Tiny Cam Questions

I’m not very techie and have run into a few snags setting up my dashboards. I’ve read a ton of stuff about adding TinyCam Pro video feeds to the dashboard but have a few questions. Using SmartThings and Fire HD8 10th gen.

  1. Can you connect directly from TinyCam Pro to Sharptools or do you have to use something like Nvidia?

  2. Does this have to be set up on the fire tablet or can I set it up on an android or chrome device?

@Terri, TinyCam Pro is an app that can be installed on an Android device. You will need to configure TinyCam to get the video source from your web cams, and setup the web server on it. Then you can create Media resource in SharpTools to point to the specific camera in this TinyCam. It is recommended by the TinyCam developer to use Nvidia Shield, but you can use other android devices. (We have many users reported success with Shield as well.)

You can setup TinyCam on the Fire tablet for the POC, but I’d suggest to have a dedicated Android device, like the Nvidia Shield, to host the TinyCam for better and more stable experience.

@Justin_Newbury from SimplySmart has put together step-by-step videos for setting up the TinyCam and adding the cameras to the dashboard that you may be interested to check out.

Thank you. I am in completely new territory with this as I am not a tech person. I watched both videos before posting my question and could not get it to work.

I have TinyCam Pro on my android phone. I do not have a Nvidia nor am I familiar with how to set them up or requirements needed to run them. I will have to look into that.

My goal is to have my fire tablet show the camera feed from wyze, ring, eufy cams when motion is detected. They don’t need to be on all the time.

I need beginner videos to teach me how to follow the videos you posted! :rofl:

It’s ok to test out by installing the TinyCam on your phone, but you would want to install TinyCam on a dedicated device because the TinyCam is basically like a video streaming proxy server. TinyCam gets the video streaming from the web cameras, transcode the video and then serves the video streams through its web server.

Ring is a closed system, so TinyCam won’t be able to stream videos from Ring though. But you can surely create a dashboard for wyze and eufy cams’ live streams, and create a rule to redirect to this dashboard automatically when a motion is detected if you are using Fully Kiosk Browser to run your dashboards.

If you can share the the steps you have tried and the specific questions you have in the process, we may be able to provide better help and more detailed instructions. :grinning:

Are their any more affordable options for hosting the TinyCam opposed to the $100+ Nvidia that is recommended? I just can’t justify the expense and don’t have a pc running full time. Could I use a unsused android phone as a dedicated host or even my fire tablet as the host as they would both be able to have constant power?

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You may be interested to check the related discussions below. I think hosing 1-2 cameras on the dedicated Android TV box ( or phone/tablet) is probably ok depending on the available resource on the device. For phone/tablet, you may need to tweak the configurations more to get the stable streamings and avoid the power-saving related features from interrupting the service.

Hi James,
I also have my tinycam pro webserver running on an android phone. I have a 2020 moto stylus with 4gb memory and 120gb storage. It is a secondary phone that I keep usb powered on my desk. The setup seems to be fairly stable. The major problem I seem to run into is when the system or webserver reboots. It picks up a new IP address making me go into my resource files and tiles ( for hyperlinks) to reflect the IP change. I may also wind up on my 5ghz network. I am currently trying to keep my cameras, webserver and laptop (my current sharptools platform) all on my 2.4ghz network. Any thoughts on how to keep the webserver at the same ip address?

Hi @johnm93359, many routers supports DHCP IP reservation, so you may want to check yours and if you can reserve the ip and assign it to your phone, so it doesn’t get new ip every time connects to the router. Each router may have slightly different naming or configuration for this “ip reservation” feature so you will have to look it up in the manual.

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Will try to look it up. A little beyond my comfort zone, but thx for the info.

What brand/model router do you have? Maybe we can help.

Ok. I had this up and working where I could view all my cameras. Then, I had to factory reset my tablet. Everything has been reinstalled. I did not change anything related to my dashboards, just reloaded FKB. Now, I cannot see my camera feeds. Tile says Failed to load image.

I allowed mixed media in chrome.
TCP webserver did not change. (has a reserved DHCP)
I double checked the IP just in case and it is still the same.
I did not edit the media tile links after reinstall.
I tried deleting the media tiles from dashboard and re-added (using same url as before reset).
Nothing seems to be working.

Any idea which setting(s) I missed during the reinstall?

Can you open any of the video camera URLs in FKB directly? eg: set your camera media tile’s URL to the start page URL in FKB.

I can not. It asks for username and password.
I do not have username or password set for FKB or tinycam

I would double check the webserver settings in TinyCam. If you are getting prompted for a username/password, then it thinks you have one or both configured.

If I remember correctly, at least the username is filled in by default so you either need to clear both the username/password or configure them both and embed them in the URL:

I would also review the following thread starting around this post as it has some helpful tips and screenshots:

:link: Media and Thermostats - #13 by josh

And this one has some screenshots specific to the webserver configuration:

:link: Media and Thermostats - #19 by josh

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I double checked, the username and password are blank. Enable guest is unchecked and username and password are also blank (just to be sure).

As I said, prior to the tablet factory reset, I could view the cam feeds on Sharptools. So when I added FKB back I didn’t touch the media links. Just reopened the dashboard and…nothing.

@Terri , I’d suggest the following troubleshooting steps:

  1. On another device, open the browser in “incognito/private” mode, and access the camera URL used in the media tile. If it prompts you to login again, then we can narrow down the login requirement to be from the TinyCam webserver

  2. If so, try to set username and password in the admin account or guest account, and include the username and password in the URL as mentioned in Josh’s post, and try to access it again from the device used in previous step. eg:

    http://192.168.1.11:8083/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?camera=2&user=admin&pwd=mypassword
    

It’s possible that the browser has cached the login token/credential previously before the reset so it opened the camera view without prompting the login.

I can view the with no problem and no login prompt in an incognito tab

All of a sudden all of my camera feeds just popped back on after viewing in an incognito tab. Wierd!