ZM and Google Nest doorbell camera

[apmvdleun]

Hi all,

Today I switched from Shinobi to ZoneMinder, because Shinobi tended to regurlarly loose the connection to the camera's. ZoneMinder is running in a Debian container on a Proxmox 7.2 server. I have three TP-Link Tapo camera's (2x C100 and 1x C310). I also have wired Google Nest doorbell camera. In Shinobi I can view the Nest camera via an URL. It's a m3u8 stream. In ZoneMinder I can view the Nest camera too, but the image is only updated one frame per 10-30 seconds.

Does anyone know if a Nest camera is supported in ZoneMinder 1.36 and how I can get the framerate up? I use an URL in the form of:

https://stream-eu1-delta.dropcam.com/ne ... YYYYYYYYYY

Thank you and best regards,
Alexander

[Magic919]

It’s actually an HLS stream and the m3u8 is just the playlist. ZM doesn’t support HLS, but ffmpeg should understand it and work as a source.

[apmvdleun]

Yeah, you're right. It's of course a HLS stream. ZoneMinder indeed seems to support the stream by using ffmpeg, but when watching in Montage the status line is all of the time 'State: Idle - 0,0 fps' and the video updates only every 10-30 seconds. Do you have any idea how I can get the live image in the Montage viewer? In Console the stream shows as capturing at 23,57 fps.

[Magic919]

As I said, ZM is not developed to support HLS. Isaac might have some suggestions, or it might need some code changes. CCTV doesn't usually involve HLS, so it's a bit of a niche requirement.

[apmvdleun]

Thank you for your reply.

I've made a solution which seems to work. Have installed rtsp-server (https://github.com/revmischa/rtsp-server and ffmpeg converts the HLS stream to RTSP and sends this to rtsp-server.pl.

The command I use for ffmpeg: LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=i965 ffmpeg -init_hw_device vaapi=foo:/dev/dri/renderD128 -hwaccel vaapi -hwaccel_device foo -i https://stream-eu1-delta.dropcam.com/ne ... ZZZZZZZZZZ -f rtsp -rtsp_transport udp rtsp://192.168.109.29:5545/doorbell

rtsp-server.pl is run without any parameters.

The monitor is now show about 10-15 fps and is constantly updated. If someone knows a better solution, I'm all ears...

[linuxgurugamer]

Can you be a bit more specific?

I have a nest camera, have gotten the rtsp-server installed and working, but not sure how to run ffmpeg, is it running as a daemon?
Also, I don't understand what this is doing:

-i https://stream-eu1-delta.dropcam.com/ne ... ZZZZZZZZZ

Thanks in advance

[mikb]

Can you be a bit more specific?

I have a nest camera, have gotten the rtsp-server installed and working, but not sure how to run ffmpeg, is it running as a daemon?
Also, I don't understand what this is doing:

-i https://stream-eu1-delta.dropcam.com/ne ... ZZZZZZZZZ

Thanks in advance

It looks like a parameter to FFMPEG. It specifies the input to FFMPEG (looks like a privacy redacted version of a URL that will get you the stream from the nest camera, hover it for the rest of the URL, it's huuuuge).

-f rtsp -rtsp_transport udp rtsp://192.168.109.29:5545/doorbell

That looks like the OUTPUT side of things, having consumed the H265/264 stream from google/nest, FFMPEG outputs a -f (format) RTSP stream, using UDP (not TCP) using the local server/URL rtsp://192 ... doorbell.

[linuxgurugamer]

Thanks.

That makes this unusable for me, I don't want to have to depend on an external website.

Looks like the Nest camera will be replaced soon with this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B7S ... LVQA&psc=1

It supports ONVIF and (even better) is hardwired, no more wifi cameras (yeah)

[mikb]

Thanks.

That makes this unusable for me, I don't want to have to depend on an external website.

Time to get a "No Cloud Garbage!" T-shirt

Remember, the whole point of most of these cloud cameras is that the manufacturers get to hold you to ransom, pay subscriptions, tie you into their products and infrastructure. Independent operation, freedom, privacy are dirty words to them -- because they can't monetize you, squeeze money out of you, or mine your data.

And when they want you to upgrade, well, just "break" the cloud side of it, tell you "Sorry, but for [reasons] we are discontinuing this product".

All a terrible way of doing business, and certainly not something I'd consider as a way to run *security* cameras.

[linuxgurugamer]

Yeah, pretty much anything these days which is wireless is tied into the manufacturer's website/cloud.

Really sucks.

Where do I get those Ts???