Controlling multiple cameras remotely with Sony API via router

Question

I've got five Sony FDR-X1000 cameras and I want to control them all at the same time with my laptop using the Sony remote control API. My plan is connecting them all to a router and then connecting my device to the router and sending them post requests to start/stop recording.

Is that even possible or I can only remotely control one camera at a time?

Answer 1

It's rather not possible this way as it is the camera the one that has to be server and your device - a client. So what could be a solution for you is rather to have five usb wifi adapters and use each of them to connect to different camera. Then you could send requests to each API via connected network interface.

Answer 2

In addition to the marked as correct answer, @Kriskot's answer is a correct one, though a complicated approach. I have worked extensively on this problem. The only way to use more than one camera with the Sony Camera Remote API is to have multiple Wifi cards on your client, each camera is a Wifi Access Point and your client normally only can connect to one Wifi network at a time.

To connect to more than one camera you have to have more than one Wifi card.

I have connected to the cameras with a router and the API is actually locked down. You can do certain things if using a router to connect to the Sony cameras but you cannot transfer media.

See my setup here: Connecting to Multiple Cameras via Sony Remote Camera API

And see my answer here for more information: Availabilty of setCameraFunction on HDR-AZ1 using Sony Camera Remote API SDK

Answer 3

This article shows how to connect multiple cameras via WPS. I have not tried it myself but maybe it will help.

http://e4e.ucsd.edu/news-and-updates/stereo-qx1-control

1.Put the QX1s into multi camera mode. To do this, tap the Wi-Fi button under the battery cover until the LCD has a block next to the multi camera mode indicator.

2.Put the router into WPS pushbutton pairing mode.

3.To pair each camera, push and hold the Wi-Fi button until the camera beeps, or until you see an indication on the router that a device has connected. Repeat for each camera.

4.You should now have your cameras connected to the Wi-Fi router.

If you do this with a Wi-Fi router, you can look up the assigned IP addresses for each camera, and have your software to talk to that IP directly. Everything else works the same as with one camera.

Answer 4

I'm driving multiple QX1's, so take the following with that in mind (I'd expect the X1000's to be similar) . In the end I've elected for the simplest approach which is just connecting and taking images sequentially.

Kriskot's approach with multiple wifi adapters is probably the best approach if you really want synchronous capture.

Alexander's approach probably won't work as there is no (publicly documented) way to shut off the Sony device's DHCP service, so they'll all start getting confused. Further, the QX1 (and I assume other devices) seem to only accept packets from the MAC which authenticated with them, meaning packets from the rest of the network will be rejected (unless there is something in the WDS configuration which is set to handle this).

Answer 5

I was looking for the same thing, as I think that the cams could be used as the perfect security camera. In combination with e.g. Indigodomo and Sony's API this would open up a ton of possibilities.

There is an option in routers that is called "WDS Bridging". This puts part of your router in a client mode and therefore should be able to access the Access Point of the Sony cam. My router (TP Link Archer C7) states that it can bridge two or more WLANs.

I do not have a Sony camera yet, so I can't test myself. It would be great if someone else can test this and post the results.