RetroPie Screen Mirroring / Streaming / Casting

Clyde

@herb_fargus Hi, I finally got to install Retropie 4.4, but I ran into a problem with UV4L. I followed your instructions by the letter. Starting the server got me this:

$ uv4l --auto-video_nr --driver raspidisp --server-option '--enable-webrtc=yes'
<notice> [core] Trying to loading driver 'raspidisp' from built-in drivers...
<notice> [core] Loading driver 'raspidisp' from external plug-in's...
<notice> [driver] RaspiDisp Video4Linux2 Driver built Jan 31 2017
<notice> [core] Device detected!
<notice> [core] Registering device node /dev/video0

The server is running on pids 3215 and 3065 according to pidof uv4l. But when I try to connect by http://ip.of.my.raspi:9080/stream/webrtc/, the browser says:

Page Not Found or Access Denied

The PC I'm trying to connect from runs Kubuntu Linux 14.04. The error occurs in Firefox 59.0.2 as well as Chromium 65.0.3325.181.

What could be wrong?

herb_fargus

@clyde hrm. I don't remember mine saying /dev/video0, it was dev something else I forget. Did you try it with sudo /rebooting the pi?

Clyde

@herb_fargus Rebooting didn't change the error, but uv4l only has one pid now.

I also have an issue with dispmanx vnc. It works, but although it shows approx. 13 fps on the Pi, krdc on my pc only gets appros 2 fps with high quality and 3 fps with medium quality. Low quality doesn't show a picture at all.

edit: The poor vnc performance might be because my Retropi runs on 1600x1200 …

Clyde

Update: I can connect to the server's menu via http://ip.of.my.raspi:8080. There, "Server Info" says:

Streaming Server Informations and Statistics

basic HTTP/HTTPS authentication: disabled

underlying video device node: /dev/video0

current connections: 1, queued: 0, total handled: 15

max. simultaneous streams allowed: 3, max. threads: 5

raw HTTP/HTTPS video streams in MJPEG, JPEG (continuous stills) and H264 formats - if supported - are available under the /stream/video.mjpeg, /stream/video.jpeg, and /stream/video.h264 URL paths respectively

But none of the listed url paths work. They give the error ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE.

Clyde

Okay, I got it: I just had to use your URL with my server's port 8080. I don't know why your server has a different port, since I only followed your instructions. But it works now with an acceptable framerate, albeit not as high as the original.

So, thanks very much for this solution! Do you have any tipps for optimizing the frame rate? My video projector's resolution is 1280x720, I'd like to render the stream in this resolution. If you happen to know the options to do that, I'd be thankful. Otherwise, I'll try to read them up.

herb_fargus

@clyde glad you got it figured out. you probably know as much about it as I do at this point. Uv4l has manpages with different settings that could probably be tweaked to improve performance.

If you/I were really ambitious we could develop a custom web app plug-in specific to streaming for retropie (uv4l had an example of an app for face tracking)

Clyde

@herb_fargus One feature I'd like would be a direct stream without any web interface that could be viewed by a network-compatible media player like vlc. If that's possible already, I didn't figure it out although I read many uv4l docs and tutorials.

Do you know (or suspect) which video format the webrtc plugin streams to /dev/video0 in? I tried to grab that device with cvlc and stream it to another cvlc running on my pc with Kubuntu like described in this tutorial, but cvlc on the Pi didn't recognize the format coming from /dev/video0 (even calling it "garbage" at one point).

As for developing a custom plug-in, I am open for that in principle, but I have no programming expertise at all, apart from some very basic bash scripting (example).

mitu

@clyde said in RetroPie Screen Mirroring / Streaming / Casting:

Do you know (or suspect) which video format the webrtc plugin streams to /dev/video0 in?

Something like this - https://www.linux-projects.org/uv4l/tutorials/rtsp-server/ ?

Clyde

@mitu Sorry for the late answer, I somehow missed your reply. 😮

Your link points to a tutorial for the raspicam driver. It has an --encoding option the raspidisp driver is missing, unfortunately.

HorseWithForce

hey there,

I know the thread is a little old but I'm trying to install uv4l for 5 hours now and I ran into diffrent problems..... first I sadly cant install RetroPie on x64 Raspi OS with Bullseye, next was that it seems that uv4l wont run on bullseye regardless x86 nor x64 bit OS....
now i took a fresh retropie image to test it with buster and followed some instructions here and there https://www.linux-projects.org/uv4l/tutorials/play-retropie-in-browser/
but I'm always leading to a point where my browsers gives me an error "invalid video device" or with another config I get "Web socket error 1006"
I guess I used the wrong video output in the config, but I cant find the right one....

Also the Retro Pi emulation wont start cause it tells me no display connected...
I only use ssh to connect to my pi and i got no Display or hdmi connected to the pi
Should I virtually add a display in the configs or is there any other solution here?

I hope you can help me out!

mitu

@HorseWithForce said in RetroPie Screen Mirroring / Streaming / Casting:

Also the Retro Pi emulation wont start cause it tells me no display connected...

That's probably the reason why it's not working - there's no video device initialized. You didn't mention which Pi model are you using, but as a general solution, configure a video mode in /boot/config.txt and set hdmi_force_hotplug=1 as-well so that display detection is skipped.

As for using the solution on the RaspiOS Bullseye, it will not work due to the fact that the MMAL/DispmanX API is no longer supported with the new KMS ARM driver.

Just out of curiosity, why are you trying to use this solution, if you don't have a display attached to the Pi ? Wouldn't it be easier to install the emulators on your PC/Phone to play ?