Camera control via StreamDeck

[Sepur]

Hi everyone,
I just recieived my PTZ2 and I was wondering, wether there is a way to control it with an Elgato StreamDeck.
With other PTZ-cameras this works by calling certain http-requests, but I could'nt find a list of commands for the PTZ2 (or any other NewTek camera).
Thanks in advance and best regards,
Jonas

 

[fgolman]

You might want to check out http://centralcontrol.io

Not only will you find PTZ control from the Stream Deck but a whole lot more. And it has a 30 free eval too.

I can't say enough about this product!

Fritz Golman
Museum of Broadcast Communications

 

[Sepur]

Thanks for your suggestion, but I can't a way to add the PTZ. It is also not listed on the "supported devices" list.

 

[bbayley]

I'm using a streamdeck with NDI Studio Monitor to simply push the hotkeys that control the camera.

-- Arrow Keys - Pan & Tilt
-- +/- - Zoom
-- PageUp/PageDown - Focus In/Out
-- Home/End Exposure Up/Down
-- F - Toggle Autofocus
-- E - Toggle Auto Exposure
-- 1-9 - Presets
-- Ctrl+1-9 Store Preset

What I'm trying to figure out is how to control multiple cameras. I have three NDI Studio Monitor Windows... I don't know how to use the streamdeck to select a specific window.

 

[bbayley]

I think I figured it out. I'm setting this up now and I'll report back after I test.

The issue is having multiple windows open with NDI Studio Monitor to control multiple cameras. How to know which camera window is active when the streamdeck is going to send a command?

Well... Streamdeck can send WindowsKey+1-9 to select that number spot on the taskbar. Great this would work except that the multiple Studio Monitor windows are 'stacked' into one taskbar icon. You can't send the necessary hold-down hotkey of WindowsKey+1, then 1 again to select the second stacked window.

So... the solution is this: Copy the Studio Monitor Application, open each copy of the App and each Studio Monitor window will be it's own icon on the taskbar. Now you can send (with StreamDeck) Windows+1, Windows+2, etc. for each camera.

I will share my setup after it's all up and running.

 

[Sepur]

Okay, but this only works when the studio monitor is the active window, right? Are there any system-wide shortcuts?

 

[bbayley]

Hi Sepur - Yes the Studio Monitor window has to be active for it to receive the StreakDeck keys. But I have a StreamDeck key that enters Windows+1 button to make sure that window is active.

I have a computer dedicated to be "Camera Operator" that runs three instances of Studio Monitor. The StreamDeck is working, controlling all three cameras.

I will try to make a video for you this weekend.

 

[bbayley]

I have one StreamDeck (medium size, 5x3 buttons) that controls three PTZ Cameras with NDI Studio Monitor. There are a couple things I had to figure out and I'll share here.

The overall setup to control one camera is pretty straight forward. Map the StreamDeck buttons to the hotkeys used in NDI Studio Monitor. 1-9 for Camera Presets, Focus with PgUp, PgDown, F, Zoom in and Out with + and -, and manual camera movement with up, down, left,right.

StreamDeck has 'profiles' which are pages of buttons on the control. I set up one profile for the camera presets and another page for the manual controls. One button on the screen switches between these two profiles.

View attachment 149492

View attachment 149493

Now that one camera is set up, you can repeat the process with as many cameras as you have. It works pretty well on my Streamdeck's three rows to have three cameras.

Once you have more than one camera the issue becomes switching between the different cameras. ith NDI Studio Monitor... whichever window is the focus gets all the hotkey commands. You can't send hotkeys to a specific window, only the active window.

One way you can set a window as active (focused), is using the windows key plus numbers. If you haven't used this before... the numbers correspond to the icons in your taskbar going left to right. So Windows+1 brings forward the first icon, Windows+2 the next, and so on. This is great - we can send hotkeys like Windows+1 using the StreamDeck.

Now the next issue. If you open multiple NDI Studio Monitor windows, they are stacked in the taskbar. They get grouped into one icon and when you mouse over it they all pop out for you to choose one. This won't work with our Windows+1 hotkey... it is not smart enough to choose a specific sub-window when they are grouped like this. The way I found to work around this; copy and paste the whole NDI Studio Monitor program folder for each window you need. The whole program is about 300MB. Now, when you open each instance of the application, windows will treat them like unique programs and not stack the icons in the taskbar.

View attachment 149495

Now that you have each instance of the application running, and you have each one in the taskbar, it's a good idea to right click and 'pin to taskbar' each one so they will always be in the same slot.

Back in StreamDeck setup... Create a button using the "Multi Action" action. Within the Multi Action you want an action to change the profile, and an action to send the hotkey for that camera (windows+1, windows+2, etc.)

View attachment 149494

Now when you choose a camera on the StreamDeck, its NDI Studio Monitor window will be active and ready to accept the other hotkeys you send with the StreamDeck.

If people are interested in this I'll try to make a video showing the StreamDeck in action.

 

[Sepur]

Hi bbayley,
that sounds like a nice workaround. Maybe I'll add an Alt-Space-N (minimize Window) at the end, so that the previous window-layout stays untouched.

