Livestream from moving vehicle over LTE

Rick

Does anyone have experience with this scenario?

I will use the Dahua IPC-HUM8231-E2 in-car, although if there is a better option I am interested.

My main concern is stream quality and stability over LTE.

The system can fall back to WCDMA UMTS if there is no LTE coverage. What sort of results can I expect in this case?

joelwsmith

Rick

Hey Rick. Thanks for reaching out and welcome to the community!

I'm curious what you are trying to accomplish? Is this a live stream for the public to view? Is it just for internal streaming for security or monitoring purposes?

I don't see anywhere in the Dahua IPC-HUM8231-E2 specifications that says it can stream over LTE natively, so it requires an external LTE/network connection to be able to stream out to the internet. How are you planning on providing it LTE/network connection?

Rick

Each livestream will only be available internally to perhaps 2-3 viewers. My understanding is that the main stream is 1080p and the substream is 720p. I'm not entirely sure if it is possible to switch between those dynamically, if for example the 1080p stream degrades. The compression format can be configured H.264 or H.265.

The edge router is a Sierra Wireless Airlink MP70 which will be connected to the network as a private APN. In the car, both the codec and this router are cabled directly, to each other and both to the on board cpu. The transport layer is TCP. There is a scenario where cpu software could act as proxy for control and security, rather than accessing the camera directly from the network.

One thing I wish to avoid is over-spec for any component considering the constraints of the network, router and codec. For example if a 4MP camera won't give me a better result than a 2MP camera I should go with the latter.

joelwsmith

Rick

Hey Rick, thanks for that info.

And thanks for your patience. I was traveling the last few days, so I've been a little slow to respond.

When streaming over cellular connections, it's usually best to use a bonded connection across at least 2 separate cell modems and cell carriers. This becomes increasingly important in a moving vehicle. If you need absolute uptime and reliability, I would recommend finding a bonding solution. But if you can deal with a few hiccups and possibly lower stream quality, then the setup you currently have will get the job done (assuming LTE service is somewhat consistent throughout the areas the vehicle is traveling).

I don't think you're really over-speccing anything in that setup. The megapixels of the camera aren't going to be as important as other things like encoding quality, bitrate, etc.