Help.. need to add hikvision camera

Is there a way to add a Hikvision camera without the MJPEG protocol?

I don’t think so. From memory the RTSP url won’t work as it you need to put ‘username:password’ in the address (rtsp://username:password@IP_address:RTSP_Port/Streaming/Channels/101/). Most browsers seem to block that.

I tried everything. In the end I got a Raspberry PI and added the cameras to that using MotionEye. I then just added the cameras using the PI’s IP address:8081 for cam 1, 8082 for cam 2 etc. I have one relevant camera on each dashboard, then I also have a hyperlink tile to open Hik-Connect via its app intent url.

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Sounds like John has you pointed in the right direction. The Media Tile supports image / media formats supported by the browser’s image tag – and browsers don’t natively support RTSP streams.

I think we chatted via the SmartThings Israel group on Facebook this morning, but a common approach is to:

  1. Check if your camera supports an MJPEG stream (the iSpyConnect Database is popular)
  2. Use something like TinyCam, Blue Iris, or Motion Eye to translate the RTSP stream to MJPEG
  3. Use an image snapshot from your camera with the refresh interval set to a short interval
    Optionally: hyperlink to a native app to view the live stream