Selective On-Demand Media Retrieval from Mobile Devices

Selective, timely retrieval of media content from a collection of mobile devices.

Perform similarity-based queries posed to a cloud search front-end, which in turn dynamically retrieves media objects from mobile devices that best match the respective queries within a given time limit.

This demo video TODO shows MediaScope in action.

MediaScope was developed at USC by Yurong Jiang (USC), Xing Xu (USC), Peter Terlecky (CUNY), Tarek Abdelzaher (UIUC), Amotz Bar-Noy (CUNY), Ramesh Govindan (USC), and Matthew McCartney (USC).

A thorough description of MediaScope can be found at the Networked Systems Lab project page for MediaScope

This document provides explains how to configure MediaScope.

This project runs on top of the Medusa project, which needs to be setup first.

• Create the MediaScope Meta_data table in the medusa database
  • mysql -u [mysql_username] -p[mysql password] < .../MediaScope/media_scope_server/config/createdb.sql
• Python libraries
  • numpy
• Permissions
  • Create the query and log folders in the media_scope_server dir, and run a chmod -R 777 on the the following items within .../MediaScope/media_scope_server/
    • query/
    • libs/
    • log/
• MediaScope/media_scope_server/config/
  • db_account.info
    • the mysql_username|mysql_password of a mysql user with read and write permissions on the medusa database
  • db_host.info
    • the hostname on which the mysql server containing the medusa database is run
      • ex: localhost
  • c2d_messaging_system.info
    • set this to either ws_c2dm (for websocket), c2dm (for GCM), or sms
  • remote_host.info
    • this is the public facing IP on which the yx_server.py will be run
  • mdscript_acceptor_address_port.info
    • the location address:port of the medusa mdscript_acceptor.py
      • ex: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:9001
  • yx_server_port.info
    • the port on which the yx_server.py script is to be run
      • ex: 9000
  • multi_query_port.info
    • the port on which the multi_query.py script is to be run
      • ex: 8080
  • wids.info
    • The comma-delimited list of medusa user wids representing the the phone ID’s you wish to retrieve images from
      • Such as the Anonymized C2DM Identifier you entered when you started up the Medusa Android app
    • ex: matt,bob,dan
  • year.info
    • This is the year you wish to operate in
      • ex: 2014
  • media_scope_server_path.info
    • this is the web location of the media_scope_server directory
    • for example, if it is stored here:
      • /var/www/MediaScope/media_scope_server
    • you would enter this:
      • /MediaScope/media_scope_server
• .../MediaScope/media_scope_server/upload_xml, meta_xml2, & kill_xml
  • the tag must match the address:port that was configured for ../config/remote_host.info and ../config/yx_server_port.info files
    • ex: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:9000
• .../MediaScope/media_scope_server/yx_server.py
  • The primary MediaScope server, it also spawns another server defined by multi_query.py
    • cd to the directory in which this script is contained in and run it
      • ex: nohup python ./yx_server.py &
• .../MediaScope/media_scope_server/gen_metadata.py
  • Retrieves the photo location and other metadata from the phones
  • Requires installation of the python googlemaps module
  • After a medusa-client is connected to the medusa-cloud cd to the directory in which this script is contained in and run it
    • ex: nohup python ./gen_metadata.py &
• .../www/MediaScope/MediaScope.html
  • Allows you to submit a query, which sends the http form data to the multi_query.py script
  • The action field of the form need to reference the location at which the above multi_query.py script is running
    • ex: http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8080/MediaScope/media_scope_server
  • For the initial test, the default form parameters should work
  • Note that the year is hard-coded, currently to 2014

Add several small (~100 kB each) .jpeg images to the /DCIM/Camera/ (or similar) directory of the phone running the medusa-client app.

Connect the client to the medusa server.

Run the gen_metadata.py script as described above.

Visit the MediaScope.html web page and hit submit.

If all goes well, you should see a web page with some or all of the images stored on the client phone.