For those who are interested: The camera is for streaming our service at church, we have one PTZ and an additional camcorder.
At the moment we use one computer for the stream, the camera and the slides (lyrics etc.). Normally we would only need to load presets during the service.
So OBS and and SongBeamer (the program to control the slides) share one screen while the Multiview is on the second screen. The third screen ist the Projektor which displays the slides for the like 20 People that are allowed to come in Person at the moment.

 

[Buffalo]

Hello, for those interested - We are successfully using a Streamdeck to trigger macros from a separate PC on our network. Took some digging to figure this out. Here is the HTTP to do that if it helps anyway. We put this as the url inside the Streamdeck, then pressed its corresponding button when establishing a 'trigger' for the macro inside our TC1... Leave the Quotes out of the string, I had to put them in for this post to work (I think / )
"HTTP://admin:[email protected]/v1/trigger?name=MACRONAME" (MACRONAME = whatever name is given in the Tricaster for a specific macro)

 

[bbayley]

Thanks Buffalo. After I got my StreamDeck all setup I realized that with NDI Studio I have 9 camera presets but on the Tricaster there are 16. Using the same method you describe I switched all my preset buttons to trigger the macro on the Tricaster instead of hitting the button in NDI Studio Monitor.

I'm still using Studio Monitor for manual control of PTZ.

 

[Jens Gottfried]

We had the same problems with the NDI-PTZ1 Camera. We didn't want to leave the Studio Monitor active all the time, because we use the laptop for other things.

The web inspector in Firefox shows which commands are sent to the camera when you control the presets via the web page, for example.

This can be used in the Companion with the internal function "internal: Run Shell path (local)". As described here https://forums.newtek.com/threads/p...dihx-camera-from-distance.162523/post-1595600 you can communicate with the camera with the following command:

url.exe -X GET http://192.168.1.158/vb.htm?powermode -u admin:admin
As parameter for the presets the following works: loadpreset1 or (2 or x)

The next test will be with several cameras at the same time. After that I will gladly add here.

You can also see the parameters for controlling the camera, so maybe more scripts can be written about it.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

 

[Jmcnally]

I have one StreamDeck (medium size, 5x3 buttons) that controls three PTZ Cameras with NDI Studio Monitor. There are a couple things I had to figure out and I'll share here.

The overall setup to control one camera is pretty straight forward. Map the StreamDeck buttons to the hotkeys used in NDI Studio Monitor. 1-9 for Camera Presets, Focus with PgUp, PgDown, F, Zoom in and Out with + and -, and manual camera movement with up, down, left,right.

StreamDeck has 'profiles' which are pages of buttons on the control. I set up one profile for the camera presets and another page for the manual controls. One button on the screen switches between these two profiles.

View attachment 149492

View attachment 149493

Now that one camera is set up, you can repeat the process with as many cameras as you have. It works pretty well on my Streamdeck's three rows to have three cameras.

Once you have more than one camera the issue becomes switching between the different cameras. ith NDI Studio Monitor... whichever window is the focus gets all the hotkey commands. You can't send hotkeys to a specific window, only the active window.

One way you can set a window as active (focused), is using the windows key plus numbers. If you haven't used this before... the numbers correspond to the icons in your taskbar going left to right. So Windows+1 brings forward the first icon, Windows+2 the next, and so on. This is great - we can send hotkeys like Windows+1 using the StreamDeck.

Now the next issue. If you open multiple NDI Studio Monitor windows, they are stacked in the taskbar. They get grouped into one icon and when you mouse over it they all pop out for you to choose one. This won't work with our Windows+1 hotkey... it is not smart enough to choose a specific sub-window when they are grouped like this. The way I found to work around this; copy and paste the whole NDI Studio Monitor program folder for each window you need. The whole program is about 300MB. Now, when you open each instance of the application, windows will treat them like unique programs and not stack the icons in the taskbar.

View attachment 149495

Now that you have each instance of the application running, and you have each one in the taskbar, it's a good idea to right click and 'pin to taskbar' each one so they will always be in the same slot.

Back in StreamDeck setup... Create a button using the "Multi Action" action. Within the Multi Action you want an action to change the profile, and an action to send the hotkey for that camera (windows+1, windows+2, etc.)

View attachment 149494

Now when you choose a camera on the StreamDeck, its NDI Studio Monitor window will be active and ready to accept the other hotkeys you send with the StreamDeck.

If people are interested in this I'll try to make a video showing the StreamDeck in action.

Are you on Windows? On the Mac I can't make any hotkeys work for the PTZ camera instructions. The Mac seems to only allow mouse use.

 

[bbayley]

Yes I'm on windows. I haven't used the streamdeck with MAC.

 

[arnisig]

Expanding on this thread. I've been able to create page for the streamdeck with companion by reading the network commands that the web interface sends. I have already programmed Pan and Tilt along with store and recall 8 presets. However for the zoom I only have found how to zoom to a specific value with the command: curl.exe -X GET http://192.168.1.177/vb.htm?zoompositionfromindex=36 -u admin:admin

However it would be much more convenient to be able to create a button for zoom in and zoom out. Does anyone know if that command exists ? The IR control has zoom slow and zoom fast so I feel like something similar should be available via the network control.

I haven't started digging into other commands yet, But I'll probably try to eventually create a companion profile for the camera.