E3DS Stream Host: stream from your own hardware

E3DS Stream Host is an agent - a small program that runs on your own machine and keeps it connected to Eagle 3D Streaming. With it you stream your Unreal applications from your machine instead of Eagle 3D Streaming's. The app stays on your hardware; Eagle 3D Streaming handles the connection, the link and the session.

Worth doing when the app cannot leave your network, when you already own capable hardware, or when you want a machine reserved for one purpose. Otherwise, uploading to the platform is less work and less to maintain.

Free for non-commercial use. Streaming from your own hardware costs nothing for non-commercial projects, and students and research projects can have the relay sponsored — see stream from your own GPU, free.

Before you begin

Install it

  1. Install the prerequisites

    7-Zip, and the Unreal Engine prerequisites for the engine version you build with. These come from Epic, not from Eagle 3D Streaming.

  2. Put 7-Zip on the system PATH

    Control Panel › System and Security › System › Advanced system settings › Environment Variables. Edit Path, add a new entry for your 7-Zip folder — usually C:\Program Files\7-Zip — and press OK through every window.

    Then restart the machine. Stream Host will not find 7-Zip until you do.

    Editing the system Path environment variable
    Adding 7-Zip to the Path.

  3. Download E3DS Stream Host (EL) and extract it to your C: drive

    Its program is called EL (EL.exe), and it comes as EL.zip. Download it from the Control Panel: Utilities › Downloadable Contents › the EL Launcher card › DOWNLOAD. That is the one official place to get it, so it is always the current version.

    Save it to C:\ and extract it there. The folder holds EL.exe and rplm.exe; rplm.exe is part of Stream Host and is managed by it — leave it where it is.

    A folder listing showing EL.exe and rplm.exe
    The extracted agent: EL.exe and rplm.exe.

  4. Run it, and give it your API key

    Double-click EL.exe. With no API key yet, it asks "API Key is missing in config.json file. Would you like to login to our control panel to automatically fetch and update the API Key in config.json file?" The API key is what ties the machine to your account.

    • Yes — sign in to the Control Panel when asked. Stream Host fetches your key, saves it in config_EL.json beside itself, and starts.
    • No, or no answer within 15 seconds — Stream Host writes config_EL.json with "apiKey": "INSERT_YOUR_API_KEY_HERE" and closes after five seconds. Get your API key from the Control Panel (API keys and tokens shows where), open config_EL.json in a text editor, replace INSERT_YOUR_API_KEY_HERE with the key, save, and run EL.exe again.

  5. Wait for it to connect

    Stream Host runs in a terminal window. Connecting to Eagle 3D Streaming takes one to two minutes; you are finished when it prints Ready to serve pixel streaming.

You will know it worked when

The Stream Host window prints Ready to serve pixel streaming, confirming Eagle 3D Streaming can see the machine. Until it does, Stream Host is running but not reachable, and a stream sent to it will wait for a machine that never answers.

Start it automatically with Windows

Stream Host does not install itself as a service. If the machine reboots overnight, nothing brings it back unless you arrange it — and the failure looks like a machine that is simply never available.

  1. Open Task Scheduler and create a task

    Creating a task in Windows Task Scheduler
    Task Scheduler.

  2. Trigger: At log on, for any user

    Setting the trigger to At log on of any user
    At log on of any user.

  3. Action: run EL.exe, with "Start in" set to its folder

    The "Start in" path is required, not optional. Without it Stream Host starts in the wrong directory and cannot find config_EL.json — so it runs, and does nothing. The folder can be anywhere, as long as "Start in" matches the folder in Program/script; the example below uses C:\1.eagle3dstreaming_b_v1\ rather than C:\.

    Setting the action to run EL.exe with a start-in folder
    The action, with its working folder.
Self-host Pixel Streaming on your own GPU with the E3DS AgentWatch on YouTube

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