How to include streaming media into an OpenGeo system to monitor live-tracked animals?

Question

I am wondering how to include streaming media (video), or camera feeds, into an OpenGeo system to monitor live-tracked animals.

I am currently doing so with different applications, but I want to do it in a whole system (open and free), preferably under OpenGeo suite and QGIS, or other open possibilities (may VLC be an solution?). For media and GPS tracking, we are currently using cheap Chinese "dashboard cams" and pet GPS collars, since we can catch these animals almost daily (that's ethology study about domesticated badgers), but we have to postprocess all the info and manually add data in the whole database, when it could be done automatically.

I think we have 2 possibilities, being the 2nd the preferred:

1. Streaming and server-side recording, which is safer since data loss is minor;
2. On-collar recording, with on-demand live camera feeds plus server-side recording (somehow as geotagged shots/stills, an option if we do m-jpeg feeds, but not the best, I think).

I have read some stuff, since I have very limited knowledge on these topics. Open streaming servers are a first step, but I am not just wondering if it is the best match, but if it is the right schema I am thinking about.

As example, one really nice, propietary option is Skyline that merges everything in a whole platform (but for UAV military purposes).

Ideas?

Answer 1

Something that might be possible is if you get your video streaming somehow (that's not a GIS problem, that's a more general web-dev problem, so lets just assume it works) then you could have points representing the current location of your animal, or if it's fixed, the location of the camera. Then you can bind a popup to that animal point that contains the stream video.

Then you use some refresh code if the animal moves, so that every second the points' locations are updated, and if one video is open, that popup gets moved to the new location.

Lot's of what you are asking can probably be solved by a web developer, though, and if these steps aren't clear to you then get someone to help. There's not going to be an off-the-shelf answer. The only potential solution I know of that does this kind of stuff out of the box is Fulcrum.

Answer 2

You may be able to use Openlayers and Google fusion tables.

QGIS can use fusion tables as well.