Video Surveillance

Posted on
Mon Feb 12, 2018 11:33 am
Different Computers offline
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Posts: 2533
Joined: Jan 02, 2016
Location: East Coast

Re: Video Surveillance

Just to throw more confusion at this topic, I searched around today and ran across two solutions I had not heard of before, both freeware:

Kerberos.io

Shinobi is written in Node.js and designed as a replacement for ZoneMinder.

How or if they can integrate is the big question, of course.

SmartThings refugee, so happy to be on Indigo. Monterey on a base M1 Mini w/Harmony Hub, Hue, DomoPad, Dynamic URL, Device Extensions, HomeKitLink, Grafana, Plex, uniFAP, Fantastic Weather, Nanoleaf, LED Simple Effects, Bond Home, Camect.

Posted on
Wed Feb 14, 2018 7:33 pm
mclass offline
Posts: 312
Joined: May 13, 2015
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: Video Surveillance

Following this thread aroused my interest in investigating closer integration of my Indigo system and my (until now) completely independent "no-name" NVR and associated POE cameras.

At the risk of extending this thread further, I thought I would share the outcome of these investigations so far.

Like some others, I have always followed the philosophy that critical systems (such as surveillance, security, etc) should remain independent of the Indigo system. Accordingly, at our beach house I installed a separate NVR with 4 POE cameras (no PTZ) that are accessible remotely via a web site or iOS app. What has always frustrated me is that the web access required ActiveX, which of course is not available on OSX machines.

My initial aim was to obtain output from the cameras that could be displayed on the property's control pages, both locally (at the property) or remotely via the Reflector service.

Sounds easy? Uh, uh!! The NVR and cameras are "no name", with even less technical information available. Having determined the IP addresses of all the devices (from the router) and the various port assignments (using a windows machine to access the camera and NVR configuration pages) I attempted many combinations of http and rtsp calls (on the local network) without success.

With further lengthy internet searches, I then discovered this blog at:
http://me-ol-blog.blogspot.com.au/2017/07/getting-still-image-urluri-of-ipcam-or.html
and discovered that the cameras (but not the NVR) are (partly) ONVIF (Open Network Video Interface Forum) compliant.

Using the process described in the blog, I was able to determine the URL's of both the stream and JPEG snapshots of each camera. For simplicity I have included each of the snapshot URL's as refreshing images on the appropriate Indigo control pages. As the NVR records a continuous stream, I am extending the refresh interval of the Indigo images to 30 seconds (and maybe later to 1 minute when the novelty wears off!). The next step is to delve further into the NVR - it appears to offer email notification of an alarm on any of the cameras, and if all else fails a hardwired alarm output that could be interfaced to Indigo.

The other interesting discovery that came out of this process (that requires SOAP protocol) was the availability of the Firefox "RESTClient" extension, a relatively simple debugger for RESTful web services of which until now I was unaware of and may prove useful for future "tinkering"!

mclass

Posted on
Wed Feb 14, 2018 8:53 pm
RogueProeliator offline
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Posts: 2501
Joined: Nov 13, 2012
Location: Baton Rouge, LA

Re: Video Surveillance

As the NVR records a continuous stream, I am extending the refresh interval of the Indigo images to 30 seconds (and maybe later to 1 minute when the novelty wears off!). The next step is to delve further into the NVR - it appears to offer email notification of an alarm on any of the cameras, and if all else fails a hardwired alarm output that could be interfaced to Indigo.

The no-name NVRs almost all use the same software out of China... and they usually can send an alarm via network (in addition to email and direct-wire output). You need some type of alarm software on the receiving end, and I have seen several other HA systems integrate them by running that software on a Pi and having it interface with the HA system. Given it is on the Pi, there clearly is an open source solution -- I would love to attempt to take this and make it into a plugin, but apparently work won't pay me to work on my HA system! :-|

At some point I would like to, but I just am throwing this out in case you want to research it using the Pi solution.

Adam

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