Another RTSP thread

[DonHay]

I have a DS-2CD2135FWD-I camera connected to a DS-7604NI-K1/4P(B) nvr. The camera is above the front door and I have been using Hik-Connect on an old iPad mounted on the wall to show a permanent live view. We can see who is coming to the front door.

(I believe) Recent updates to Hik-Connect have caused the old iPad to struggle. Live view disappears for no apparent reason from anywhere between two minutes and a couple of hours. It just drops back to the desktop and a double tap on the home button shows the app still running in the background. I think the old iPad hardware is now not up to the job.

I also run Home Assistant and have the camera set up as a 'generic camera'. The problem using that display is that its very laggy. Sometimes I can see myself arriving home!!
There are a number of other ways to get the camera into HA, but all seem to need an rtsp stream. I can't for the life of me get rtsp to work.

I think I have tried every combination of url possible but nothing works. I'm using VLC to test the streams but they all fail. I have tried on both my iMac and a Windows laptop with the same results. I look at vlc logs but they make no sense to me at all.

The most mentioned url seems to be rtsp://<nvrip>:<port>/Streaming/Channels/101 but that doesn't work.

Any suggestions of how to get rtsp working or a different solution to my problem greatly received. I want to avoid buting a new iPad if at all possible.

Sorry if it's a bit TL-DR.

 

[JB1970]

I have a DS-2CD2135FWD-I camera connected to a DS-7604NI-K1/4P(B) nvr. The camera is above the front door and I have been using Hik-Connect on an old iPad mounted on the wall to show a permanent live view. We can see who is coming to the front door.

(I believe) Recent updates to Hik-Connect have caused the old iPad to struggle. Live view disappears for no apparent reason from anywhere between two minutes and a couple of hours. It just drops back to the desktop and a double tap on the home button shows the app still running in the background. I think the old iPad hardware is now not up to the job.

It's possibly hardware as you say. In Hik-Connect > Me > Settings you can try toggling the 'Hardware Decoding Preferred' to the opposite of what it is currently set. That can sometimes resolve it. A H264 stream may also take less hardware resource to decode than H265, but that will have an impact on the required bitrate and storage too.

I have no issue running a 4 camera screen 24/7 on Hik-Connect on either a 3 year old iPad or cheap Amazon Fire HD8. The Fire HD8's aren't great tablets but are great for a cheap wall mount device to display your cameras or HA dashboard if that's all that's needed. I do use the sub stream rather than the main stream as otherwise it may be too much work for the tablet.

I also run Home Assistant and have the camera set up as a 'generic camera'. The problem using that display is that its very laggy. Sometimes I can see myself arriving home!!
There are a number of other ways to get the camera into HA, but all seem to need an rtsp stream. I can't for the life of me get rtsp to work.

I think I have tried every combination of url possible but nothing works. I'm using VLC to test the streams but they all fail. I have tried on both my iMac and a Windows laptop with the same results. I look at vlc logs but they make no sense to me at all.

The most mentioned url seems to be rtsp://<nvrip>:<port>/Streaming/Channels/101 but that doesn't work.

Assuming it is camera 1, for that camera the URL would be as you have above but would start admin:password@ before the NVR IP to avoid being presented with a logon prompt. I'd also be more inclined to use the sub stream (/102). Often the issue with displaying cameras in a browser is that they don't support basic authentication as the username and password is sent as clear text and not secure. Although not a big issue on your home network to use that url, the browser won't allow it.

If you're using HA you could get your camera into Homekit. I set mine up last week using the 'camera.ui' plugin for Homebridge. I'm just using that for live view with audio so I can see the cameras alongside all of my Hubitat setup in the Apple Home app.

 

[DonHay]

@JB1970 thank you for taking the time to respond.

I had already tried toggling the 'Hardware Decoding Preferred' in Hik-Connect. Unfortunately it made no difference.

Using VLC I had assumed that using 'rtsp://<nvrip>:<port>/Streaming/Channels/101' would get me to a user/password prompt, but it always failed.
I did try inserting ' adminassword@ ' at the start of the url, but that always failed as well. I now realise it was failing because my password contains the '@' symbol. That was really confusing VLC!

I have now set up a new user, but that failed initally until I gave it a few more privelages. Happy days!

Going off the Hikvision topic now, within HA I use an integration via HACS called WebRTC Camera. It creates it's own custom card and you insert your rtsp stream url and off you go.
(the only down side is that my user/password is in plain text within HA. I don't have any external access to HA, so I hope it is secure)

I now have a constant live view on my 10 year old iPad Air 2.

 

[JB1970]

Going off the Hikvision topic now, within HA I use an integration via HACS called WebRTC Camera. It creates it's own custom card and you insert your rtsp stream url and off you go.
(the only down side is that my user/password is in plain text within HA. I don't have any external access to HA, so I hope it is secure)

I've not got around to it yet but at some point I'll give HA a try myself. I'm using Hubitat and have node-red and an mqtt broker running on a Pi 4 to bring in some other devices. A lot of Hubitat users have HA and have it bridged using Hubitat for Z Wave and Zigbee.

I now have a constant live view on my 10 year old iPad Air 2.

Glad you've sorted it