Anyhow, as of recently its been tasked upon us to work with some streaming video. Now, the hardware we will be using for our client are some nice IP/H.264 compatible cameras. Well, I personally do not have one but needed a solution by which I could test and work with. I have one of those little eye ball looking cameras and found some free software (WebCamXP) that would run a simple MJPEG stream. (Yea, yea…its windows but who doesn’t have a windows box to hack and slash on? Ha!) After this is up and running you have a basic MJPEG stream that is running and accessible via http://10.0.0.99:8080/webcamp_1.cgi (or whatever your internal IP is and the port you configured in the software)

** Note: This tutorial uses iPhone references as thats what I worked with first. I’ll update with the Android version later. I am also using Linux (Ubuntu) to do the encoding and serving of the new video stream. Also assuming you have Apache or another web server up and running.

Now, this .cgi page/script ‘can’ be placed as the source of a UIWebview and works ok.

NSString *urlAddress = @"http://10.0.0.99:8080/cam_1.cgi";
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:urlAddress];
NSURLRequest *requestObj = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
[streamWebView loadRequest:requestObj];

But, ultimately this is not what we’re looking for. We need to get a nice H.264 compatible stream rolling out so that we can play this directly to the iPhone (MPMoivePlayerController) or be able to hook into a streaming server (as we’re planning on doing) so that we can re-broadcast to several devices at once.

So…how might we convert this MJPEG (.cgi) into an H.264 compatible stream? VLC Media Player to the rescue.

On your Linux box install VLC and the x264 libraries.

# apt-get install vlc x264

A few of the tutorials you read on this all reference using the command: vlc. However, if you don’t have X11 installed on your system (as I do not) you will run into a few errors with regards to this. But, have no fear, VLC provided a command line option: cvlc.

Now what we need to do is fire up VLC with a bunch of options that will read in the MJPEG (.cgi) convert it to H.264 and then provide us with a means of accessing the stream (via the Linux server – 10.0.0.69). So, on the command prompt do something like:

cvlc --intf=rc http://10.0.0.99:8080/cam_1.cgi --sout '#transcode{fps=25,
vcodec=h264,venc=x264{aud,profile=baseline,level=30,keyint=30,
bframes=0,ref=1,nocabac},acodec=mp3,ab=56,audio-sync,deinterlace}
:standard{mux=ts,access=http,dst=10.0.0.69:8090/myStream.mp4}'

Now, on the command prompt you’ll see a bunch of stuff start scrolling by. This is what you want. Its reading in frames from the original MJPEG stream and converting them. But, you’re not done yet. In order to get this to play via MPMoviePlayerController on the iPhone, we need to setup the .m3u8 or the playlist file.

In your web server directory create a file myStream.m3u8 and put the following in and save:

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:10
#EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE:0
#EXTINF:10, 

http://10.0.0.69:8090/myStream.mp4

Now you’re ready for some iPhone code to show the stream.

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://10.0.0.69/myStream.m3u8"];
MPMoviePlayerController *player = [[MPMoviePlayerController alloc] initWithContentURL:url];
player.controlStyle = MPMovieControlStyleNone;
[player.view setFrame:CGRectMake(0, 120, 320 , 200)];
[self.view addSubview:player.view];
[player play];

This should basically do it. I don’t believe I left out any steps. I’ll update if I run across any missing steps or you guys let me know. When you run the app, it can sometimes take a few seconds before the video starts playing. At one point I set a background color to the mpmovieplayercontroller’s view so that I could tell where it was being

With MPMoviePlayerController there are several other options you may be interested in using/implementing.

When setting up the player you can have your containing view controller listen for some of the playback events (can help with some debugging) with:

//Defined in the above MPMoviePlayerController allocation
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self  selector:@selector(moviePlayerPlaybackStateDidChange:)  name:MPMoviePlayerPlaybackStateDidChangeNotification  object:nil];

//NSNotification callback function
- (void)moviePlayerPlaybackStateDidChange:(NSNotification*)notification {
     NSLog(@"playbackDidChanged");
     MPMoviePlayerController *moviePlayer = notification.object;

     MPMoviePlaybackState playbackState = moviePlayer.playbackState;

     if(playbackState == MPMoviePlaybackStateStopped) {
          NSLog(@"MPMoviePlaybackStateStopped");
     } else if(playbackState == MPMoviePlaybackStatePlaying) {
          NSLog(@"MPMoviePlaybackStatePlaying");
     } else if(playbackState == MPMoviePlaybackStatePaused) {
          NSLog(@"MPMoviePlaybackStatePaused");
     } else if(playbackState == MPMoviePlaybackStateInterrupted) {
          NSLog(@"MPMoviePlaybackStateInterrupted");
     } else if(playbackState == MPMoviePlaybackStateSeekingForward) {
          NSLog(@"MPMoviePlaybackStateSeekingForward");
     } else if(playbackState == MPMoviePlaybackStateSeekingBackward) {
          NSLog(@"MPMoviePlaybackStateSeekingBackward");
     }
}

Please let me know if I’ve left out any steps or you have any issues and I’ll be happy to help and work through it with you. This was a quick and dirty how-to with a ways to go before I push anything out to production. Just wanted to share my research and discovery. Good luck!

