RTSP would help ease the pain of not having to fully rely on custom firmware / the lack of no web interface.
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Would be nice to have RTSP with the official firmware, I don’t like using openipc or Xiaomi-Dafang-Hacks as I would like to keep the app usage, as well as integrate into my current DVR setup.
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Glad to see this is now on the Radar. Currently I had to uses a hacked firmware because the storage option would crap out with no warning. Example, The camera with the Wyse Firmware just stopped recording to the memory card. It took a reboot of the unit to get the video. Od part was that LIVE viewing was working without issues.
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RTSP is a valuable feature that I would love to see added.
It would enable others, and eventually yourselves, to develop a web interface to view multiple cameras at once, from a single web browser on a desktop computer. And that would allow me to finally replace several hundred analog cameras with WyzeCams for my customers.
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The audience for this post is intended to be people who are interested in how their camera is connected. You may have read posts from people asking for RTSP support, and wonder why it is such a big deal. The Real Time Streaming Protocol was design to allow a stream of media to be managed across the web. It can encode and transmit data in a variety of formats, and it is an internet standard. The great thing about internet standards is that anything that supports the standard can use it. There is a “higher” standard than this called ONVIF, but for now I just want to explore RTSP.
Out of the box, the Wyze Cam products offer an excellent user experience. They are easy to configure and easy to use. They allow someone to configure each camera using an app on their phone and connect the camera to their local router, view and manage images and video stored on a local Micro SD card, and manage a rolling set of clips stored on a free Amazon Web Services area.
It is excellent. Reliable, cheap, and has a passionate and dedicated staff to support the system.
There are a number of users who would appreciate RTSP support. There are several reasons for this. Some people may have a network video recorder, some people may not want their video streams going out to the cloud. At the moment, the only way to get an RTSP feed on a Wyze Cam is to install unsupported third party firmware, and doing this means no more support from the wonderful Wyze Cam team. This is why so many support requests feature RTSP.
All these internet protocol cameras (or IP cams) on the market have a little web server in them. When you power them up, most feature the same process that Wyze Cam uses - they beep and / or talk to you, you point the camera at a QR code, and then the camera picks up your wifi details and connects. This provides the simple but robust user experience that we know and love. Users of RTSP - and users of older IP cameras - are used to directing their web browser at the address of the camera, logging in to an administration web page on the camera, and then adjusting the settings. It’s not such a simple interface, but it can be friendly. If you’ve ever logged in to your home router you will be familiar with the experience.
When Wyze Cam update their firmware to include RTSP support, the user will log in via the web page, turn on RTSP support, and then test the connection. Once they are able to view the RTSP stream they can do whatever they want with the RTSP feed.
This is the key point - with an RTSP stream, you can do whatever you want with anything that supports it. You could connect your stream to, for example:
- Action Tiles
- Netcam Studio
- Smart Things
- Blue Iris
- iSpy / ZoneMinder / Yawcam
- VLC
- etc.
I personally use Netcam Studio. I make sure my current cameras are not connected to the internet, but just to my home server. I can then view my cameras by logging in to the Netcam Studio home interface.
In summary, I hope this post goes some way to explain in relatively simple terms why RTSP support gives flexibility.
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If I am reading this correctly, once you go to RTSP you would no longer need to have an app on your phone or iPad/tablet, nor need the SD card. Correct?
What about those of us who have cameras at two locations or travel a lot. How would we see our cameras?
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I have a small home server that is always on in my house. It runs Netcam Studio. This bit of software, like many similar products, acts as a Network Video Recorder. I can configure it for motion detection, timelapse, and even full video recording. It will record video to the hard drives attached to my home server. I have full control over these clips, and can even set up jobs to copy the clips to cloud storage if needed. If I want to view the results, I log into the web on my home server to view them.
I can view this web page on my phone. Netcam Studio also have a mobile application which links to your local server.
If you use RTSP, you may no longer need to use the Wyze app on your phone. You may no longer need to use the SD card.
I can view my cameras in any area by logging into the web interface for my application. If I had cameras at two separate location, I would have to log into two separate Netcam Studio web pages. However, if I had that issue, I might research a way to combine RTSP feeds across the internet. I don’t want my cameras to be streaming across the internet - I am happy to allow myelf access to Netcam Studio which manages my streams.
