Compatible Cameras - Arlo?

josh · July 21, 2018, 3:49am

I’ve seen some projects where people are using the Arlo APIs unofficially. Looking through some of the examples, you might be able to get snapshots or even download MP4 copies of past recordings, but live streaming requires RTSP which isn’t natively supported by browsers.

There are lots of cameras which support MJPG streaming and JPG snapshots. I have a mix of Reolink cameras outdoors as well as Amcrest cameras indoors. I also have a few other cameras and have them all stream through Blue Iris which provides its own MJPG and snapshots for all of the cameras you connect to it.

Are you looking for an indoor or outdoor camera and do you have any particular requirements?

josh · July 24, 2018, 5:21pm

@Niklas_Poulsen another Arlo user was asking about integrating Arlo cameras into SharpTools.io dashboards so I did a bit more research and it looks like the ArloPilot SmartApp can provide image snapshot URLs which you can use in SharpTools.io media tiles:

There’s quite a few steps to get it setup, but I figured you might be interested in it!

josh · July 24, 2018, 5:35pm

Also, back to the original question in the topic, here’s links to the cameras I use today:

Outdoor “Bullet” Camera
Reolink RLC-410:
https://amzn.to/2LLAonj

Indoor PTZ Camera
Amcrest ProHD 1080p
https://amzn.to/2uMgT7p

I also have a few Yi Home Cameras (720p) mainly because you can install custom firmware on them to provide an RTSP stream into Blue Iris and you can usually get them for $30.

Which brings up a good point that a really common solution for bringing cameras which don’t have an MJPG stream into a dashboard is to use an Network Video Recorder (NVR) app to transcode the signal.

Blue Iris - PC
Blue Iris is a really popular NVR which has a ton of features and is really powerful. It’s what I personally use in my house to bring all my cameras together into one location and record everything together. If one camera is triggered, I can set it to automatically start recording other cameras in the group which might not have detected motion. It also has a great transcoder built-in which works really well on the latest generation Intel CPUs. I bought a micro form factor PC just to run this for just over $200 and it works great.

http://blueirissoftware.com/

TinyCam Pro - Android / Fire Tablet
TinyCam is an excellent piece of software for viewing cameras on Android devices. It’s what I primarily use to view all my various cameras, but it also has a webserver and transcoding functionality built into it. I would definitely recommend Blue Iris first as it’s a more powerful solution and it has been really stable for me, but if you have a powerful Android device (like an NVIDIA SHIELD), TinyCam Pro could work as well.

https://tinycammonitor.com/

Note that some people run TinyCam on their Fire Tablets directly - it’s definitely an option, but the Fire Tablets are relatively underpowered device, so ‘your mileage may vary’ with that approach.

For example, lots of people have been using TinyCam with the cheap $20-35 WyzeCams in order to integrate them with their dashboards.

In my opinion: If you can get a camera with direct MJPG support, that’s usually the best solution. Blue Iris would be the fallback… and TinyCam would be my fallback from Blue Iris.

Adrian_C · July 24, 2018, 6:55pm

Hey @Niklas_Poulsen here is screenshot of Arlopilot snapshot DH working with Sharptools, it refreshes every 5min.

Niklas_Poulsen · July 24, 2018, 7:09pm

Looks great, @Adrian_C ! But cant get it to work here
Its make the “Oh no! something went wrong” fail… With the link

josh · July 24, 2018, 7:12pm

Where are you seeing the error message? Is it during one of the ArloPilot setup steps?

Niklas_Poulsen · July 24, 2018, 7:15pm

It will not show the “latest” still image… its blank.
The url i get is just a random code !

josh · July 24, 2018, 7:21pm

Maybe double check all the steps from the first post of the ArloPilot thread.

In specific, make sure the arloPilotCameraTile device handler was installed and make sure to create a virtual camera tile using the ArloPilot SmartApp → ArloPilot Settings.

Might also want to double check that OAuth is enabled as expected. ArloPilot SmartApp → ArloPilot Settings → Configure External Access and follow the on screen instructions to enable OAuth for the ArloPilot Service Manager SmartApp.

Niklas_Poulsen · July 24, 2018, 7:42pm

Dosent work …

But, @Adrian_C - how often are your image updating? Is it possible to set Arlo to auto take snapshots, so the dump in Sharptools always is an new one? Even, is it possible to click the image, to open the arlo liveview?

Adrian_C · July 24, 2018, 9:41pm

Arlo currently doesn’t support live views from 3rd party apps. The image on sharptools thanks to arlopilot updates every 5min. Best we can get now until Arlo opens API to devs.

