I have experienced nearly every sort of VLC failure imaginable as I’ve found VLC to be an unreliable mess when it comes to running as a transcode server. I also have other systems feeding from this camera, so I’m doing more than transcoding for SmartTiles (specifically, I have it creating an HLS stream that can be consumed by Roku.) I wound up writing an AutoIt script to wrangle VLC into handling errors but it’s highly customized to my environment and I’m not at all confident that it would be helpful to anyone.
Interestingly enough, to date I have had few issues with VLC crashing on its own. After reviewing my logs and opening a case with ST, it became known that one of my installed Smart Apps is rebooting my cameras at random times. Each time the cam reboots, the VLC feed fails. ST support is advising that my integration of IFTTT may be the culprit. I have removed IFTTT and am testing. Well see if I get any change…
I have my cams status led’s turned off. When the cam reboots, the status led defaults to on. This is what lead me to realize the cams were being rebooted.
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
386
Looks like a great deal that likely uses a clone of Foscam firmware, but hard to tell which model of Foscam… Not all support generic MJPEG streaming (with URI authentication) which is generally the only way SmartTiles currently is sure to handle streaming video. 5 seconds Stop Motion Video of JPEG snaps is always more likely to be an option.
Find detailed specs (if you can) and I’ll read them, but easiest to just buy one and try…
Can anyone tell me what I’m doing wrong? I’ve got a D-Link DCS-932LB camera that I am trying to pass a username and password in the URL string so I don’t have to enter it on page load. I thought I was doing it correctly but it doesn’t seem to work.
That said, it still doesn’t seem to want to work as expected in some browsers right off the bat. If I pull it up on a separate tab on my kindle, it’ll load and then work in SmartTiles but not on load of SmartTiles otherwise…
I have the same behavior actually! Would be awesome if it loaded automatically but its better than nothing!
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
391
Yah… @625alex and I are really aware of how valuable the Camera Feed Tiles are and know that they deserve a whole bunch of effort to research and improve features / support.
For the initial release of V6, however, we don’t have the bandwidth to divert attention to enhancing this particular feature yet. Focus is on maintaining all existing functionality and adding in areas of configuration, performance, and security.
Very much agree, my issue is I’m trying to find a full screen browser for my Kindle Fire 5th Gen that I can open the URL easily from to get it to work. I tried a few but they all don’t like to play nice on the Fire (lack of physical buttons?). I’ll keep looking.
Completely understand, very glad to have SmartTiles! Thanks for all your work getting it to where it is.
Holy mackerel! Just read this whole thread start to finish,… took a couple of hours! What a great app though! Love it!
I’m currently using YawCam and IP Webcam on two separate dashboards to monitor my home and camp locations. Everything works OK, but I want to install several dedicated cameras instead of repurposing old phones and laptops.
Even after reading this whole thing I’m not really sure what the best (affordable) camera to buy is for inside & outside use. I hope to avoid the whole “transcode your own” VLC step like the Foscam C1 seems to require. I also know it needs to support MJPEG.
Would anyone go so far as to recommend at least a good brand and starting point? I’m willing to do the research and I’m more than familiar with how to find and configure the URLs, as well as establishing custom CSS.
I just need that kick in the pants in the right general direction. Who has sub-$100 cameras they are using in MJPEG mode indoors and out?
Looks like the Cammy CL320 doesn’t support MJPEG (according to iSpy), but does support snapshots? Perhaps you could add it as a stop-motion source, using a URL in the format of:
I have a strange issue. I am using a Lorex IP camera and have MJPEG stream working. The problem is that as soon as motion occurs in the stream it stops functioning after about 3 seconds in the smarttile. The video tile turns into a question mark. Has anyone seen this behavior before? Any ideas what would fix it?
Actually I just checked the straight link in a browser and it stops transmitting after motion. Looks like an issue with the camera. Bummer…
update. I played with the settings on the camera and now it seems happy. They look like this now.
This is a RTSP camera so I think you are out of luck right now since SmartTiles doesn’t support it. I think the Web link is rtsp://user:password@ip/onvif/profile5/media.smp
What a great app though! Love it!
