IP Camera Linking [Resolved]

Hello All

Having read through some of the items on this forum regarding linking IP cameras to WD, as an utter novice with respect to IP cameras, I find myself asking questions which to the well informed will probably seem rather naive. I have recently purchased a relatively inexpensive outdoor IP camera from TomTop. It appears unbranded, but it works well enough. I have managed to set it up ok, set up a DynDns service and I can see the cam with respect to the net (http). The streamed output from the camera under alarm conditions creates an avi format file ( camera doesn’t serve a static .jpg as far as I can see though the camera case is marked M-JPEG ). Would I therefore be better off to upload the streamed video to my website (somehow using ftp) or just forget about that and enjoy the video from wherever I’m located? Any direction towards literature/software would be really appreciated as I don’t think WD encapsulates any interface for this or does it with WebCam Capture v.9.99?

Richard

you should be able to enter the needed correct IP address into the IP camera setting in the webcamcapture program and enable that
then setup the file save

then in WD you can set to FTP upload that image , via the web cam ftp setup in the FTP/Internet setup if you need to

Hi Brian

Yes, thanks for that…it asks for the URL as well… I assume its’ looking for http://xxxx…and not the ip address. At the moment I’ve tried both but nothing happens. I’m now away for a few days, so I’ll look into it further later. I need also to check that I can see the camera away from home. The port forwarding checker utility I have used tells me that the ip camera port is open therefore the port forwarding is working ok, so logically it should work within WD.

All the best for the season and the New Year

Richard

Hi All

Just to add a little more info to the original text, I have now pretty well established that the TomTop IP camera is in fact a re badged Foscam outdoor device, I can see the o/p from it with 2 different pieces of capture/streaming software, and I have correctly set up port forwarding and DYNDNS hosting as I can see the camera o/p from remote premises. What I don’t understand is why WD won’t link with IP camera either by network streaming or capture. I’ve tried a USB webcam and that works fine with webcam capture v.9.99 but not the IP camera. Is anyone using a Foscam with webcam capture or streaming, and if so, I wonder if they could post me their settings as an example.

Thanks

Richard

Screen grab showing my IPCam setup. I used an Agasio A502W wireless webcam successfully with WD.

FWIW, my webcam died a couple weeks ago and I am currently working on getting either a replacement or my money back.


Hi Dan

Thanks for that, this is the most useful info I’ve had (there hasn’t been any other surprisingly). The fact that the path shows a .cgi, do I assume that the data comes direct from the IP cam or from another capture program that saves the file to a folder somewhere then WD web cam capture picks it up?

Sorry to hear about the IP cam, how long did it last?

Regards

Richard

Hi Richard,

With that setup WD was able to capture still images direct from the webcam. You can see the result at http://travelingrvwx.com/wxwebcam.php (even though the webcam is no longer working I left the page showing the last grabbed image). The Agasio webcam has a built-in webserver. I viewed that page html code to find the code used to display live video and that’s how I found the .cgi link to use in WD.

The webcam ran 24/7 for 30 days before it died. I’m still waiting to hear back from Agasio to see if they will refund my money or just offer me a replacement webcam. They can be rather slow to respond but have been supportive, they replaced my first webcam but it took almost 3 months. The webcams are built in China and they waited for new firmware before shipping.

Dan

Hi Dan

That’s pretty interesting stuff. My camera to was made in China too. I was wondering if the camera you have is similar to or an exact clone of the Foscam. I’m pretty interested in this cgi angle, as I’m sure it’s something like this that stops me from viewing in WD direct from the IP cam. Have you a file name for where you were looking in the code and found the cgi script?

Regards

Richard

Hi Dan

Just realised your’e a ham…me too G0CFB…pleased to meet you!

73

I don’t think my ip camera has a webserver built in, but looking through the blurb for your cam, I didn’t see it mentioned either.

R

If it doesn’t have a webserver, how do you view the image?

Hi

I view it with the viewer supplied and yes it views the o/p of the IP camera in an .htm window. However, I cannot view any o/p in other than a jpg or avi format except with a program called Blue Iris, the supplied software and another called Webcam XP 5, 2 of which are trial versions. With none of these programs can I tell what format the video stream is in any of these progs other than AVI, MPEG video recordings or JPG (stills). This is what I find so puzzling as I just cannot get WD to pickup on any of the o/p from the ip camera, but these 3 bits of software can. This is why the info from Dan re. cgi was interesting as I think it pointed him to the o/p of his ip camera. The software I had in each case was easy to set up, but obviously not in the case of WD webcam capture v. 9.9.

Hi Dan

This is the url of the page displaying the ip camera output is :- http://192.168.1.99:8080/index1.htm, but what did you use to view the html code, The version of I.E I’m using is IE 9 but I cannot see anything that will view it.

Richard

Right click at the top of the IE9 screen, and select to show the Command Bar, that will give you access the Page menu, which has the View Source option.

Hi Niko

I just found that, but I couldn’t locate what I was looking for in the software supplied with the IP Cam. However, when I looked in Webcam XP5, I found the following :- document.images.webcam1.src = “http://RICHARD-PC:8080/cam_” + currentCamera1 + “.jpg?uniq=”+uniq1; which simply shows me what I’m seeing on my PC. What I want is the source from the IP camera, so that I can tell WD Webcamcapture what it should be looking for. I’ll get there one day!!

Richard

Can you same that page source as a .txt and attach it to a post? Also try a right click and properties on the actual displayed image, maybe that will have the image url.

Hi Niko

Rt clicking on the actual picture shows nothing. The attached text file is the html code for the IP camera control panel. In the meanwhile I’ll keep looking, I may stumble into it!

Richard


dashboard.txt (56.5 KB)

Eeuuuw yuk :dontknow:

I don’t know if this will help, but here’s a link to the API for the Agasio that tells how to access the stream or still photos http://www.agasio.com/forum/post394.html?hilit=api#p394. If you’re lucky the urls might work? If not, it’s sure to be something similar I would think.

  • Jim

Hi Jim

Thats very helpful Jim and this made me do a bit of research and I have managed to find the same thing for Foscam IP cameras. I’ll start playing with the cgi’s sometime over the weekend. I note that the Foscam sometimes use .asf instead of .cgi and as my camera sees to be a clone of a Foscam, I’m more hopeful now. Thanks for the help and if I manage to crack it, I’ll post here for the benefit of all.

Regards

Richard

It appears they are using iframes from the code you posted…see if you can get the source code for the iframe that contains the actual video display from the webcam.