http Sending HTTP commands with watchout

[danielbrodie]

So I want to send commands to recall camera presets using Watchout to a set of Panasonic AW-HE50 cameras. The way that they normally work is through the use of http commands sent through the web browser, but I want to duplicate this through Watchout. The commands are roughly in the format: http://192.168.0.10/cgi-bin/command=R00&r=1 which would tell the camera at ip address 192.168.0.10 to recall memory preset 00. Anyone have any idea on how to correctly format the string output in Watchout to duplicate this?

 

I've tried sending the command in Watchout as written to 192.168.0.10 on port 80 (the http port) but nothing happens, but I can indeed make the camera respond to the command if I just paste it into the web browser. Any ideas?

[danielbrodie]

Looks like it's simply adding the http command GET before the page, so the final command would look like GET /cgi-bin/command etc.

 

[sfmcnally]

Struggling to deliver string commands to Panasonic AW-HE40 on port 80.

In Chrome this works perfectly with no auth:

http://cameraipaddress/cgi-bin/aw_ptz?cmd=%23R01&res=1

I think the string command should be

GET /cgi-bin/aw_ptz?cmd=%23R01&res=1

I've also tried:

GET /cgi-bin/aw_ptz?cmd=%23R01&res=1$0D

I've also tried just

$0D

All of these return the error "Failed at delivering data"

Wathchout 6.7.2

Does anyone have any experience with these or other Panasonic PTZ cameras with String Commands or any other method? Just need to recall presets from the timeline. Thanks!

 

[sfmcnally]

Did this work? I'm not having much success a decade later. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. 

[Mike Fahl]

I dubt you'll succeed in sending HTTP commands from WATCHOUT. It just has basic TCP and UDP support. HTTP is a more complex protocol. The camera also seems to have a serial control protocol:´

https://eww.pass.panasonic.co.jp/pro-av/support/content/guide/DEF/HE50_120_SERIAL/ConvertibleProtocol.pdf

As far as I can recall (it's been a while), WO can do serial. Alternatively, using a TCP-to-serial bridge, such as a MOXA nPort.

If you really need HTTP, you probably need something else to talk to the camera, such as PIXILAB Blocks or some other control solution.

Mike

 

 

[Eddy Yanto]

You can actually send GET or POST request using *String Output* in WATCHOUT by mimicking how the request header work, since HTTP is a protocol built on top of TCP.

Please see the steps below

• Let's say you have a device that accept GET request at http://192.168.1.100/volume/mute
   
• Before you try it in WATCHOUT, you have to make sure that it works using a web browser
   
• Next, create a String Output
  
   

 

• Drag the String Output to timeline and edit the data to similar format below, the key thing is the GET uri and the host address:
  
  
    

GET /volume/mute HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.1.100
Connection: keep-alive
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/120.0.0.0
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8,application/signed-exchange;v=b3;q=0.7
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9$0A$0D

[Mike Fahl]

If you attempt Eddys' suggestion, I believe you should terminate by $0D$0A$0D$0A (i.g., CR, LF, CR, LF):

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50447483/end-of-http-header#:~:text=Each header ends with CRLF,for the HTTP protocol spec.

This may work for single commands spaced "far apart", since WO holds the connection open for a bit after sending the command. It will then send any following commands on that already open TCP connection, which I doubt the other end will like in this case. Also, the action may be deferred until WO closes the connection (depending a bit on how the device implemets the HTTP protocol).

I don't recall how the line endings for the other header lines are terminated when you paste in multiple lines like this. Those would also need to be terminated each by a CR/LF pair. But perhaps that's the case already, or he device may not be too picky here.

Mike

 

[sfmcnally]

Thanks for the suggestions. I ended up sending a simple string command to Bitfocus Companion. Much easier to just tell companion what button to press and let it handle the backend. 

Command is:

BANK-PRESS 1 1  ****FIRST DIGIT IS PAGE NUMBER THEN A SPACE SECOND DIGIT IS BUTTON NUMBER****

$0D ***HEX REPRESENTATION OF ENTER****

Works great and its free software. Has libraries for most PTZ cameras.