ViscaCamLink – Camera control application for PTZ cameras | Hacker News Reader

ViscaCamLink – Camera control application for PTZ cameras

github.com

29 pointsyaman07111 comments

I use Frigate NVR (https://frigate.video/) for my home and it's far more feature rich including support for PTZ cameras.

There is also OpenIPC which works with some of my cheap chinese cameras

https://github.com/OpenIPC/

https://team.openipc.org/ipcam_dms/ (note the english translated link)

Be sure to firewall your cameras on your router to only intranet, do not let them access internet or they phone home

(you can let them sync time by capturing ITP requests and running your own service on your router)

It looks like OpenIPC is a replacement firmware. I would assume this means (as long as you trust the OpenIPC authors) that you don't have to firewall them off from the Internet. You ordinarily only have to do that for the sketchy firmware that they come with. Open firmware shouldn't be "phoning home".

You never know when a zero-day is going to popup and whack your cameras as IOT, part of a DDOS or whatnot

But if you've hardened it even a little bit with something as easy as not letting it communicate off your intranet, well that can prevent ugly discoveries later

If you need offsite remote camera access you can always carve out a tunnel

> […] a network connection using the VISCA protocol.

This seems to be a thing for the commercial broadcast space:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VISCA_Protocol

As opposed to the more security (residential?) camera protocol of:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ONVIF

* Comparison: https://ikancorp.com/choosing-the-right-ptz-control-protocol...

I'd like the ability to control, privatize, manage the feed for my wyze and reolink cameras. Anyone doing that?

Docker wyze bridge. Some wyze versions have an rtsp firmware available too.

https://github.com/mrlt8/docker-wyze-bridge

I haven't gotten around to trying it, but this may be a solution for Reolink cameras (that don't already support RTSP/ONVIF): https://github.com/QuantumEntangledAndy/neolink

For Wyze and Reolink, check out Home Assistant with the ONVIF integration, Scrypted, or Blue Iris - all provide varying degrees of control over these camera brands without relying on their cloud services.

I worked at a video surveillance company many years ago. We built PTZ controls that worked on the desktop and over the network via a web page... this was in early 2000s.

We also got hammered by a patent troll because apparently, the math behind stitching fisheye lenses into a flat video plane is somehow patented.

Gotta love the derelict USPTO.

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