This guide will teach you how to add an audio stream to your teleoperation interface.

Step 1: Navigate to device teleoperation settings

In Formant, in the upper-left corner, open the menu and click Settings.
Click Devices, and then click on the device you want to configure.
Click on the Teleoperation tab to open the teleoperation configuration page.

Step 2: Configure audio stream

ROS audio stream

Formant supports the audio_common_msgs/AudioData ROS data type.

In the teleoperation configuration page, scroll down to Audio and click the plus (+) icon.
Click Add ROS topic.
Enter the name of the ROS topic which contains the audio stream you want to play during teleoperation.
Click Done, click Save to confirm your teleoperation settings, and proceed to Step 3.

Camera microphone stream

You can also stream audio directly from an integrated microphone on your camera. If you've already added an image stream as in Add a teleoperation image stream, you'll follow the same process here to add the audio stream from that camera.

In the teleoperation configuration page, scroll down to Audio and click the plus (+) icon.
Click Add from hardware.

USB camera

Configure your audio stream as follows:

Property	Usage
Hardware type	Set this to usb.
Hardware path to USB camera	Enter the hardware path to your camera. This field should auto-populate with detected USB devices.
Quality of the video	Choose the resolution of the encoded video stream. Higher video quality will use more data.

Click Done, and then click Save to confirm your teleoperation settings.

IP camera

Configure your audio stream as follows:

Property	Usage
Hardware type	Set this to ip.
RTSP URI of IP camera	Enter the URI of your camera in the following format: RTSP: `rtsp://<ip>:<port>/H264` RTMP: `rtmp://<ip>:<port>/steam/live`
Encoding required	Set this to YES if your camera outputs a format other than `H.264`. Formant requires incoming `H.264` video to be encoded with the `baseline` or `baseline constrained` profile. If Formant detects a different profile, or a non-supported set of encoding parameters, it will try to re-encode the video. If this fails, you must enable this property. Proper encoding of your video prior to ingestion by the Formant agent (allowing you to set this property to NO) will save computation resources.
Supports ONVIF	Set this to YES if your camera supports the ONVIF protocol. Formant will be able to connect to your camera automatically. If you specify a fully qualified address in RTSP URI of IP camera, this property will be ignored, as its functionality will already be fulfilled.
Username	Enter the username to access your camera.
Password	Enter the password to access your camera.

Click Done, and then click Save to confirm your teleoperation settings.

Step 3: Verify your work in teleoperation mode

In your device view, in the upper-right corner, click the three dots >> Teleop, or enter Shift + T.
Verify that your audio stream is working properly.

👋
If you notice an issue with this page or need help, please reach out to us! Use the 'Did this page help you?' buttons below, or get in contact with our Customer Success team via the Intercom messenger in the bottom-right corner of this page, or at [email protected].