Video Frequently Cuts Out - Using VLC

[lenegene]

Hi everyone,

An issue our team has come across while testing connection with the ground station is that the raspberry pi camera will frequently cut off the live feed.

We aren't sure if it is due to the connections with the ubiquiti modems, something with the pi camera itself, or some other issue. We ran indoor, outdoor, short-range, and long-range tests, but in each test, the feed would still cut out and we would have issues connecting back to the feed. The long range test (~1500m) couldn't stream at all. We could successfully ping the pi, and the ubiquiti modems showed full connection. Indoors and short range outdoors worked but we would lose connection randomly - but the ubiquiti modems still showed connection. All of these tests are purely attempting to connect to VLC. We can't get ffmpeg to work, and we aren't trying to use OBS currently because we can't even connect to VLC. 

I was wondering if there were different tests our team could perform, or some fixes other teams have come across to test the pi camera so that we can stream it as expected to for upcoming launches.

Thanks,

South Dakota Solar Eclipse Team

[Wesley]

How long does it generally stream before disconnecting? Is the image on the pi the latest version? Something you could try is connecting the pi and your ground station laptop together directly via ethernet cable. If the stream still cuts out randomly the problem is related to the pi or you laptops hardware so more debugging would be required. If it streams perfectly then the problem is likely with the connection. Check antennas and cables on the payload and on the ground station.