Media and Thermostats

[josh]

@Guy_Katz

from your experience how resource heavy is putting a tinycam with webserver/low bandwidth turned on on a fire HD for example?

There’s lots of factors at play, so it’s hard to say for sure. In general, we don’t recommend running TinyCam as a transcoder on a Fire tablet which is also being used to display dashboards as they are fairly resource limited devices.

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That being said, there are things you could do to minimize the resource impact. As you noted, you might try using image snapshots that are refreshed periodically. Even refreshing every few seconds should be significantly lower load than an MJPEG stream.

If I remember correctly, TinyCam uses an Axis Camera compatible API, but I don’t recall if they support all the parameters. For example, Axis supports parameters like:

Parameter	Values	Description
resolution	1280x1024, 1280x720, 640x480, 640x360, 320x240, 240x180, etc.	Specify the resolution of the returned image.
camera	1, 2, 3, 4	Select which camera you want to use
compression	0-100	Adjusts the compression level of the image. Higher values correspond to higher compression, i.e. lower quality and smaller image size.
fps	0, 5, 15, etc	Frames per second.

So you could build a URL like:

http://{tiny.cam.address:port}/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?camera=1&compression=60&fps=10

[Guy_Katz]

@josh

Frames per second.

thanks for the elaborate answer

[Alex_Burrows]

Josh, Is there a more in depth walk through for setting up wyze cam via tinycam in sharptools? I know there are newer threads that speak of it. I tried using the URL format you described here, but I do not know where to input my own information.

[josh]

@josh

Let me know if you need a walkthrough on how to use Wyze Cam via TinyCam in SharpTools. The short version of it is:

1. Add your Wyze Cam in TinyCam
2. Setup the TinyCam webserver
3. Use the following format for the URL in the SharpTools Media Tile:
   http://{tiny.cam.address:port}/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?camera={id}

@Alex_Burrows

I tried using the URL format you described here, but I do not know where to input my own information.

Can you clarify what you’ve tried so far and where you’re getting stuck?

Have you already setup the Wyze Cam in TinyCam? And do you already have the TinyCam webserver running? When the webserver is running in TinyCam, it should show the IP Address and port in the left navigation drawer of the TinyCam app:

From there, you’ll want to use the URL format mentioned above.

So the format:

http://{tiny.cam.address:port}/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?camera={id}

Becomes the following (based on my screenshot):

http://192.168.1.102:8083/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?camera=1

Note that if you have different settings configured in TinyCam → Settings → Web Server, you may need to adjust accordingly. The default format assumes non HTTPS and either no Admin account set at all or the Guest Account enabled with an empty username and password.

Since the ‘Use HTTPS’ uses a self generated HTTPS cert, it won’t work properly in modern browsers anyway, so this should generally remain unchecked.

You can enable a username and password, but you’ll need to include it in the URL. For example:

http://192.168.1.102:8083/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?user=admin&pwd=mypassword

On Chrome 85 and newer, you will need to allow mixed content / insecure content.

[Alex_Burrows]

Josh,
sorry for the delayed response, I just barely had the chance to sit down.
I eliminated my login and password and used that format and it works!
If I want the camera as a live stream do I enable autorefresh or leave it off?
And if i get the nvidia shield to be the server, how many cameras can be loaded and running?

[josh]

@Alex_Burrows

If I want the camera as a live stream do I enable autorefresh or leave it off?

If you’re using an MJPEG stream, then it’s a live stream and the Autorefresh option is not required. That being said, some people still keep autorefresh on, but at an extended duration - for example every 30 minutes or even every few hours - just to make sure the stream refreshes itself in case the stream dies.

[Aren_Navarro]

on my chrome browser on my pc the cameras are working but for some odd reason the cameras aren’t showing up on my tablet that’s running fully kiosk browser. Not sure what happened but it was working on the weekend.

I have Wyze cameras running on Tinycam pro thats constantly on thru Nvidia Shield. So i’m not sure what the issue is.