Happy to answer any other questions.
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@deanwsmith If you want RTSP, why don’t you just flash an alternate firmware to the Wyzecam (OpenIPC). There isn’t much firmware space for Wyze to do too much and adding, would likely disturb what is currently working for most. Or just use a camera that already supports RTSP.
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Well, yes - but I’d still like it officially supported.
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I, for one, would appreciate RTSP support. RTSP would allow me to connect my cameras to my MotionEye server so I could view them through any web browser along with my other non-Wyze cameras. I think it would make an already great little camera useful for many other purposes.
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I had asked a question about RTSP early on in this post. I never responded. I will now.
I would not use RTSP as it would cost me additional money and steps just to view my alerts. Since I do have my cameras in two different locations I would not want to watch alerts through the Internet as you said in your response to me. After reading your post I said to myself, "this has way too many requirements just so I can watch my alerts on a web server.
I can do that now with WyzeCam via my app. I can view all 20 cameras from one app on my iPhone.
I agree with zarthan that I also want Wyze to continue to invent and produce these awesome cameras that are affordable.
I am looking forward to the next Wyze camera.
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Zarthan and sisty2,
Nobody is arguing that Wyze should compromise the current functionality of their cameras to accommodate RTSP. I don’t want that to happen either. We’re simply asking that they consider adding RTSP as a feature like they would with any other feature request. Only their engineers and and accountants can decide if it’s possible without compromising other functionality and if it’s financially beneficial. Both of you are arguing against a new feature without knowing the downsides of implementing it. What if they can pull it off and not compromise elsewhere? Then they just sold a bunch more cameras to people would wanted RTSP and they keep their existing customers.
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I like this idea based on my current understanding. There are many shortcomings with the WyzeCam app and this would alleviate many of them. Just my 2 cents.
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Like the idea of RTSP also. Especially to be able to record motion to my own server instead of an sd card.
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Hey Guys,
I agree that the only big thing that these cameras are missing is “Wyze supported”, reliable, and secure RTSP. Id rather not hack the camera just to get it. To be able plug the feeds into my existing solution via RTSP would be a HUGE nice to have; in fact I would immediately purchase an additional set of cameras if it did.
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RTSP in addition to the current offering would be an ideal situation for me, I could get rid of at least 2 of my older axis cams.
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I’m not currently a WYZE customer, but would be in a heartbeat if RTSP was added. That’s actually the only reason I’m not currently a customer.
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Just bought my first Wyze camera. LOVE it.
After 15 minutes of tinkering, the first thing I also went looking for was native RTSP support.
(Wow, what an ugly set of comments above, but I’ll jump in)
For me, I would love to have an RTSP option, even if it meant I had to give up another feature.
STOP:
not taken way, just disabled. I don’t want to inconvenience other users. Native RTSP would be great for:
- Local streams to SO many other home/smart systems, giving Wyze a great break into the SmartHome Market
- Using it for things such as SKYPE would be great. Why? Becuase it has a decent lens, and decent auto focus features.
As mentioned above, adding the code is likely not difficult. It’s a product team priority.
I hope someone at Wyze finds their way through this thread and sees another vote for RTSP.
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OpenIP.cam is fun to play with, but the functionality cost(s) to move to that from the Wyze firmware are not worth it to me.
Known Issues listed on their GitHub:
- Auto Night Mode does not work due to Wyze V2 missing LDR chip
- Full 1080p not supported. 1600x900 is maximum resolution.
If I wasn’t using these for external security cameras (in all weather mounts), then maybe MAYBE these two items could be looked over. But a reduction in resolution, and the inability to use the Auto IR are what kept me off OpenIP.cam’s firmware for more than the 30 minutes I ran it.
Granted, it’s a very nice suite of tools they add, but given time, I can see those coming to the Wyzecam as well. If OpenIP.cam can fix these lingering issues before Wyze offers RTSP, then I may try it again.
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+1 I would love to see native RTSP support for Wyze cams. I have 4 Cam and one pan.
If it happens, I will gladly buy 5 more and swap out my zmodo system to run all my recordings to my nas server.
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