
Value
Default
Description
onvif.configuration.capacity
number
1
maximum number of brokers that can be deployed to utilize a device (up to 1 per Node)

Installing Akri with the ONVIF Configuration and Discovery Handler

Leveraging the above settings, Akri can be installed with the ONVIF Discovery Handler and an ONVIF Configuration that specifies the Akri frame server broker:
Note: See the cluster setup steps for information on how to set the crictl configuration variable AKRI_HELM_CRICTL_CONFIGURATION
1
helm repo add akri-helm-charts https://project-akri.github.io/akri/
2
helm install akri akri-helm-charts/akri \
3
$AKRI_HELM_CRICTL_CONFIGURATION \
4
--set onvif.discovery.enabled=true \
5
--set onvif.configuration.enabled=true \
6
--set onvif.configuration.brokerPod.image.repository="ghcr.io/project-akri/akri/onvif-video-broker" \
7
--set onvif.configuration.brokerPod.image.tag="latest"
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No discovery details were provided to filter the Discovery Handler's search so the Discovery Handler will find any ONVIF camera on the network and will deploy up to one broker pod to each camera, since capacity defaults to one. The brokers will supply the automatically created Instance Services and the Configuration Service with frames.
The following installation examples have been given to show how to the ONVIF Configuration can be tailored to you cluster:
  • Filtering ONVIF cameras
  • Changing the discovery timeout

Filtering ONVIF cameras

The ONVIF Discovery Handler supports basic filter capabilities has been provided. Discovery details can be set in the Configuration that tell the Discovery Handler to either include or exclude specific IP addresses, MAC addresses, or ONVIF scopes.
For example, the following enables discovery of every camera that does not have an IP address of 10.0.0.1:
1
helm repo add akri-helm-charts https://project-akri.github.io/akri/
2
helm install akri akri-helm-charts/akri \
3
$AKRI_HELM_CRICTL_CONFIGURATION \
4
--set onvif.discovery.enabled=true \
5
--set onvif.configuration.enabled=true \
6
--set onvif.configuration.brokerPod.image.repository="ghcr.io/project-akri/akri/onvif-video-broker" \
7
--set onvif.configuration.discoveryDetails.ipAddresses.action=Exclude \
8
--set onvif.configuration.discoveryDetails.ipAddresses.items[0]=10.0.0.1
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You can enable cluster access for every camera with a specific name, you can modify the Configuration like so:
1
helm repo add akri-helm-charts https://project-akri.github.io/akri/
2
helm install akri akri-helm-charts/akri \
3
$AKRI_HELM_CRICTL_CONFIGURATION \
4
--set onvif.discovery.enabled=true \
5
--set onvif.configuration.enabled=true \
6
--set onvif.configuration.brokerPod.image.repository="ghcr.io/project-akri/akri/onvif-video-broker" \
7
--set onvif.configuration.discoveryDetails.scopes.action=Include \
8
--set onvif.configuration.discoveryDetails.scopes.items[0]="onvif://www.onvif.configuration.org/name/GreatONVIFCamera" \
9
--set onvif.configuration.discoveryDetails.scopes.items[1]="onvif://www.onvif.configuration.org/name/AwesomeONVIFCamera"
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Changing the discovery timeout

The ONVIF Discovery Handler will search for up to discoveryTimeoutSeconds for IP cameras. This timeout can be increased or decreased as desired, and defaults to 1 second if not configured. It can be set in the Configuration like this:
1
helm repo add akri-helm-charts https://project-akri.github.io/akri/
2
helm install akri akri-helm-charts/akri \
3
$AKRI_HELM_CRICTL_CONFIGURATION \
4
--set onvif.discovery.enabled=true \
5
--set onvif.configuration.enabled=true \
6
--set onvif.configuration.brokerPod.image.repository="ghcr.io/project-akri/akri/onvif-video-broker" \
7
--set onvif.configuration.discoveryDetails.discoveryTimeoutSeconds=2
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Modifying a Configuration

Akri has provided further documentation on modifying the broker PodSpec, instanceServiceSpec, or configurationServiceSpec More information about how to modify an installed Configuration, add additional Configurations to a cluster, or delete a Configuration can be found in the Customizing an Akri Installation document.

Implementation details

The ONVIF implementation can be understood by looking at several things:
  1. 1.
    ​OnvifDiscoveryDetails defines the required properties
  2. 2.
    ​OnvifDiscoveryHandler defines ONVIF camera discovery
  3. 3.
    ​samples/brokers/onvif-video-broker defines the ONVIF broker
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Last modified 29d ago
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Contents
Background
Deploying the ONVIF Discovery Handler
ONVIF Configuration Settings
Discovery Handler Discovery Details Settings
Broker Pod Settings
Disabling Automatic Service Creation
Capacity Setting
Installing Akri with the ONVIF Configuration and Discovery Handler
Modifying a Configuration
Implementation details