I did the fix on my chrome browser on my PC and chrome on my android tablet worked but for some reason it isn’t showing on Fully Kiosk Browser

[josh]

Can you share some more details about your setup? Maybe share an example URL that you’re using for your media tile?

I would also try accessing that same URL directly from the browser on your tablet (eg. Silk on Amazon Fire) to make sure that the tablet can access those media resources.

[Iram_Chavira]

Hi @josh is it possible to add a Nest camera and Ubiquiti camera to Sharptools?

Thanks in advance

[James]

@Iram_Chavira , welcome to the community. See the post below for how to add Nest camera to the dashboard.

Nest Cam and Nest Hello Experimental Support

Today’s release includes experimental support for displaying public feeds from Nest Cam cameras and Nest Hello video doorbells in Media Tiles! [Nest%20Cam] In order for this feature to work, you’ll need to share your camera publicly. Once you’ve enabled the Share Publicly option for your Nest Cam, you can copy the link and use it in a SharpTools Media Tile: [image] Also included in this release are a few bug fixes and enhancements: Devices with the deprecated ‘Garage Door Control’ capab…

What Ubiquiti cameras do you have? I don’t personally have any experience with Ubiquiti camera, so I am not sure if any of their cameras supports MJPEG streaming format, which is supported by the web browser. So if the camera supports RTSP, but not MJPEG, you will need something like Blue Iris or TinyCam Pro to proxy and encode the video streams to MJPEG, so they can be displayed in the dashboard.

[Iram_Chavira]

Hi James for your quick response, I can’t access the link it tells me that page doesn’t exist

For the Ubiquiti cameras we have UVC-G4-Pro, G3-Flex,Protect G3 PRO, is there a guide to use Blue Iris or TinyCam Pro?

Thanks

[josh]

I’ve updated the link in James’ post. Give it a try now.

[kmatwill]

Hi, Is there an output for motioneye that would work with sharptools media tile?

[Chris_C]

I’ve seen other people use motioneye. Does this documentation help?

https://motion-project.github.io/motion_config.html#OptDetail_Stream

[kmatwill]

Thanks. I don’t think I have enough knowledge to make heads or tails of it.

[josh]

From what I gather, the streams from MotionEye are available at a URL in the format:

http://{IP}:{port}/{camid}/stream

Presumably where {IP} and {port} are the IP and port that your MotionEye instance are running at and {camid} is the motioneye camera ID.

If you open up a URL in that format in your browser, do you see your stream? If not, can you tell use more about your motioneye installation and how you have it configured?

[kmatwill]

Thanks. The key was port forwarding. You have to port forward port 8081. I could see the stream via http://homeassistant.local:8081/. Now I can see it via my public ip address on port 8081. (Although, I will probably close that hole, as I only need to see this from my internal dashboard.)

Once I forwarded the ports and waited 5min, it worked.
Oddly, I can’t see it via my domain name with that port.

If someone else is looking to do this, in MotionEye, you will see Useful URLs in the Video Streaming section. In order for this to work, you have to make it an http link, not https, unless you have an SSL certificate.

[Nambi_J]

Josh,

I am stuck. My cameras worked fine until recently. For some reason they are no longer working. I am running my Reolink NVR (4 cameras) set up through TinyCam and a 5th Reolink cam running independently of the NVR. They were then added to Sharptools so I can run them on my Fire 10 via Fully Kiosked Browser. I have gone through the following before asking for assistance.

1. Deleted and re-added all of the camera’s to TinyCam/Sharptools. I followed Justin’s videos to a T.
2. Allowed Mixed Content / Insecure content
3. Enabled SSL Certificates in TinyCam
4. Tried both mjpg/video.cgi?camera={id} & jpg/image.cgi?camera={id}
5. Validated admin/password information is correct/removed them

Any thoughts? Also note, my knowledge base here is limited. I simply followed the instructions in each of these forums. Thanks in advance.