Open Spherical Camera Manufacturer Guide

Version 2.1

Introduction

The Open Spherical Camera (OSC) Manufacturer’s Guide provides spherical camera API implementation guidance for manufacturers of cameras with built-in WiFi. Please refer to the OSC API Specification for the full set of commands.

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Discovery

Discovery flow works as follows: the camera serves a discoverable, password protected, WiFi network. Client software running on a phone or other computing device scans for such networks and displays a list of discovered network Service Set Identifiers (SSIDs), from which the user can select one. The user enters the selected network’s password to authenticate and connect the client software with the camera’s server.

The camera implements discovery flow by defining a human-readable SSID that uniquely identifies the camera to a client. The camera’s server authenticates and communicates with a client via HTTP on port 80.

SSID and password

The WiFi SSID begins with a user friendly name (20 characters maximum), with a period (.) delimiter before the suffix, OSC. Adding a random, unique element to the end of the name helps prevent name collisions. For example, VendorCamera123.OSC; where 123 uniquely identifies the current camera from nearby cameras of the same model, from the same manufacturer.

Camera WiFi requires WPA2-PSK protection. WPA2-PSK requires passwords that are at least 8 characters long. Password can contain letters, numbers, and symbols, but no spaces. Users can change it only when the camera is connected to a client device. Once it is changed, the camera disconnects and the client must reconnect using the new password.

The camera must provide a reset method in case the user forgets the password; for example, a reset button on the camera to restore the factory default password.

IP address and port

The camera’s IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.1) is the gateway IP address of the camera’s wifi network, which can be obtained from the wifi connection on the client side. For port, please use default port 80 for HTTP (obtain the port for updates from endpoints in /osc/info; see OSC Protocol > Info).