IP Cams on Mint 18.3

[wasbit]

I’ve acquired an old Lenovo T61, T8300 CPU, laptop from Freegle (was Freecycle) on which I have loaded Mint 18.3 Cinnamon 64bit.
I was hoping that I would be able to use it to view my 3 Axis M1054 IP cameras to save using my decent laptop or tablet in the dusty environment of the shed.
To view the cameras in Windows or Android is easy. I can even stream them via AVG but Linux Mint is flummoxing me.
Any easy ideas?

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Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[RSB]

Say Cheese ?

It may or may not work with your camera though, worth a shot though 😉 ?

EDIT: I think I have got it Wrong. I now see it’s a network camera. You could use vlc for basic functions or something like zoneminder for more advanced features. To be honest and despite what people say I.P Cam software on linux is still a dogs dinner in my opinion.

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[Ed P]

Normally an internet connected camera will set up a server which has a DNS address for each camera e.g. 192.168.1.139 it will often as not not output on port 80, so you need to find out which port your server uses.e.g port 83. You then just type 192.1.168.139:82 into your browser address bar.

[RSB]

That is as long as a windows plugin is not needed to view the camera in the browser. Like most of the cameras I have.

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[PlaneMan]

The cameras I have at my mothers all work the way Ed has described irrespective of OS. As long as the browser is recent it just works.

[Ed P]

Sorry made a stupid typo in my example. The browser address should of course be port 83 and not the port 82 I typed.

Lee is correct that some cameras also use a plug-in, to set-up and control the camera, but often they will also send out a LAN addressed view as well if you set it up. Probably a case for RTFM!

[Dave Rice]

The AXIS M1054 streams H264 via RTSP.

I gave up on Linux and IP cameras years ago. The whole thing is odd as the manufacturers use Linux in the cameras and NVRs but all the clients are Windows based. However the high end Hikvision NVRs now run an embedded Windows 10 machine grafted onto a Linux machine that looks after storage and the cameras. That also mean Intel and making inroads into what was an ARM stronghold.

[Ed P]

If you Googlefoo it you will see that others have solved rtsp using vlc to transcode the stream. For example: link

 

This may be even easier (untested)

[Dave Rice]

That’s what Lee was doing. Axis can be a bit weird.

[wasbit]

The purpose was to get three cameras viewed in one screen rather than have three instances of a programme open. When I tried earlier, Mint Firefox wouldn’t connect to the camera & kept sending me to a search engine so I installed Chrome (ughh) which did see them & since then so does Thunderbird.

As I said, I managed to get all the cameras to stream via RTSP with VLC player individually in Windows 8.1, but not all three together. The RTSP address format is different for each make of camera but I managed to find the correct one online. Unfortunately the address doesn’t work in VLC Mint.
So work in progress.

Thanks RSB. I came across Zoneminder in my searches. It’s included in Mint but I can’t find out how to work it.

 

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[Dave Rice]

Looking at the ZM wiki it prefers MJPEG streams to H264 RTSP streams – how last century is that! A real bandwidth hog too.

You should be able to do this with the Axis – I haven’t used them or MJPG for a long time so I can’t remember the exact steps.

You’re probably better off with a phone or tablet running AXIS Companion http://tinyurl.com/y88sppar

 

[RSB]

The other thing you could do although I have not tried it my self is run  what I run on windows “with out a single hickup” contacam. But you could try it in wine. Guide Here.

There is also a few options here but I guess if you have been searching you will have come across it already. Save your self the hassle though. Try and go windows.

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[Ed P]

Software patents on H264 stuffed up a lot of Linux developments. Bizarrely you are more likely to find H264 support on a Pi than a Linux PC due to these licensing problems.  There are now a few open source options for Linux Desktops but I guess it takes time for them to get wide support and Windows still rules commercial decisions.

On Windows I use BlueIris to control cams and this includes a LAN streamer with output that is fully compatible with Linux.

[Dave Rice]

On Windows you can actually run the big boy Milestone for free for up to 8 cameras.

It’s still H264 though, we have moved onto H265.

Off to a cattery tomorrow, they want general surveillance at the moment but have already said to quote for an over sized NVR as they anticipate putting cameras into the “cottages”. Pens to you and me, but they advertise themselves as the Dorchester for Cats and very nice it is too. Our cats never wanted to come home.

Just waiting for the day they ask to have them available to customers, they’re own Cat Cam so they can see their loved ones when they’re away. Don’t know how I’ll sort that one securely.

I’ve just thought of a way… but it’s messy. Enable Hik Connect on the camera to allow it to be available over the internet (the feed is encrypted). Create a Hik Connect account for the customer and share the camera with them so they can view it on Android or iOS. After the duration unshare it.

[RSB]

@ricedg I had never heard of it until you just mentioned it. May give it a go. Anything I should know before I do?

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[Dave Rice]

It’s a fully fledged commercial product aimed at businesses but I think you’ll find it reasonably straight forward. Not played with it for ages.

I’m a bit tied up this morning and probably early afternoon. I’ll have another look at it as soon as I can. IIRC it’s in 2 or 3 modules, the idea is the recording server is on another box in your server room. You will need to install all the modules on the same machine. For a handful of cameras it really won’t make any difference.

At the back of my mind you may have to record to a separate hard drive, but it’s installed on my laptop which only has one. May have set up a NAS drive for storage. I forget. We decided that whilst it was very good it didn’t offer as much as our Hikvision products. However it’s massive in the CCTV world and the day may come when we have to deal with an existing installation.

Have a tinker, you can’t do any harm to anything.

EDIT waiting for a crappy HP laptop to reboot after some Windows updates so I’m downloading it to the workshop PC. I see they now have an option for single computer installation, that’ll make it easier.

Recommended you record to a separate drive but not compulsory.

Well that was dead easy. Once I’d knocked back the external camera to H264 it got the feed OK. You set up recordings and other camera settings in the management client.

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