References:
Apple – Reference: MPMoviePlayerController
StackOverflow – HTTP stream without extension in MPMoviePlayerController

At some point define the max size you want the font to be. I typically put this in my .h file

#define kDefaultFontSize 24.0

Then in your .m file where you add the text to the UITextView you would place something like:

myTextView.text = @"Some long string that will be in the UITextView";
myTextView.font = [UIFont systemFontOfSize:kDefaultFontSize];

//setup text resizing check here
if (myTextView.contentSize.height > myTextView.frame.size.height) {
    int fontIncrement = 1;
    while (myTextView.contentSize.height > myTextView.frame.size.height) {
        myTextView.font = [UIFont systemFontOfSize:kDefaultFontSize-fontIncrement];
        fontIncrement++;
    }
}

Hope this helps! Enjoy!

Now, I have another fix for MacFUSE/Macfusion here, but unfortunately this did not work for the latest release of MacFUSE on the new MacBooks.

So, after much searching and hunting I FINALLY came across the solution. There is an unofficial release of MacFUSE that lets all the goodness of Macfusion work with SSH. Apparently, there is an issue with MacFUSE and 64-bit kernels. Links and references below:

Build download: macfuse-core-10.5-2.1.9.dmg
Source download: macfuse-rebel-2.1.9-src.tar.bz2

Local build download: macfuse-core-10.5-2.1.9.dmg
Local source download: macfuse-rebel-2.1.9-src.tar.bz2

Solution source: Google Groups

I noticed after installation when I would go to start plugging in some of my external devices via USB the dang thing would lock up on me. That is, desktop completely frozen, unable to remotely ssh into the box, just plain dead.

So, I tried various things and what have you and nothing appeared to help.

My solution was:

apt-get remove modemmanager

Simple as that. I haven’t had any lock-ups, system has been up for several days and I’ve been able to add my alfa wireless and my magic jack to the box without any crashes. Hope this may help you too!

The file you will be looking for is:

/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/UserAgent.plist

What I have done is copy this file off to my home directory. Open the file with the Property List Editor (provided with Apple’s developer tools). I will add 2 entries into this file. One to give a nice divider for my custom agents and another for the Google Bot Agent.

For the divider:

1. Select the last ‘Item’ (be sure the ‘Item’ is not expanded) and click the ‘+’ sign to add a new ‘Item’
2. Change this ‘Item’ to a ‘Dictionary’ under the ‘Type’ column.
3. Expand this ‘Item’ and press the ‘Add sub-item button’ (replaced the ‘+’ sign after expanding)
4. Rename this sub-item’s key to ‘separator’, change the type to Boolean, and select the Value checkbox.

For the new User-Agent:

1. Add a new ‘Item’ as you did in step 1 above.
2. Change this ‘Item’ to a ‘Dictionary’ under the ‘Type’ column.
3. Expand this ‘Item’ and press the ‘Add sub-item button’ (replaced the ‘+’ sign after expanding) 4 times.
4. Set the key, type, value for each as follows:

name, String, Google Bot

version, String, 2.1

platform, String, Mac (not sure if this matters or not)

user-agent, String, Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)

Save this file. Quit Safari. Replace the original with the new one.

$ sudo su -

# rm /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/UserAgents.plist

# cp /Users/derek/UserAgents.plist /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/

Fire Safari back up and there you have it. A new custom user-agent. Repeat as necessary to add more.

Also, since my last post I’ve had several apps go into the store. Check them out!

I’ll be back soon! Got a ton going on and more apps coming out daily. I’m now moving into the Android Universe as well, to port the above apps over. Feel free to contact me if you have any specific questions or inquiries at me@derekneely.com.

There are already some very good tutorials on revamping the whole table view.  Google it! The best I came across was from Cocoa with Love – Custom UITableView.

However, this can be a bit overkill for some situations. It can also take a good bit of time to setup all the necessary images. What I needed was a quick and easy way to ‘theme’ the application and thus the selection style for a UITableViewCell. This needed to work with both plain and grouped table view styles and custom cells as well. You can see now why this may take  a while using the above methods.

Here is a quick and easy method to do just that.

