Camera service

One-process-per-camera MQTT capture worker built on the Bytronic service template. Supports six backends (dummy, opencv, GigE, FLIR, Pylon, LJS), dual event sources (MQTT trigger vs hardware/continuous frame thread), and multi-variant image publish (raw / colourmap / RGB).

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10 or newer
• An MQTT broker at localhost:1883 (typical)
• Backend SDKs as needed (Baumer CTI, Spinnaker, pylon, Keyence LJS DLL)

Quick start

python -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
pip install -r requirements-dev.txt

python app/main.py --config ./config.yaml

Site examples (local; gitignored):

python app/main.py --config ./config-dunbia_seal.yaml
python app/main.py --config ./config.example.yaml

python -m pytest test

What it does

1. Connects the camera backend from service.camera.camera_type
2. Software / single: subscribes to the trigger topic; payload must contain "trigger"; then capture_image
3. Software / continuous: MQTT on/off arms a timed capture stream (no repeated trigger messages)
4. Hardware / single: camera line/edge IO via wait_for_frame
5. Hardware / continuous: camera free-run stream via wait_for_frame
6. For each service.images entry: format → optional archive → JPEG/PNG encode → publish {image, date_time, image_id, encoding} on {image topic}/{topic_end}

Orchestrator runs multiple instances (camera-service, -2, -3) each with its own config file.

Configuration

--config PATH is required.

Topic name	Role
trigger	subscribe + trigger (MQTT modes)
image	publish base; topic_end appends /raw, /colourmap, …

Domain knobs live under service:: camera, trigger, camera_settings, lights, images, archiving. CameraLibrary still reads them via loadConfig.get_section / dotted return_config_value, which resolve under service first.

Logging is stdout only (logging.level).

Releasing

Push to prod runs the signed release pipeline. Keep SERVICE_SIGNING_KEY and scripts/sign.py EXPECTED_PUBLIC_KEY aligned.

• requirements.txt — runtime
• requirements-dev.txt — tests / CI
• requirements-signing.txt — release job only
• FLIR: install Spinnaker wheel by hand on Windows

Project layout

• app/main.py — dual-path loop + publish
• app/dependencies/CameraLibrary/ — vendor backends
• app/dependencies/image_functions.py / archive_functions.py
• config.yaml — tracked shape

License: see docs/LICENSE.