A modular microservice camera streamer for Ingenic SoCs. Raptor replaces the traditional monolithic streamer with independent daemons that communicate through POSIX shared-memory ring buffers and Unix domain control sockets.

Each daemon runs as a separate process. Producers (RVD, RAD, or RFS) publish encoded frames to SHM rings; all other daemons are pure consumers or support services. On camera platforms, RVD owns the ISP/encoder hardware. On platforms without ISP (A1, x86 testing), RFS replaces RVD+RAD by reading from files.

Raptor is fully modular -- install and run only the daemons your application requires. A headless recorder might run just RVD and RMR. A cloud-connected doorbell might run RVD, RSD, RAD, RIC, and ROD. A minimal RTSP-only camera needs just RVD and RSD. On an A1 media processor, RFS + RSD streams video from MP4 files. Each daemon starts independently and discovers available ring buffers at runtime, gracefully skipping any that don't exist.

 sensor                              .mp4 / .h264 file
   |                                        |
  [RVD] --shm rings--+              [RFS] --shm rings--+
   |  \               |                |               |
   |   \              +--> [RSD] RTSP/RTSPS server (via compy)
   |   \              +--> [RSD-555] RTSP server (via live555)
   |    \             +--> [RHD] HTTP snapshots / MJPEG / audio
   |     \            +--> [RMR] fragmented MP4 recording
   |      \           +--> [RWD] WebRTC/WHIP server (DTLS-SRTP)
   |       \          +--> [RWC] USB webcam (UVC + UAC1)
   |       \          +--> [RSP] RTMP/RTMPS push (YouTube, Twitch)
   |       \          +--> [RSR] SRT listener (MPEG-TS)
   |        `--osd shm <-- [ROD] OSD text / logo renderer
   |        `--ivs ------> [RMD] motion detection → triggers RMR
   |
  [RAD] --audio ring--+--> (all consumers above)
   |
  [RIC] ---- ctrl sock --> [RVD] (exposure queries, ISP mode switch)

Raptor is built against the above libraries and the Ingenic vendor SDK.

Runtime shared libraries from the Ingenic SDK / Buildroot sysroot:

• libimp -- Ingenic multimedia platform
• libalog -- Ingenic logging
• libschrift -- TrueType font rasterizer (ROD)
• libfaac -- AAC encoder (optional, AAC=1)
• libhelix-aac / libhelix-mp3 -- AAC/MP3 decoders (optional, for rac playback)
• libopus -- Opus codec (optional, OPUS=1)
• libaudioProcess -- Ingenic audio effects (optional, AUDIO_EFFECTS=1)
• libmbedtls / libmbedcrypto / libmbedx509 -- TLS/DTLS (optional, TLS=1, required for RTSPS and WebRTC)
• libsrt -- SRT protocol (optional, statically linked into RSR, built from source by build-standalone.sh)
• libliveMedia / libgroupsock / libUsageEnvironment / libBasicUsageEnvironment -- live555 RTSP (optional, statically linked by RSD-555)
• libmov -- MP4 demuxer (statically compiled into RFS from ireader/media-server, MIT license)

./build-standalone.sh t31                # downloads toolchain + deps, builds everything
./build-standalone.sh t31 --local        # use sibling repo checkouts instead of cloning
./build-standalone.sh t31 --static       # static binaries
./build-standalone.sh t31 --clean        # clean all build artifacts

Supported platforms: t10, t20, t21, t23, t30, t31, t32, t33, t40, t41, a1.