SomeViewController.h

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface SomeViewController : UITableViewController {
     UITableViewCell *currentSelectedCell;
}

@property (nonatomic, retain) UITableViewCell *currentSelectedCell;

- (void)setSelectedCell:(UITableViewCell *)selectedCell
     deselectedCell:(UITableViewCell *)deselectedCell;

@end

SomeViewController.m

#import "SomeViewController.h"

@implementation SomeViewController

@synthesize currentSelectedCell;

- (void)setSelectedCell:(UITableViewCell *)selectedCell deselectedCell:(UITableViewCell *)deselectedCell {
     //revert deselected cell
     if (deselectedCell != nil) {
          deselectedCell.backgroundColor = [UIColor whiteColor];
          for (UIView *subView in [deselectedCell.contentView subviews]) {
               if ([subView isKindOfClass:[UILabel class]]) {
                    UILabel *label = (UILabel *)subView;
                    label.textColor = [UIColor blackColor];
               }

               if ([subView isKindOfClass:[UITextField class]]) {
                    UITextField *textField = (UITextField *)subView;
                    textField.textColor = [UIColor blackColor];
               }
          }
     }

     //setup selected cell
     selectedCell.backgroundColor = [UIColor redColor]; //Some defined UIColor
     for (UIView *subView in [selectedCell.contentView subviews]) {
          if ([subView isKindOfClass:[UILabel class]]) {
               UILabel *label = (UILabel *)subView;
               label.textColor = [UIColor whiteColor];
          }

          if ([subView isKindOfClass:[UITextField class]]) {
               UITextField *textField = (UITextField *)subView;
               textField.textColor = [UIColor whiteColor];
          }
     }
}

#pragma mark -
#pragma mark Table View Delegate Methods

- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:
     (NSIndexPath *)indexPath {

     setSelectedCell:[tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:indexPath]
          deselectedCell:currentSelectedCell];

     currentSelectedCell = [tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:indexPath];
}

#pragma mark -
#pragma mark Table View Data Source Methods

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView
     cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {

     //........Setup UITableViewCell...........//

     cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone;

     return cell;
}

- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)table numberOfRowsInSection:
     (NSInteger)section {

     return count;
}

@end

Now, I’ve provided this in one class but what I’ve done is setup an ‘application’ singleton that has this function and is called from each UITableView’s didSelectRowAtIndexPath delegate. Works great on standard, custom, plain, and grouped views.

For the following examples we will assume the global variable you are trying to implement is a User object.

User.h

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

@interface User : NSObject {

NSString *username;

NSString *password;

NSString *accountType;

}

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *username;

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *password;

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *accountType;

User.m

#import “User.h”

@implementation User

@synthesize username;

@synthesize password;

@synthesize accountType;

ApplicationAppDelegate.h

#import “User.h”

@interface ApplicationAppDelegate : NSObject <UIApplicationDelegate> {

NSManagedObjectModel *managedObjectModel;

NSManagedObjectContext *managedObjectContext;

NSPersistentStoreCoordinator *persistentStoreCoordinator;

UIWindow *window;

User *user;

}

@property (nonatomic, retain, readonly) NSManagedObjectModel *managedObjectModel;

@property (nonatomic, retain, readonly) NSManagedObjectContext *managedObjectContext;

@property (nonatomic, retain, readonly) NSPersistentStoreCoordinator *persistentStoreCoordinator;

@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIWindow *window;

@property (nonatomic, retain) User *user;

ApplicationAppDelegate.m

#import “ApplicationAppDelegate.h”

@implementation ApplicationAppDelegate

@synthesize window;

@synthesize user;

#pragma mark -

#pragma mark Application lifecycle

- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application {

[window addSubview:tabBarController.view];

// Override point for customization after app launch

[window makeKeyAndVisible];

user = [[User alloc] init];

}

Then from any view controller you can access the Delegate variable as such.

SomeViewController.m

UIApplication *app = [UIApplication sharedApplication];

app.user.username = @”Username”;

While this can be done and will work. The overall use of the AppDelegate for this functionality is incorrect. The AppDelegate should be used for the following 2 reasons:

• implemenations of the NSApplication delegate methods (includingapplicationDidFinishLaunching: to finalize application construction)
• handling menu items for items that don’t exist in a window (for example, opening the application Preferences window)

So, on that note, lets implement a Singleton. The ‘correct’ way of creating a single global instance of an object that can be accessed and manipulated by the view controllers.

