Camera Setup

Community Playground General Discussions
#1

I am running vera version 1.0.979 and am trying to set up an Vicon I-Onyx Megapixel camera for veiwing. It runs from a web browser so i thought that it would work with vera as well. when I go to add a camera it asks for a “UpnpDevFilename” and I’m not sure what to put in. i can’t even get to a point where I need to edit the camera. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks

#2

Hi,

Install the plugin from Setup > Devices > Luup plugins for the generic ip camera. This will provide the support and you only have to enter the IP, path, username and password for your camera.

#3

Thanks mcvovidiu for your quick feedback.

Okay,
So I did figure out how to add the camera and the IP address and username and password, but I still don’t get any picture. All I get is the Red X. Maybe this camera will not work. I saw in a previous post that the time it takes to get a picture could be changed. Could this be my problem. The picture comes up black in internet explorer until it loads, but I cant even get that to load from vera.

#4

You first must check that the cam can give a JPG image. Most cams have a "static
jpg URL that you can fetch an image from, this is the URL or path you give to Vera

Check the docs and see what URL you fetch an image from and use that in Vera

#5

That’s just what I was thinking. For instance, one of my network cameras from a different OEM uses the URL “/image/jpeg.cgi”.

#6

it doesn’t have a url to look at the jpeg. It’s actually formatted in a M-jpeg, (don’t know if that matters or not. I put in the url following the ip address when I veiw it, but that didn’t work either.

It looked like this xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/cgi-bin/videoconfiguration.cgi

#7

Hi,

mpeg streaming is not supported by Vera (yet). Try to see if your camera can grab a snapshot using a button or something and maybe if you right-click on that image, it will show the path to it (in jpeg or jpg format). If it does, you can use that path to paste it in Vera under camera configuration. Is IE asking you for ActiveX when you load the UI of the camera?

#8

This isn’t a problem, as long as you can use a browser and up comes a JPG image you can use this URL

The path would be “img/snapshot.cgi” (this is what I use in my linksys wvc54GCA, WVC80N and WVC210 cameras)

Ive got 8 cams all working in Vera, if you can get a JPG, it works just fine.

#9

mcvovidiu- IE did make me download an activeX control, but only the first time I connected.

#10

Try accessing you camera with a different browser and see how the UI degrades when ActiveX is not available. You may get redirected to a different URL.

#11

Hi,

Thanks mikeholczer, that’s a good suggestion.

@coryj: Please follow the directions mikeholczer pointed out here.

#12

There are a few other final options you can use:

  1. Use MPlayer and try to “extract” the JPG from the video stream. This of course requires you to have some PC at the home or office running where the cam is. This MPLAYER application can read most video streams and extract the image.

  2. WebcamXP - Also requires some PC or Home Server running at the cam location, but this app has tons of codecs that can also strip out the video stream and offer JPG’s or recode the video into another stream. Very cool app and you can also use this to plop a USB webcam on your PC or home server and use this cam in Vera!

either of these options should work. Im not sure how many folks have or want a spare PC on at home or office 24/7 to do this, but I have a HP Home server as my Network Storage and website hosting, backup, etc running in the home. I have several scripts I wrote to purge old video files from motion detection (homemade DVR) as well as a custom HTML home page for my Cell phones, wordpress websites for friends, family members and hobbies and of course Squeezecenter. Best of all the HP Home Servers use a fairly minimal power supply, and has oodles of space. :slight_smile:

#13

I get all of the setup options, but have no video streaming at all. I used firefox.