ONVIF Camera Discovery

ONVIF Camera discovery provides the ability to automatically scan the network, identify what cameras are running, and automatically onboard the devices to the Edge Xpert platform.

This automatic discovery process greatly reduces the effort in allowing ONVIF cameras to be onboarded quickly and easily.

Create a local docker-compose file

Create a local docker-compose file to override the default Edge Xpert image and its settings.

This example uses two ONVIF simulator instances, which runs with ports 10000 and 10001.

The configuration shown below will automatically discover and onboard all ONVIF cameras to the platform. These devices are given names relating to the Vendor Name and Device Instance so they can be easily recognized.

version: '3.7'

x-common-env-variables: &security-common-variables
  EDGEX_SECURITY_SECRET_STORE: "true"
  EDGEXPERT_LICENSE_PATH: /edgexpert/licenses/

x-logging: &default-logging
  driver: "json-file"
  options:
    max-size: "10mb"
    max-file: "5"

services:
  device-onvif-camera-host:
    image: iotechsys/edgexpert-device-onvif-camera:2.3
    command: /device-onvif-camera ${EDGEXPERT_USE_CONSUL:-}
    container_name: device-onvif-camera
    hostname: device-onvif-camera
    network_mode: host
    user: 2002:2001
    read_only: true
    restart: always
    environment:
      <<: *security-common-variables
      SERVICE_HOST: 172.17.0.1
      MESSAGEQUEUE_HOST: <MQTT_BROKER_HOST>
      CLIENTS_CORE_DATA_HOST: <CORE_DATA_HOST>
      CLIENTS_CORE_METADATA_HOST: <CORE_METADATA_HOST>
      XRTCONTROL_MQTTBROKERINFO_HOST: <MQTT_BROKER_HOST>
      SECRETSTORE_HOST: <VAULT_HOST>
      SECRETSTORE_PORT: '8200'

      APPCUSTOM_DEFAULTSECRETPATH: MyCredential
      APPCUSTOM_DISCOVERYMODE: both
      APPCUSTOM_DISCOVERYETHERNETINTERFACE: en0 
      APPCUSTOM_DISCOVERYSUBNETS: "192.168.56.0/24,192.168.12.0/24"
    volumes:
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      - license-data:/edgexpert/licenses/:ro
      - /tmp/edgex/secrets/device-onvif-camera:/tmp/edgex/secrets/device-onvif-camera:ro,z
    depends_on:
      - consul
      - core-metadata
    logging: *default-logging

Note

Use the host network so that discovery messages can be sent over UDP to cameras
Since we cannot use the host and edgex-network at the same time, we must define another ONVIF Camera device service in the docker-compose file
Enable the secure mode by setting EDGEX_SECURITY_SECRET_STORE to true, then you can post secret data via the REST API of the device service
Please replace the APPCUSTOM_DISCOVERYETHERNETINTERFACE and APPCUSTOM_DISCOVERYSUBNETS to meet your environment
Please refer to CLI Service Ports to get the values for <MQTT_BROKER_HOST>, <CORE_DATA_HOST>, <CORE_METADATA_HOST> and <VAULT_HOST>.

APPCUSTOM_DEFAULTSECRETPATH indicates the default secret path, refer to ONVIF user auth page to find more instructions
APPCUSTOM_DISCOVERYMODE indicates mode used to discovery devices on the network, available values are netscan, multicast and both, default is both
APPCUSTOM_DISCOVERYETHERNETINTERFACE indicates the target EthernetInterface for multicast discovering
APPCUSTOM_DISCOVERYSUBNETS indicates the network segments used when discovery is scanning for devices. It is a list of IPv4 subnets in CIDR(Classless Inter-Domain Routing) format (X.X.X.X/Y) and separated by commas ex: "192.168.1.0/24,10.0.0.0/24"

Deploy Edge Xpert with the ONVIF Camera Device Service

Use the following command to deploy the required services:

edgexpert up --secret xpert-manager device-onvif-camera-host

After deploying Edge Xpert, post the secrets into the secret store via the REST API of the device service:

curl --request POST 'http://172.17.0.1:59985/api/v2/secret' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-raw '{
    "apiVersion":"v2",
    "path": "MyCredential",
    "secretData":[
        {
            "key":"username",
            "value":"admin"
        },
        {
            "key":"password",
            "value":"admin"
        },
        {
            "key":"mode",
            "value":"usernametoken"
        }
    ]
}'

Query the discovered devices

The ONVIF Camera Device Service will trigger discovery when the service starts up and the two devices should be discovered. The default is that the discovery process runs every hour.

This can be controlled, as below:

DEVICE_DISCOVERY_ENABLED: 'true'

DEVICE_DISCOVERY_INTERVAL: '30m'

You can use seconds (s), minutes (m), hours (h), and so forth.

The discovery and onboarding of the devices can be easily verified by using the Edge Xpert Manager UI at http://localhost:9090.