First we need to make some changes to our User class as such:

User.h

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

@interface User : NSObject {

NSString *username;

NSString *password;

NSString *accountType;

}

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *username;

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *password;

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *accountType;

+ (User *)sharedUser;

@end

User.m

#import “User.h”

static User *sharedUser = nil;

@implementation User

@synthesize username;

@synthesize password;

@synthesize accountType;

#pragma mark -

#pragma mark Singleton Methods

+ (User *)sharedUser {

if(sharedUser == nil){

sharedUser = [[super allocWithZone:NULL] init];

}

return sharedUser;

}

+ (id)allocWithZone:(NSZone *)zone {

return [[self sharedManager] retain];

}

- (id)copyWithZone:(NSZone *)zone {

return self;

}

- (id)retain {

return self;

}

- (unsigned)retainCount {

return NSUIntegerMax;

}

- (void)release {

//do nothing

}

- (id)autorelease {

return self;

}

@end

Now, in any view controller we need to access/manipulate the ‘global’ user we can do:

SomeViewController.m

#import “SomeViewController.h”

#import “User.h”

@implementation SomeViewController

- (void)someFunction{

User *user = [User sharedUser];

user.username = @”Username”;

}

@end

References and resources that made this post and my learning possible.

• Cocoa’s Fundamentals Guide (by Apple)
• Cocoa With Love
• Matt Galloway
• Stack Overflow

- Updated: 11.17.09 – Reviewed Apple’s documentation on singletons and made the proper changes. Apple’s Singleton Documentation

Nginx

Configuring Nginx to start on system boot:

# vi /etc/rc.local

# start nginx
if [ -x /usr/local/sbin/nginx ]; then
   echo -n ' nginx'; /usr/local/sbin/nginx
fi

Load balance configuration (one public ip -> 3 private servers):

# vi /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

user  nobody;
worker_processes  2;
worker_rlimit_nofile 10240;

error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log;

events {
   worker_connections  8192;
}

http {

   upstream  site {
        server 192.168.1.100:80 max_fails=2 fail_timeout=15 weight=3;
        server 192.168.1.101:80 max_fails=2 fail_timeout=15 weight=3;
        server 192.168.1.102:80 max_fails=2 fail_timeout=15 weight=1;
   }

   upstream  site_ssl {
        server 192.168.1.100:443 max_fails=2 fail_timeout=15 weight=3;
        server 192.168.1.101:443 max_fails=2 fail_timeout=15 weight=3;
        server 192.168.1.102:443 max_fails=2 fail_timeout=15 weight=1;
   }

   server {
        listen  AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD:80;

        location / {
             access_log off;
             proxy_connect_timeout 15;
             proxy_set_header Host $host;
             proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
             proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
             proxy_pass http://site;
        }
   }

   server {
        listen  AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD:443;

        ssl on;
        ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/ssl.cert/site.com.crt;
        ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/ssl.key/site.com.key;

        server_name site.com;

        location / {
             access_log off;
             proxy_connect_timeout 15;
             proxy_set_header Host $host;
             proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
             proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
             proxy_set_header X_FORWARDED_PROTO https;
             proxy_pass http://site_ssl;
        }
   }
}

Should you have a chain file you need to add it to the end of the certificate file as such:

# cat /path/to/chain.file >> /etc/ssl/ssl.cert/site.com.crt

Packet Filter Firewall Rules:

# vi /etc/pf.conf

site_ext="AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD"
site_int1="192.168.1.100"
site_int2="192.168.1.101"
site_int3="192.168.1.102"

pass in quick log on $ext_if inet proto tcp from any to $site_ext port 80 keep state
pass in quick log on $ext_if inet proto tcp from any to $corp_ext port 443 keep state
pass out quick log on $int_if inet proto tcp from any to $site_int1 port 80 keep state
pass out quick log on $int_if inet proto tcp from any to $site_int1 port 443 keep state
pass out quick log on $int_if inet proto tcp from any to $site_int2 port 80 keep state
pass out quick log on $int_if inet proto tcp from any to $site_int2 port 443 keep state
pass out quick log on $int_if inet proto tcp from any to $site_int3 port 80 keep state
pass out quick log on $int_if inet proto tcp from any to $site_int3 port 443 keep state

Helpful Nginx server management commands:

Test Nginx Config file:

# nginx -t -c /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Restart Nginx server:

# kill -HUP `cat /var/run/nginx.pid`

Stop Nginx server:

# kill -QUIT `cat /var/run/nginx.pid`

If your like me and want to keep tabs on the load balancing (as in ipvsadm for Linux ldirectord) you can add a label to the end of each of your firewall rules:

label “[some unique label for this rule]” (i.e. label “site-ext”)

Then using pftop -v label you will see:

RULE LABEL           PKTS     BYTES     STATES MAX  ACTION   DIR
....
16   site-ext        867991   630495K   11833       Pass     In  ...
17   site-ext-ssl    29427    13315230  847         Pass     In  ...
18   site-int-1      13761450 6842062   813483      Pass     Out ...
19   site-int-1-ssl  234678   12345     12344       Pass     Out ...
....