Adrian_C · July 24, 2018, 10:33pm

Another thing to keep in mind… my arlo cams are running on battery, so they only record during motion detection. So I will only have still images of the last motion triggered event, regardless what refresh interval is.

Unless you have plugged in power, recording 24hrs, then you will have constant image updates.

Saj_Varghese · September 18, 2018, 10:59am

how about a local dvr camera…How can I get that into Sharp tools?

josh · September 18, 2018, 12:43pm

You can use the Media Tiles feature to load an MJPEG stream or image snapshot from a local NVR / camera:

If you’re not sure what the URL is for the MJPEG stream for your camera, the iSpyConnect database is a good resource.

Leonard_Canada · January 22, 2019, 5:24pm

Has anyone had any luck with an Amcrest IP2M-841B I have try all of the Mjpeg on Ispy and still not able to connect?

josh · January 22, 2019, 5:57pm

Do you have a username and password set on the camera? If so, you’ll want to use a variant of the URL with the username and password in it. For example:

http://camera.ip.address/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?loginuse=[USERNAME]&loginpas=[PASSWORD]

You may also need to specifically enable the MJPEG stream in the camera settings. If you enable it on the substream (rather than the main stream), then you may have to pass the subtype parameter like:

http://camera.ip.address/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?loginuse=[USERNAME]&loginpas=[PASSWORD]&subtype=1

Edit: I had the white version of this camera running through Blue Iris and into my SharpTools.io dashboards. I haven’t hooked it back up since we moved, but if the tips above don’t help, let me know and I can pull it out to see if I can figure out the proper direct stream URL.

Leonard_Canada · January 23, 2019, 6:47pm

@josh I try the URL that you suggested but no luck? Thanks for the suggestion.

josh · January 23, 2019, 8:30pm

I’ll see if I can dig out the camera when I get home and figure out what the valid URL is.

Just to confirm, did you enable the MJPEG stream on the camera as noted in the previous post?

josh · January 24, 2019, 4:14am

I pulled out my Amcrest IP2M-841 camera and did some testing and unfortunately it looks like they only provide support for embedding the username and password using a format which is no longer supported for embedding on Google Chrome and some other modern browsers. (eg. username:password@cameraURL)

I had my camera running through Blue Iris which can be used to consolidate multiple cameras into a single interface and acts as a nice DVR for your cameras. Blue Iris has URLs which work with SharpTools and that’s how I previously viewed these cameras in SharpTools.

If you don’t want to setup Blue Iris, another alternative would be to use TinyCam as a middle-man. Similar to Blue Iris, it can take the video from your camera as an input and then output in a format supported by SharpTools. You can find more details about using TinyCam as a middle-man in this post: Use TinyCam as a middle-man for incompatible camera streams

Leonard_Canada · January 24, 2019, 6:40pm

@josh is there a guide how to set up Blue Iris?

josh · January 24, 2019, 7:04pm

I did a quick Google Search and it looks like Amcrest has a guide on how to get your Amcrest camera into Blue Iris:

The steps are relatively the same for most cameras, so the tips from their article apply to most cameras.

This is a highly summarized version of the required steps, but at a high level you would:

Download Blue Iris from their website:
http://blueirissoftware.com/download/
Install Blue Iris on a Window PC.
Launch Blue Iris and follow any final installation steps
Click the + button in the top-right frame of the Cameras pane of Blue Iris
Enter the IP address of your camera and click Find/Inspect
Note: If you have a username/password set on your camera, you would enter the password here before clicking Find/Inspect
1. If Blue Iris finds your camera, you can proceed to tweak settings as you see fit
2. Alternatively, you may need to select the Make (Amcrest) and Model and then tweak settings
Click OK and the New Camera window should appear where you can make further adjustments
Click OK on the New Camera window to complete the setup
Make sure the Blue Iris webserver is setup - from the main Blue Iris screen, tap the globe icon at the top of the screen to have it walk you through the web server setup.
Note: Alternatively, you can edit the Blue Iris Settings → Web Server and enable the webserver as James showed in this post.

One setting I would recommend changing is making the Web Server setup to require authentication from Non-LAN only: Blue Iris → Settings → Web Server → Advanced.

From there, verify that you can access the Blue Iris webserver in your browser:

http://blue.iris.ip:port/

Example: http://192.168.1.99:81/

If that’s working, then verify that you can view the camera MJPG stream directly in your browser:

http://blue.iris.ip:port/mjpg/{cameraShortName}

eg. http://192.168.1.99:81/mjpg/FrontYard

If that’s all working, then you can use that camera stream URL as a Media Tile in SharpTools.