Raspberry Pi webcam server

On 17/05/2013 22:41, James Harris wrote: > Any recommendations for using the Raspberry Pi as a webcam server? My > preferences are: > > * high frame rate, high resolution > * include video and audio > * streaming over a network

If you are looking for a solution rather than a project, you can buy a complete IP camera with IR, pan/tilt, two way audio, etc, on ebay for as

little as £16 for VGA and £25 for 720P. Which makes more sense than tying up the Pi on such tasks. I've just bought one of these:-

---druck

Maybe I should be asking this question elsewhere (comp.sys.acorn. networking?) but I am unfamiliar with remotely accessing anything on my network from outside.

If you want to be able to access this camera from a remote site do you have to make changes to your router settings (NAT firewall?) that might compromise your network in someway or reduce its security?

At the moment I like to think that my router setting are locked down as tight as possible to reduce /any/ possibility that anything on my network can be "got at" from outside.

yes - ish!

you need to pass through the inbound connection. That puts your webcam in the public domain :-)

indeed. It may be possible to isolate the cam so its the ONLY thing that CAN be got at. With a decent router.

You would need to get the router to forward external connections to a particular port to the port on the IP camera.

Only the IP camera can be accessed directly from outside, but if there are vulnerabilities in the IP camera server, it could be used to gain access to other devices on your local network.

---druck

And anything else presumably, which then becomes more dependant on its own firewall program. Thanks, I thought that might be the case.

BT fibre with their modem followed by a TP-Link N600

The Pi camera posting:

has some notes on how to stream raw video (not sure if it's H264 or JPEG encoded). Not sure if that's sufficient or you'd need better compression. It won't do audio but maybe you could set up something else to do that?

Theo

no, not presumably. You can open an IP link TO the web cam, but thats it. Now if it has a way to be hicked using -0 say - port 80 to act as a start point fr attcaking the interneal network, maybe. Otherwise, web cam alone really.

Oh god. TP link. I've never found it possible to hat a FW working AT ALL on mine.

On Sat, 18 May 2013 17:44:02 +0100, Stuart declaimed the following in comp.sys.raspberry-pi:

Yes!

One: you will need to have either a fixed IP address, or some dynamic IP address forwarding service (DynDNS) so that the outside world can address your network at all.

Two: you will have to open the router to permit outside connections to pass through to whatever machine is being used as a server (good routers should have the ability to specify a "dmz" node which is exposed to the outside but still block blind attempt to other machines on the inside).

This assumes your outside world is supposed to be able to control the camera at all. Otherwise you could just set up a chron job to have the camera take shots at some interval and upload the image to an external web/ftp hosting site (if the file name doesn't change, you could maybe have the HTML for a web site time to update the page at the same interval you run the uploads; so anyone viewing would see the page updating periodically).

Thanks to everyone for your help and information.

I was wondering about the possibilities of being able to keep an eye on my home while I am away, which I thought was the purpose of such a camera.

The issues are beyond me so I'll be leaving it there.

Thank you.

Stuart

Yes. The obvious approaches (Allowing a client to connect to a server in your network and periodically updating an external webserver (the latter doesn't need any holes in your firewall as the update would be a cron job that connects out to the webserver) both are, at least potentially, world viewable - of course your client program could use authentication to see streamed video of you could password protect the web page holding the photos, but they may get hacked, hence my 'at least potentially'.

The end result is that, while you can check on the state of your house, the black hats can also see when you're out. For this and othyer reasons I think you'll find that all similar publically accessible webcams only show external views suitable for checking the weather, etc.

The only semi-secure method I can think of would be to arrange your setup so that you could fetch pictures by e-mailing your house system to request current picture(s) and it would send you the picture(s) in a reply message. That should be fairly easy to implement: you'd run a mailserver and use procmail or a javamail-based Java program to monitor the camera's mailbox and generate a response whenever a valid mail request was received.

HTH

IME IP cameras and software which do motion detection will SEND you an email when they see something. No need to ask. They will also often send stills via FTP to a web server on an interval or on motion detection. Then you can set up a web page like this

You could use some PHP or summat and password protect a page it if you find it necessary. And careful when you set motion thresholds or you could receive a barrage of email.

I have been using CCTV, web and IP cameras for years. I have written a few notes about setting them up which are linked from the above page. My set-ups have both helped with an RTA outside my client's office (which proved an idiot was overtaking on a pelican crossing) and catching door-to-door con men who visited my house and wanted to rip us off for unnecessary roof repairs. The funny bit was that our local cop had no idea you could have a basic CCTV set-up with a PC, a few £10 USB cameras and free open-source software.

Perhaps iSpy could be ported to the Pi.

Cool! Yes, I would consider something like that if the prices are so good. I wanted a security camera by the front door, for example. The only webcam servers I had seen before, albeit some time ago, were such as those made by Axis and which cost over £100.

That said, I also have some low-light webcams which I bought cheaply a while ago. I would like to try them in a number of scenarios. For those, a computer connection might be better so I am still interested in Raspberry Pi solutions.

James

on.

Thanks. It's a long page so I may have missed it but the page seems to relate more the new camera board than a webcam? The new camera is very impressive. I might try that at some point but I have some low-light USB webcams, i.e. with CCD rather than CMOS sensors, and I would like to try them out with the Pi.

So any pointers on *CPU-friendly* streaming from the Pi would be welcome. I may just have to try it and see where I get to but I guess this must be a well-trodden road.

James

Alternatively set up a VPN with openvn running on the pi and then you can still control and view the camera from anywhere, but only if you have the necessary VPN keys. Also the traffic is encrypted across the public internet.

Any router should be able to manage that.

It's finally arrived, and unfortunately it's pretty crap. Video and sound stuttery, crashes a lot, IR LEDs not working. Just updated the firmware and suspect it's bricked itself. Will probably cost me more to return it to China that I paid for it. :-(

---druck

Those things are poor knock-offs of decent cameras which cost £60 or so but beware: some of the knock-offs are £60. FOSCAM is what they copy, apparently. Some even claim to have microphones and loudspeakers when they don't. And they may claim all sort of resolutions which may only be upscaled in software from a tiny, crappy VGA sensor.

My soon-to-be-ex bought me one of those Chinese clone jobs a few years ago (it cost a fortune) and the wireless never worked well and eventually it just stopped working altogether. 'Twas badly made cheap rubbish and looked identical to those listed at the URL I won't repeat.

I bought one of these:

It seems quite good for the price. Wireless worked OK with my Technicolor router in the UK, but tended to saturate the link. For some reason it doesn't want to work with my Sagem router here in France, but I don't care as I want to run it wired anyway. Never got the microphone or speaker to work, though.

As I said, for just over 30 quid it's not bad, and Amazon offer a year's warranty; hardly worth going directly to a dodgy chinese supplier.

Might be worth opening an eBay case for goods significantly not as described? I've bought some great cheap audio and general electronic stuff on eBay from China, but the one video camera I bought worked briefly and then got rather warm. OTOH it was so cheap it wasn't really worth bothering about.

My

Thanks for the warning.

I have had good purchases from Hong Kong in the past. Not sure about China more generally.

Strange that it is so poor. The seller has good feedback for other items they have sold - though it's not clear what products the feedback is about.

As someone else said, it might be worth registering a complaint specifically about something that made it unsuitable. In some ways Ebay have improved in helping buyers.

James