Any IP WiFi camera experts here?
13 Aug 2017 9:10:40 UTC
Topic 209203
(moderation:
A good friend of mine has an elderly mother that lives on her own. She wants to monitor her to make sure she hasn't fallen over. Next door neighbours are on the phone and have a key. She was thinking of a simple IP WiFi camera that she could screw to the wall and access from her smartphone. Yes this can be done in two ways.
1. Install internet at the place, mains powered IP camera, that talks to the router by WiFi. If she knows the camera's IP address she can access it via the smartphone. But that means a monthly internet charge which she doesn't want.
2. Mains powered IP WiFi camera talking to a 4G WiFi box. But that is big money up front, and a monthly plan for the box.
She seems to think that a simple IP WiFi camera can talk directly to the local WiFi hot spot, so she can access it on the iPhone. I've said no. It would have to be be via a router or 4G box.
Any cheap ideas?
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
Not an expert but what about
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Not an expert but what about something like a ring cam. It has a wifi connection, 2 way communication and motion camera that you can access on your smartphone. Of course you would install it inside instead of outside. It's not cheap
https://ring.com/stickupcam
Just throwing things out there..
Why a camera and not a
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Why a camera and not a tracker with panic button that her mother can press?
It's small and can also be used outdoors.
It's basically a miniature phone that regularly submits it's location. And it will only call one specific phone number.
What good is a camera when she falls outside of it's field of view anyways? I doubt your going to want to place a 100 cameras to cover every part of the residence.
Ask Gordon on Seti. I think
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Ask Gordon on Seti. I think the issue is that you have to have access not only for the camera, but for a computer to set it up. And that means enough access to the router that you can find the camera's IP address when it pulls a DHCP lease from the router. That might not be possible for a public hotspot. Also that computer needs to be there to keep the DYNDNS entry up to date or you need fixed IP from the ISP. Oh and don't forget if the camera loses power you have to go through the setup again.
A way around much of this might be a camera on a Raspberry PI. The PI has a video display built it so you can do the setup and walk away with the keyboard and monitor and remote control with VNC.
That could work, the pi could
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That could work, the pi could phone home to some kind of VPN making the whole thing secure and the ddns service would only need to be in place somewhere else, like at the good friends place, hosting the vpn server. Probably enough ip cameras that can also do that without a pi. Not losing its configuration on power loss. I know mine do not loose their settings.
But still that won't solve the problem of falling outside the view of a single camera.
Thanks for the input guys
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Thanks for the input guys appreciated.
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
Jonathan_76 wrote:That could
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They won't if you own the router, but if you don't when it reconnects it has to pull a new IP from the DHCP server on the router and that breaks everything. If you own the router you set the camera to a fixed IP on your subnet as you would a printer and no issue, plus open the right ports, etc.
The PI can contact the DNS service with its IP and act as a VPN if you wish so no need to complicate it with another box at another location. PI 3's have blue tooth and WiFi built in.
If it was me a recent security system box and camera(s) would be the easiest bet, but it will require hardware internet from the DVR box to the outside. This is exactly what they are made for.
Final word, whatever you do change the default passwords!
Here is a link to a Pi3
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Here is a link to a Pi3 camera I built: http://usefulramblings.org/?page_id=10321
The 3D aspect is probably more than you need. you could mount the Pi and camera to a piece of Lexan and run the power cords. There is a video at the end of the page if you are interested in the quality of the PI3 stream. I notice that you run windows machines so Linux might be another issue. You could use Linux motion to stream the image from the Pi so if the Pi's hostname is "doodah" you could see the image at doodah:8081 if this is how you configured "motion" on the Pi3. You would need a home network and your router would need to port forward all traffic for port 8081 to "doodah", i.e. "doodah:8081" It would also be necessary to have a fixed wan side addr from your ISP rather then a dynamic WAN side IP or you won't find your "router". Most ISP charge more for "fixed" WAN IPs but you can use a dynamic site that updates WAN IPs should they change. It used to be free but I am not sure if that is currently true. There are several things to consider.
I currently use POE IP cameras of various vendors. This means I only have to run CAT 5/6 cable since it can carry both power for the camera and data to/from the camera. Makes for an easier installation but requires an injector for power for a single camera or a POE switch for multiple cameras.
I have "jotted down" a bunch of stuff here and probably you don't want/need this much configuration but I thought I would throw it out anyway as "things you need to consider".
The entire point of having a
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The entire point of having a fixed IP address would be to be able to use port forwarding so you can access the camera from the WWW. On a router you don't control that's not an option. Gaining access to the camera is always going to have to go through a remote service to which the camera connects, that might as well be your own service.
The local IP address you get from the WiFi is irrelevant when you can't have port forwarding to it.
So sorry Rob and Gary, that won't work.
You say no need to complicate things while you put the complex things on the remote site! You want a server remotely behind a router/nat/firewall you don't control. Good luck with keeping that simple.
I'd put the server on some location where you do have control, always.
If you want access to something that's behind stuff you don't control, that something is best to connect to you instead of the other way around. And when you want that safe, use a VPN.
A public WiFi could still be trouble though, like does it have a maximum time a client can remain connected? Do you need to accept terms before you can use it? Anything can be scripted, but then something changes at the WiFi side and everything is broken. And it's remote so not easily accessible to your friend.
If you just want something easy you could go for a simple baby-phone with camera thing that will 'phone home' to the manufacturer and allows you to connect via their servers to the camera. Not as secure, super easy to setup. You could try if it works and if not simply return the camera to the store.
Again many thanks for all the
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Again many thanks for all the replies. A baby monitoring system is something I hadn't thought of and will look into.
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
Jonathan_76 wrote: So sorry
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While I might not have understood Chris' configuration I can assure you that what I described "works" just fine at my location. And for my configuration.
My user name is robl.