Get Started#

Sensor Manager discovers USB and ONVIF network cameras and exposes them through a REST API.

Prerequisites#

Run with Docker Compose#

  1. Go to the component directory:

    cd edge-ai-libraries/microservices/sensor-manager

  2. Build the image and start the service (.env is created from .env.example on first run):

    make build run

  3. List the discovered cameras:

    curl http://localhost:8090/api/v1/sensors

  4. Load the ONVIF profiles of a network camera:

    curl -X POST http://localhost:8090/api/v1/sensors/network-camera-192.168.1.100-80/profiles \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"username": "<user>", "password": "<password>"}'

    Caution

    Avoid putting real passwords in your shell history. For example, read them from a file or an environment variable.

  5. Stop the service:

    make stop

Configuration#

Variable

Default

Description

SENSOR_MANAGER_HOST

0.0.0.0

Bind address of the HTTP server

SENSOR_MANAGER_PORT

8090

HTTP port

ONVIF_DISCOVERY_ENABLED

true

Enable the periodic WS-Discovery sweep

ONVIF_DISCOVERY_INTERVAL_S

20

Seconds between discovery sweeps (minimum 1)

LOG_LEVEL

INFO

Python log level

VIDEO_GID

44

Host GID of the video group (Docker Compose only)

Networking and Security Notes#

  • ONVIF WS-Discovery sends a UDP multicast probe to 239.255.255.250:3702 and receives unicast replies, which do not pass Docker’s bridge NAT. The container therefore uses network_mode: host, so the API is reachable on all host interfaces on SENSOR_MANAGER_PORT. The API has no authentication: restrict access with a firewall, or set SENSOR_MANAGER_HOST to a specific address.

  • Containers on a bridge network reach the service through the host gateway, for example with extra_hosts: ["host.docker.internal:host-gateway"] and http://host.docker.internal:8090.

  • /dev is mounted read-only. Access to V4L2 (c 81:*) and USB (c 189:*) character devices is granted with device_cgroup_rules. The container runs as a non-root user with a read-only root filesystem and all capabilities dropped.

Learn More#