PyCA – Matterhorn Capture Agent

PyCA is a fully functional Opencast Matterhorn [MH] capture agent written in Python. It is free software licenced under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License [LGPL].

The goals of pyCA are to be…

• flexible for any kind of capture device
• simplistic and minimalistic in code and functionality
• unrestrictive in terms of choosing capture software

PyCA can be run on almost any kind of devices: A regular PC equipped with capture cards, a server to capture network streams, small boards or embedded devices like Raspberry Pi [RPi], Beagleboard, Cubieboard, …

Backup Mode

By setting backup_mode = False in the configuration file, the PyCA will go into a backup mode. This means that capture agent will neither register itself at the matterhorn core, nor try to ingest any of the recorded media or set the capture state. This is useful if the CA shall be used as backup in case a regular capture agent fails to record (for whatever reasons). Just match the name of the pyCA to that of the regular capture agent.

Installation

Here is a short summary for Debian based OS like Raspian:

git clone https://github.com/lkiesow/pyCA.git
cd pyCA
sudo apt-get install python-virtualenv python-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev
virtualenv venv
. ./venv/bin/activate
pip install icalendar python-dateutil pycurl configobj
vim etc/pyca.conf  <-- Edit the configuration
./start.sh

For RedHat bases systems like Fedora it's almost the same:

git clone https://github.com/lkiesow/pyCA.git
cd pyCA
sudo yum install python-virtualenv
virtualenv venv
. ./venv/bin/activate
pip install icalendar python-dateutil pycurl configobj
vim etc/pyca.conf  <-- Edit the configuration
./start.sh

[MH]	http://opencast.org/matterhorn

[LGPL]

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lkiesow/pyCA/master/license.lgpl

[RPi]

http://www.raspberrypi.org/