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Comment by mwint | Hacker News Reader

I was hoping this was going to end with "look, it runs embedded linux and here's how to get root, on a $20 camera". That would solve this problem:

Does anyone know of a good way to have a camera stream video over WiFi to my server, which can then forward it to the Internet, without passing through a third party? And, ideally, without opening ports. Burned too many times by buying cameras with streaming systems that are shut down two years later.

I think if I could get root on embedded linux on a WiFi camera, I could set up an SSH tunnel and go from there. But with the current IP camera I wasn't smart enough to get root (or a shell at all, IIRC) and it wouldn't take firmware updates.

So right now I have a terrible hacky solution where it FTPs an image to me every ten seconds, and then I put serve that... but a real stream would be way better.

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Scrypted is what you want. I’m using it to stream an Amcrest AD410 doorbell camera to my NAS and forward it to HomeKit Secure Video with a local copy of the video saved on my NAS. It’s rock solid. It uses a plugin architecture and HKSV is just a Scrypted plugin (as is saving the video locally). The developer is very responsive.

https://github.com/koush/scrypted

Lots of RTSP cameras available - which would do exactly what you want and leaves you fairly open to whatever software you choose to implement on the server to share the feed.

I use lots of the Ubiquiti Cameras - I’ve had lots of success using them without the UniFi Protect controller app purely as RTSP devices.

Can you pull 4k from the Pro cameras without the controller?

I wrote this for Wyze v2 cameras: https://github.com/openmiko/openmiko

This is awesome, thank you! I have a few Wyze cameras and their hardware and pricing are great, but their app is pretty bad. Would be lovely to be able to use them outside the app.

This looks quite nice, I will give it a try. I mostly have v3 cameras and unfortunately it looks like these are not supported?

Wyze has an official RTSP firmware you can download from their support section for the v3. It’s beta, but has mostly worked for my needs.

The official rtsp firmware is garbage and outdated and of course still phones home. For v3 I have been playing with https://github.com/gtxaspec/wz_mini_hacks which seems very promising since it allows ssh root access.

> outdated

If it works, it works?

It’s also garbage and also phones home still.

The “outdated” knock on it is relevant because it points to Wyze once giving a nod to tinkerers, and apparently deciding it’s not in worth it to maintain that branch vs working on the firmware that drives monthly revenue.

> The “outdated” knock on it is relevant because it points to Wyze once giving a nod to tinkerers

The RTSP firmware for the v3 isn’t even a year old (was released after June 2021), so “once was a nod to tinkerers” combined the rest of your vitriol makes me wonder if you have an axe to grind. Did Wyze kick your dog or something?

My experience is with the V2 firmware. Read the notice at the top of this page:

https://support.wyze.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026245231-Wyze...

I might have a small axe to grind. My Wyze cams were much more capable when I bought them 3 years ago than they are today. Now the app takes much longer to load, and has the uncanny ability to insert an advertisement under my finger just before I touch the camera feed I want to view. Scrubbing through saved footage is slower now than it used to be.

It all smells like feature bloat that I can’t opt out of. RTSP was how I tried to escape that, but as their own site says, they no longer offer it for my cams.

> Now the app takes much longer to load, and has the uncanny ability to insert an advertisement under my finger just before I touch the camera feed I want to view.

Which platform? I’ve never once seen an ad in the official iOS app. The app was always slow to load for me in all the years I’ve used it, so that doesn’t have me riled up. My beef with them is the AI detection has taken a significant step backwards the last six months (why I flipped a bunch of my cams to the RTSP firmware).

Sorry, I should be clearer. The ads I’m referring to are for Wyze’s add-on features. “Try Cam Plus”, “Get Cam Protect”, “Home Monitoring”, etc. Not any third party ones.

And somehow I always seem to either click on the ad rather than my first camera, or click on a camera listed above my targeted one as the ad appears just as my finger lands on the screen.

And also to be clear, the axe I grind is small. I generally like these Wyze cams. For $20 each they’ve done a decent job. But knowing there is third party firmware out there is promising.

> The ads I’m referring to are for Wyze’s add-on features.

Ah, gotcha. I’ve seen those before, but haven’t experienced same issue with getting in way. Maybe I’m just slow to click.

> And also to be clear, the axe I grind is small. I generally like these Wyze cams.

The reason why I bought so many of them is because they don’t upload to the “cloud” unless they detect motion (or sound trigger). Yes, they phone home like crazy, but at least they aren’t streaming 24x7 to Google or Amazon or worse like some competitors products do. Add on to that that they are cheap, and I’m mostly a happy person. If only they could tell the difference between a person and absolutely nothing (no shadow, no movement, nothing!) I might still have all my cams on the mainline firmware.

I use a Reolink camera, my one supports a standard video stream or jpeg output accessible via a url on the device itself, no cloud required (though they’re iOS app presumably uses cloud for its connectivity, but it’s optional to use the apps). Combined with a Tailscale node in the house could provide external access without open ports.

I'd start by looking at the esp32cam.

Wyze camera with it's official (but not supported) RTSP firmware. You have to flash it with the firmware and once done it's a rock solid RTSP cam in my experience.

You either open a port, or employ a third party (even if you run that yourself), no in-between.

If you'd like a secure setup, I'd advise a generic WiFi camera, accessible only on your LAN, and setting up OpenVPN or similar, to connect to your home network. This way you need to only trust your chosen VPN implementation, and I'd wager they are pretty secure.

This might interest you. https://github.com/EliasKotlyar/Xiaomi-Dafang-Hacks

See Reolink+Neolink, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33091698

Pair with a coral (if you can find one) and you get decent home network AI detection as well. Blue Iris, Frigate etc for a home NVR setup.

> Does anyone know of a good way to have a camera stream video over WiFi to my server,

with a battery life of a year? there is no competition. if you achieve this, please post it here!

I have mains power available.

https://github.com/cannonbeach/ott-packager

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