First run downloads the toolchain and all dependencies automatically. Output binaries go to build/. Options: --no-tls, --no-aac, --no-opus, --no-mp3, --no-audio-effects, --alt (jz-crypto HW accel), --libc=musl|uclibc|glibc.

make PLATFORM=T31 CROSS_COMPILE=mipsel-linux- SYSROOT=/path/to/sysroot

Required variables:

• PLATFORM -- target SoC: T10, T20, T21, T23, T30, T31, T32, T33, T40, T41, A1
• CROSS_COMPILE -- toolchain prefix (e.g., mipsel-linux-)

Optional variables:

• SYSROOT -- path to Buildroot sysroot for library linking
• DEBUG=1 -- build with -O0 -g instead of -Os
• AAC=1 -- enable AAC encode/decode support
• MP3=1 -- enable MP3 decode support (rac playback)
• OPUS=1 -- enable Opus encode/decode support
• AUDIO_EFFECTS=1 -- enable noise suppression, HPF, AGC
• TLS=1 -- enable RTSPS (TLS-encrypted RTSP via mbedTLS) and WebRTC (RWD)
• WEBTORRENT=1 -- enable WebTorrent external sharing in RWD (requires TLS=1)
• V=1 -- verbose build output

Install to a staging directory:

make PLATFORM=T31 CROSS_COMPILE=mipsel-linux- DESTDIR=/tmp/raptor install

This installs binaries to $DESTDIR/usr/bin/, the config to $DESTDIR/etc/raptor.conf, and the init script to $DESTDIR/etc/init.d/S31raptor.

All daemons share a single INI-style config file: /etc/raptor.conf. See raptor-docs/23-rss-config.md for the complete reference (all sections, keys, types, defaults).

Runtime changes via raptorctl:

raptorctl status                      # show running daemons
raptorctl rvd set-bitrate 0 2000000   # change encoder bitrate at runtime
raptorctl config save                 # persist running config to disk
raptorctl rvd                         # show all RVD commands

All consumer daemons (RSD, RWD, RMR, RHD, RSP) automatically reconnect to both video and audio ring buffers after RVD or RAD restarts. If a ring producer stops writing for ~2 seconds, consumers close the stale ring and retry until the new ring appears. No manual daemon restart required.

When refmode is enabled, video ring buffers become metadata-only (~9KB per stream instead of ~1.5MB). The encoder writes compressed output directly to a shared backing store that consumers mmap — eliminating the per-frame memcpy from encoder DMA buffer into the ring data region.

Two backing store paths are selected automatically based on the encoder IP:

Enable in config:

[ring]
refmode = true

Consumers detect refmode transparently via ring header flags — no consumer code changes required. JPEG snapshots stay embedded (not affected by refmode).

A reference init script is included at config/S31raptor. RVD must start first (creates SHM rings); all other daemons start after the ring appears. Each daemon checks its own enabled config flag and exits cleanly if disabled.

Server-side pipeline latency (sensor capture → ring availability) is ~2ms average, measured with ringdump main -l. The full end-to-end breakdown:

Enable in config for encoder immediate frame output:

[sensor]
low_latency = true

Most RTSP latency comes from the client's jitter buffer. Recommended player settings for lowest latency (use UDP transport):

# ffplay
ffplay -fflags nobuffer -flags low_delay -rtsp_transport udp rtsp://camera/stream0

# mpv
mpv --no-cache --untimed --profile=low-latency rtsp://camera/stream0

# VLC
vlc --network-caching=0 rtsp://camera/stream0

WebRTC (via RWD) has inherently low latency (~50ms total) since browsers use minimal jitter buffering.

On-device (pipeline only — sensor to ring):

ringdump main -l           # pipeline latency (per-frame)
ringdump main -l -n 100    # measure 100 frames, show min/avg/max
ringdump audio -l           # audio pipeline latency

End-to-end (sensor to network client, includes network):

# Run from any host on the network (requires NTP-synced clocks)
rlatency rtsp://camera/stream0              # continuous measurement
rlatency rtsp://camera/stream0 -n 500       # 500 frames with summary
rlatency rtsp://camera/stream0 -n 200 -v    # verbose per-frame output

rlatency uses RTCP Sender Report NTP/RTP timestamp correlation (RFC 3550 §6.4.1) to map each received frame to the camera's wall clock. Reports min/avg/max/stddev/P50/P95/P99.

Platform differences are handled by raptor-hal, which abstracts the three SDK generations behind a common API. The PLATFORM build variable selects the correct HAL backend at compile time. On A1, HAL is not built — RFS serves as the video/audio producer instead of RVD+RAD.

Licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.