This page describes the first steps after unboxing the MPCam…

** updated for image v2.x **

Table of Contents

Overview

This page will walk you through:

• requirements

• board layout (connectors, sensors, etc…)

• powering the board

• running the built-in demos

Requirements

A self-contained device, the MPCam is shipped with only a wall-wart AC adapter:

Open

You will also need a Cat5 cable to connect the MPCam to your LAN (note: that you can later use a WiFi USB dongle. More on this later.)

To more easily connect over the network, the MPCam uses mDNS which is natively supported by Windows and Mac/iPhone (note: Android does not natively support mDNS.)

MPCam board

Open

Powering up

To boot the MPCam:

1. plug in the Cat5 cable to your network

2. plug in the wall adapter jack

The MPCam will boot and LEDs should:

1. red PWR LED turns on, indicating that the board is properly powered

2. blue STATUS and red LED1 both turn on for a few seconds then LED1 turns off

3. blue STATUS LED starts blinking to show BSP activity.

It’ll take about 25 seconds to fully boot.

Built-In Demos

Once the MPCam is fully booted, the built-in demos are accessible through the onboard web portal.

In your browser, open: http://mpcam.local

Note: the MPCam uses mDNS with the hostname set to “mpcam”.

If more than one MPCam are present on the same network, the domain name is automatically updated to:

• first MPCam to boot: mpcam.local

• second MPCam to boot: mpcam-2.local

• third MPCam to boot: mpcam-3.local

• etc…

Using mDNS, you can ssh using the mpcam.local hostname as the user: mpcam (password: mpcam):

• ssh mpcam@mpcam.local

Onboard Web Portal

Open your target MPCam’s portal, for example: http://mpcam.local

The following homepage should open:

From this homepage:

• Left side-menu:

  • Version: image version

  • Hostname, ex: mpcam.local, mpcam-2.local, etc…

  • IP Address: local network address

  • Toggle LED (button): toggles the red LED1 to easily identify the target MPCam

  • MPCam Demos: links to the demo/home page
    
    

• Demos:

  • Pose detector => Posenet demo (see ref)

  • Object detection => simple demo for object detection

  • Live tracker => demo from Stura.io: live people tracking demo

Clicking on a demo START button opens its demo page, which shows:

• START / STOP the demo

• Console displays outputs from the demo script.

• Stream shows the motion-jpeg stream from the demo.

Depending on the demo, it may take several seconds to start (load the model, init the camera, etc…)

Note that in general, the MPCam is not designed as a streaming camera. After all, it is an edge device and video is not intended to be streamed over the network. Therefore, the onboard web portal only supports basic streaming for development validation. As such, the reported frame-per-second (fps) may not be optimized for a given demo.

Continue exploring with our Hello World!