IP camera solution

[paulca]

It's getting worse with some kids toys now required to be cloud connected and the constant drip of exploits and hacks by paedophiles to track, spy, groom them.

I bought my daughter 2, an Amazon Fire HD to watch cartoons on.  But to watch anything Amazon want to push you must leave the Wifi enabled.  So instead I will download content to it and make sure the Wifi is off when she has the device.  I may, just in case, find a way to permenantly disable the camera, even if that means introducing it to my soldering iron tip to "frost" the lens.

I am slowly, as a hobby, implementing a home automation, control and monitoring system.  I refuse to use a single cloud/online service for it.  I will do my own.  If I do later choose to integrate it with any cloud features, I will write the interface myself.  I would rather that someone hacks my webserver or AWS EC2 and it's my fault than to trust it to ass hats in these cloud companies.

[soldar]

OK, this thread has prompted me to waste spend quite some time playing with some IP cameras and different software.

At this point I am quite amazed that when I bought the cameras and recorder all separately they all pretty much connected and worked together without issue because now I see the many problems that can come up.

My wife's family are, again, asking me about buying and installing a system and told me they were recommended this system. I haven't looked at it closely yet but with that price and knowing you get something which will work right out of the box it may be good for non-tech people. Of course, it uses wifi...

So, I have been wasting spending time with my cameras and computer.

OnVif Device Manager immediately locates and identifies all devices on the network. Three cameras work and display video well and in a fourth camera the video does not display. The recorder is located and identified but does not work.

iSpy gives the same results. Three cameras work but the fourth one does not. Of course, I am using the parameters provided by onvif Device Manager so this is not surprising.

The general format used is

Code: [Select]

rtsp://192.168.1.333:554/user=admin_password=neZ3wSSM_channel=1_stream=0.sdp?real_stream
But the fourth camera works fine when accessed with the browser, and with the recorder, so it must be just a matter or finding the correct command or string. I thought of using a network recording tool, like WireShark or similar, to record and inspect the traffic between browser and camera to see what commands and strings the camera requires. I got as far as recording a file with all the traffic but analyzing it is more than I am willing to do right now.

I also tried CMS and, after some tinkering, it did manage to display the fourth camera. I had to enter IP and port manually but it finally did connect.

To anyone who just wants a system that works I would recommend buying a complete system. Even then you should be aware of security vulnerabilities. The simplest way to deal with that is to have it on a separate LAN with no internet access.

Another issue to take into account is the necessary bandwidth. I would expect to have problems with four cameras using wifi. Also, if you will be using a computer as a recorder it better be quite powerful. An old laptop you have lying around is not going to cut it.

That's my report for today.

[NiHaoMike]

I bought my daughter 2, an Amazon Fire HD to watch cartoons on.  But to watch anything Amazon want to push you must leave the Wifi enabled.  So instead I will download content to it and make sure the Wifi is off when she has the device.  I may, just in case, find a way to permenantly disable the camera, even if that means introducing it to my soldering iron tip to "frost" the lens.

Check if there's a straightforward way to root it on XDA. The only time I would ever consider buying an unrootable Android device is if it's crazy cheap.

[mrflibble]

Put everything IoT in a dedicated LAN segment with a FW. Remote access only via VPN. And stay away from the cloud. It's a security nightmare ...

No kidding. Some time ago I bought one of those cheap IP cams to play around with. I was expecting some infosec entertainment, and was not disappointed. It was almost as if someone had taken the "How to make a moderately secure network connected user appliance" tutorial, universally applied a boolean NOT to every sentence and started ticking them boxes.

[paulca]

I bought my daughter 2, an Amazon Fire HD to watch cartoons on.  But to watch anything Amazon want to push you must leave the Wifi enabled.  So instead I will download content to it and make sure the Wifi is off when she has the device.  I may, just in case, find a way to permenantly disable the camera, even if that means introducing it to my soldering iron tip to "frost" the lens.

Check if there's a straightforward way to root it on XDA. The only time I would ever consider buying an unrootable Android device is if it's crazy cheap.

Apparently the Fire HD NetFlix and Amazon Prime apps allow "offline content", so in the "Adults" section of the device you can download offline content that can be made available in the kids account.  This is second hand information, but if true it should make it easier to provide limited content and not need the Wifi connected to view.