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timps wiki

timps ("Tiny IMP Streamer") is a lightweight, dependency-light RTSP / fragmented-MP4 / MJPEG streaming daemon for Ingenic T-series SoC IP cameras. It is built directly on the vendor libimp SDK — no live555, libconfig, libwebsockets or libschrift — and is designed as a drop-in alternative to prudynt-t / raptor within the thingino firmware ecosystem.

This wiki is a curated, evergreen reference for developers and operators. It is distinct from docs/*.md at the repository root, which are historical investigation notes, build-hardening logs and one-off code audits — those are linked from here where they contain relevant deep-dive detail, but this wiki is the place to start.

Every page in this wiki is written against, and verified against, the actual source in src/ on main.

What timps does

• RTSP (port 554, TCP interleaved or UDP transport; RTSPS on port 322 when built with USE_TLS) — H.264 always, H.265 where the SoC/SDK supports it, AAC or G.711 (µ-law/A-law) audio.
• Browser preview over fragmented MP4 (/stream.mp4, /) — MSE-compatible fMP4 muxing for ffplay/VLC and <video>/MSE in a browser, with audio.
• MJPEG (/stream.mjpeg) and JPEG snapshot (/snapshot.jpg).
• SRT output (USE_SRT) — MPEG-TS over SRT, as a listener (srt.mode=listener, the default; e.g. ffplay srt://<ip>:9000) or as a caller dialling out to srt.host (srt.mode=caller).
• On-demand encoding — a stream's encoder only runs while at least one client is subscribed; idle streams cost ~0% CPU.
• Live control API (/control, USE_CONTROL) — read and change ISP image tuning, audio, OSD, motion and more without a restart, with changes persisted back to the config file.
• Event push (/events, Server-Sent Events) — subscribe to motion, day/night and stats updates instead of polling.
• Grid-based motion detection built on the Ingenic IVS ("Intelligent Video System") hardware move-detection API.
• Automatic day/night switching, replacing thingino's separate daynightd daemon: an auto sensor automaton (four independent day/probe/heartbeat/boot paths) with an optional calendar, or a calendar-only schedule mode. See Day/Night.
• Local recording (continuous or motion-triggered fMP4 segments to SD) and timelapse (periodic JPEG capture).
• Native speaker output (IMP_AO) for an ONVIF-style two-way audio backchannel and a system-sound play queue — no external /bin/iac/play helper needed.
• Privacy masks, per-stream TrueType OSD overlays, and image rotation (hardware 90/270/180 on some SoCs, software 90/270 on others).
• Authentication: RTSP Digest, HTTP Basic, and a token mechanism for the HTTP media/API endpoints, with a localhost bypass for on-device UIs.

Supported platforms

T10 · T20 · T21 · T23 · T30 · T31 · T40 · T41 · C100 (Ingenic SoC families). See Platform & SDK Support for the capability matrix (two encoder-API generations, per-SoC rotation tiers, ISP tuning availability) and links to the deeper docs/sdk-feature-gaps.md and docs/rotation.md investigations.

Page index

Page	Covers
Architecture	Process/thread model, the HAL abstraction, the hub pub/sub mechanism, fan-out queues, and the end-to-end data flow from sensor to client
Building	make sim, cross-compiling for a real camera, every USE_* build flag, and the thingino-firmware packaging integration
Configuration Reference	Every timps.conf key, grouped by section, with type/default/range and live-vs-restart-only classification
HTTP /control API Reference	The /control GET/POST JSON API, authentication, the caps capability object, and the /events SSE stream
Streaming Protocols	RTSP, HTTP fMP4, MJPEG, snapshot and SRT — ports, transports, codecs, and client-compatibility notes
Motion Detection	The IVS grid model, sensitivity mapping, the on_motion hook, and the T23 software-rotation coordinate caveat
Recording & Timelapse	Continuous/motion-triggered SD recording with pre/post-roll, segment rotation, and periodic JPEG timelapse capture
Rate Control and Bandwidth: T23 vs T31	Why the classic and new-generation encoder rate controllers use such different bandwidth for the same settings — a rate target vs. scene-content-adaptive quality
Rate Control Parameters	Every rate-control field (bitrate, rc_mode, quality_lvl, change_pos, i_bias_lvl, ...): range, per-SoC support, and cost — measured vs. header-derived
Day/Night	Automatic day/night switching, decision modes, and the ISP running-mode latch fix
Day/Night Design Notes	Historical: why the day/night subsystem kept needing fixing — the incident record, the restart-equivalence invariant, and the replay-harness plan that made the 2026-08-17 redesign possible
Audio	Capture codecs, the ONVIF-style two-way backchannel, and the system-sound play queue
Platform & SDK Support	Per-SoC capability summary; links to docs/sdk-feature-gaps.md and docs/rotation.md
Testing / QA	scripts/timps-qa.sh — what it checks and how to run it against a real camera
Logging	Log levels, the per-module debug_modules switch, the module-tag table, and the machine-readable switching to / probe: / stats: lines

Quick links

• Top-level README.md — condensed feature tour and quick-start.
• docs/rotation.md — full rotation deep-dive (direction conventions, per-SoC constraints, OSD-on-rotated-stream limitations).
• docs/sdk-feature-gaps.md — an independent audit of every IMP_* SDK call available per platform vs. what timps currently uses, with a prioritized list of unused capabilities.
• docs/backchannel.md — a stub kept for old links; the audio backchannel is documented in Audio.