Live Streaming Tips

Facebook, YouTube, Periscope and RTMP

Facebook, YouTube, and Periscope use Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) to live stream events. The Wireless Live Streaming Plug-in provides a great example of RTMP for 4K equirectangular video direct from the camera.

WebRTC, Oculus Go and Video Conferencing

You will need to do more work for WebRTC. The RICOH Live Streaming plug-in Sample for RICOH THETA provides a complete open source example using the RICOH Cloud servers.

If you want to use WebRTC with your own servers, you will need an external signaling server.

Examples of WebRTC external server use:

• HowTo: Viewing 360° Video in Real-Time from THETA V with Oculus Go Browser
• Making Theta 360 work with OpenTok’s client-side webRTC livestreaming - mobile stitching - google “cardboard” view
• 360 Video Conferencing with the RICOH THETA S

Ethernet

Although the Wireless Live Streaming plug-in does work with Ethernet, the camera cannot be powered by Ethernet. There is no known success of bypassing the battery to power the THETA V from an external source. If you use Wi-Fi, you can power the THETA V from the USB port

Heat

HoloBuilder has reported success with 24 hour 4K live streaming using Wi-Fi. Some people have reported heat issues.

• blowing a fan on the body of the camera helps. You can use a household fan and angle it toward the camera.
• Using Wi-Fi will generate more heat than streaming through the USB cable
• Although you can stream dual-fisheye and offload the stitching, Ricoh does not release lens parameter information.

USB

No one has figured out how to stream from the plug-in over USB as of Oct 2018. We do not think it is possible to stream from the plug-in using USB. We recommend that you use the normal camera application and not the plug-in.

Power

We’re using a mobile phone charger capable of supplying 1.5 amps for our tests. Do not power the camera from your computer USB while attempting Wi-Fi streaming. Although the camera is receiving power from the USB when it is streaming over Wi-Fi, our initial tests indicate that the battery power may be decreasing slowly.

Test and Debug

Tip to use adb with a USB cable and Wi-Fi for streaming

adb shell settings put global usb_debug true

Use adb from IP address

If you’re testing Wi-Fi live streaming, you may be trying to connect the THETA V Wi-Fi to the Internet while you are debugging the plug-in with Vysor or adb connected to your camera with a USB cable. This won’t work.

To get Vysor or adb to work with TCP/IP, you need to run the following command first with the camera connected with a USB cable:

adb tcpip 5555

Get IP address from router.

Once connected, establish adb connection with:

adb connect IP.address:PORT

or with my IP address of 192.168.2.102

adb connect 192.168.2.102:5555

You can also use Vysor with an IP address that is established using Wi-Fi or Ethernet.