Web Interface
The camera image and gesture preview is the main feature of the AirPointr Web Interface. The preview shows the exact camera viewfield that is processed for the gesture recognition. It is essentially intended to help setting up the camera and to showcase the different features.
Please note that the preview shows a black-and-white image (even when a color camera is used) at a slow refresh-rate.
With the help of the preview function you are able to monitor and adjust the camera angle. With the additional control elements zoom, mirror and flip you have the freedom to adapt the camera perspective for any possible use case.
The camera image preview is not a video stream of the camera, therefore the refresh rate of the image is relatively low. This is not a bug, but it is intended to be like that, as the camera should not be used as streaming device with AirPointr. The provided camera image is only meant as feedback to help with the positioning of the camera.
To protect your privacy AirPointr incorporates a timeout timer that will disable the live preview after a certain system uptime. This timeout defaults to sixty (60) minutes and can be set in /etc/airpointr.conf. The timeout value is loaded from the config file upon system startup. Once the timeout has expired the live camera image is replaced by a static "lockout" image.
The currently active timeout value can be verified on the "About AirPointr" page of the web frontend.
You can disable the timeout completely by setting it to -1 in the config file. In that case a notice will be displayed on the preview page of the web frontend.
[camera]
preview_timeout=-1The recognized gestures of the AirPointr service are symbolically displayed as an overlay to the camera image. Therefore the preview can be used to explore the functionality of AirPointr and to get a feeling of how the different gestures work.
<a name="websocket" /a>
The preview uses a websocket connection for the gesture input. Under Windows Internet Explorer generally shows the best performance with the gesture preview. The following table lists the websocket performance of some tested browser configurations:
| Browser | Version | Operating System | Quality |
|---|---|---|---|
| Internet Explorer | 11.0.9600.18161 | Win 8 (64-bit) | ++ |
| Firefox | 44.0 | Win 8 (64-bit) | + |
| Google Chrome | 48.0.2564.97 m | Win 8 (64-bit) | + |
| Internet Explorer | 11.0.9600.18204 | Win 7 (64-bit) | ++ |
| Firefox | 44.0 | Win 7 (64-bit) | - (Laggy) |
| Google Chrome | 48.0.2526.111 m | Win 7 (64-bit) | - (Laggy) |
| Firefox | 44.0.2 | Ubuntu 14.04 (64-bit) | ++ |
| Chromium | 48.0.2564.82 | Ubuntu 14.04 (64-bit) | ++ |
| Firefox | 43.0 | Android 5.5.1 | + |
| Chrome | 47.0.2526.83 | Android 5.5.1 | + |
Note that Browser and Operating System are not the only parameters regarding a smooth preview behaviour. Network aspects, as connection type (Wireless/Cable) or network traffic, can also have an impact on the performance.