Seervision Server Setup

Here's how to configure a Seervision server to control the PTU of your choice

If you are using Seervision with a Q-SYS setup or NC Series PTZ camera, please follow the instructions on support.qsys.com or those provided by your Q-SYS rep.

This page will talk about getting the Seervision server to nicely “talk to” (i.e. control) the pan-tilt unit (PTU) you have (be that a PTZ or a robotic head). There’s a few more steps left, but before we dive in, let’s make sure we’re on the same page. At this stage, you should have:

  • Powered on your PTU and connected it to your LAN. If that’s not the case, check out the Quickstart section and get set up.
  • Powered on the Seervision server and connected it to the same LAN
  • The SDI or NDI® feed of your PTU feeding into the Seervision server (for help on how to do that, see the SDI/NDI® page).
  • A laptop/PC with a Chrome browser that’s on the same LAN as the PTU and the Seervision server
  • Nice to have: in the case of a robotic head, have your lens control set up – that’s not a hard requirement to verify everything works, but good to have. More detail about this can be found on the Robotic Head Quickstart page.

If this is the case, great, let’s dive in!

This page is one of the hardest to write adequate documentation for, as there are many variables that come together in your setup. We’ve tried hard to make it as exhaustive as possible. If we’ve missed something, don’t hesitate to reach out!

Accessing the Seervision interface

So first questions first, how can you access the Seervision Suite? The Suite is served as a web app on the IP of the server, so you will need a client machine with Google’s Chrome browser installed to access it.

The HDMI ports of the Seervision server do not give access to the interface. They only serve a terminal login and nothing else. To access the Seervision Suite, simply access the IP via your browser.

To bring up the interface, you’ll need to find out the IP of the Seervision server.

By default, new Seervision servers are configured to take a DHCP IP. If you have connected the Seervision server on a network with a DHCP server, consult the DHCP server’s client list to find the IP of the server. If you need the MAC address, this is physically printed on the back of the server.

If you do not have access to the DHCP server, or there is none present, use our Seervision Discovery tool to find the server’s IP.

Accessing the link-local interface of the Seervision server

If you’re on a network that doesn’t have a DHCP server, the Seervision server will configure itself to take a link-local IP of the form 169.254.0.0/16 (for more information, see Wikipedia on the link local address). You can discover this IP using the Seervision discovery tool. Once you have the link-local IP, you will have to configure your PC/laptop to sit on this network, before you can open our interface.

macOS
On macOS, go to System Preferences > Network, and use the little + to add a new virtual Network Interface. Make sure to select the correct interface that you are using, add it, and set the Configure IPv4 dropdown to Manually. As an IP address, add 169.254.1.5, set the Subnet Mask to 255.255.255.0. You can leave the Router option empty as there shouldn’t be one.

Microsoft Windows
Windows does not currently seem to conveniently allow the creation of virtual interfaces (please let us know if we’re wrong there!) so you will have to modify the settings of your current network connection.

  • Navigate to Network & Internet and find the network connection you want to use for accessing the Seervision server.
  • Click the network connection and under IP Settings, hit Edit.
  • In the dropdown, select Manual and enable the IPv4 slider
  • Set the IP address to 169.254.12.5
  • Set the Subnet prefix length to 16
  • Set the Gateway to 169.254.1.1
  • You can leave the DNS empty

Hit Save, you should now be able to access the server’s link-local IP in your Chrome browser.

2. Configuring the Seervision server

Now that you can access the Seervision Suite, it is time to configure it to communicate with the PTU of your choice. At this stage, you should already have completed the PTU setup (see our other Quickstart guides).

Using the Google Chrome browser, type in the server’s IP you found in the steps above, and go to the Operations Server (for example at http://192.168.1.101/operations/server) and in the PTU Configuration, click the three vertical dots to create a new configuration.

  1. Give the configuration a name that you can easily recognise, such as Main Room Cam 1 for example
  2. For PTU, select the driver that is applicable to your PTU
  3. Under IP, fill in the IP of the PTU that you wish to control
  4. For the Camera menu, make sure to select the relevant lens configuration. If you don’t see yours listed, don’t worry, it can be added when necessary through lens calibration later on (see below). Just select Calibration for now.
  5. Save your configuration, then hit the green Launch or Relaunch button

After a few minutes, the system should be up and running, and if you scroll down in the Operations Server, the PTU Status should show Connected. If that’s the case, congratulations, you’re close to done! Go check out the Seervision Manual to see what you can do with your newly setup Seervision server.

If not, no problem, this setup has a lot of moving parts! Just shoot us an email and we’ll help you get set up.

3. Calibrating the lens (for Robotic Heads only)

This is only relevant if you are using a robotic head, all PTZ setups come with a pre-calibrated lens.

At this point, you should be able to access the UI, control the head, and control the lens’ zoom and focus. If that’s the case, great! Now it’s time to calibrate the lens to get better tracking performance.

An in-depth walkthrough of the calibration can be found in our online manual. The basic steps are as follows:

  1. Point the camera at a feature-rich environment
  2. In the Preferences pane, navigate to Lenses, select the Calibration camera, and the corresponding Calibration Lens
  3. Once selected, in the same panel, click the Add New button in the top right. Add in the name of your currently mounted camera, and the name of the current lens that you have mounted
  4. Click Start Calibration and wait for the process to complete
  5. Once the process has completed, open up the Lenses tab again and select your newly calibrated camera/lens pair!

 

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