Calibrate Vivotek PT7137 from URL

The Vivotek PT7137 is a pan-tilt network camera from Vivotek.

After panning and tilting for some time, especially after hitting the boundaries a couple of times, the camera is in need of calibration. You can see this if you have some predefined postition and selecting it doesn’t bring the camera centered to the selected position.

Calibrating the camera can easily be performed by logging in as the administrative account (root) and selecting the Maintenance in the menu. The Calibrate button will immediately calibrate the camera.

However, in some cases you would like to calibrate the camera directly by entering a URL or by using a script.

By entering the following URL into your browser the PT7137 will be calibrated. Note that you will be prompted for the administrative account (root) and password for the camera.

http://PT7137_HOSTNAME_OR_IP_ADDRESS/cgi-bin/camctrl.cgi?button=Calibrate&calibrate=go

PT7137_HOSTNAME_OR_IP_ADDRESS should be replaced by the host name or IP-adress of your camera. If it is configured for any other port than port 80 (http), you should also include “:” and the port number directly after the host name/ip-adress and before the “/”.

The following UNIX/Linux shell script can be used for calibrating the PT7137 directly from the shell or automatically by running it from cron. It requires the wget program to be installed on your host.

#!/bin/sh
# Calibrates Vivotek PT7137
# Copyright HelTech Communication, http://www.heltech.se, Stefan Helander 2009
# Free to use and distribute in unmodified form.
# 0.1   SH      2009-09-14      Creation
#
# Settings
#
USER=root
PASS=your_admin_password_here
URL=http://PT7137_HOSTNAME_OR_IP_ADDRESS/cgi-bin/camctrl.cgi\?button=Calibrate\&calibrate=go
WGET=/usr/local/bin/wget
#
# Calibrate
#
$WGET --user=$USER --password=$PASS $URL -O /dev/null