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Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

hackernoon.com

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Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#41

Post by dagrha »

StavrosK wrote: post #15
lozaning wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got the same thing going at home, tough to beat ~7 of these cameras flashed with OpenIPC for the cost of a single drop cam. Got the rtsp stream connected up to smartthings and blue iris and have had zero trouble with them. They're only $20 if you order from wyze.com

Does anyone know of a good Android viewer for RTSP? I'm probably going to proxy it with an HTTP webserver over TLS (if I can do that with RTSP? EDIT: Apparently I can't, I'll have to find a way to add authentication) to add basic auth, so the viewer will need to support that.

VLC is great-- it's what I use for viewing RTSP on my LAN.

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#42

Post by notyourday »

StavrosK wrote: post #15
lozaning wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got the same thing going at home, tough to beat ~7 of these cameras flashed with OpenIPC for the cost of a single drop cam. Got the rtsp stream connected up to smartthings and blue iris and have had zero trouble with them. They're only $20 if you order from wyze.com

Does anyone know of a good Android viewer for RTSP? I'm probably going to proxy it with an HTTP webserver over TLS (if I can do that with RTSP? EDIT: Apparently I can't, I'll have to find a way to add authentication) to add basic auth, so the viewer will need to support that.

VLC does the job but what you really want to do is run ffmpeg against it and generate HLS

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#43

Post by StavrosK »

There's a virtuous cycle thing going on here: Someone releases a product with hackable/open specs (Xiaomi has a good track record here), people are overjoyed because you can't easily get good hardware for cheap and build a bunch of software around it, thus (usually greatly) extending the capabilities of the product, other people buy that product because it's much more advanced than competitors (because of all the extra software), profit for the parent company.

Basically, the company gets a bunch of people to do work for free, the product gets improved, the company makes profit, everybody wins.

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#44

Post by tjoff »

StavrosK wrote: post #43

There's a virtuous cycle thing going on here: Someone releases a product with hackable/open specs (Xiaomi has a good track record here), people are overjoyed because you can't easily get good hardware for cheap and build a bunch of software around it, thus (usually greatly) extending the capabilities of the product, other people buy that product because it's much more advanced than competitors (because of all the ext…

You forgot the part where the company uses that profit and market penetration to stifle competition, lock down the hardware and lock in the users.

And boom, current state of affairs.

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#45

Post by pdelbarba »

StavrosK wrote: post #43

There's a virtuous cycle thing going on here: Someone releases a product with hackable/open specs (Xiaomi has a good track record here), people are overjoyed because you can't easily get good hardware for cheap and build a bunch of software around it, thus (usually greatly) extending the capabilities of the product, other people buy that product because it's much more advanced than competitors (because of all the ext…

I wish more companies would allow this. Look no further than games, where the ones that are memorable are the ones that can be modded to death. Look at skyrim, kerbal space program, and lets not forget Falcon BMS (originally released in 1998 and still being updated to current standards by the community). Similarly, in ham radio, a grandfather to the current maker community, vendors have been releasing closed source hardware for decades to spite the advent of SDR and GNU radio. Because of this a small chinese brand has become a major player due to their software being dumped by some enthusiasts then extended and modified to run all of the digital modes with loads of other features. It seems that every time a company with a decent product releases tools or code (willingly or not) the community comes in and pushes it to the front of the line. I don't understand why this isn't more widely recognized

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#46

Post by samfisher83 »

VectorLock wrote: post #39

I see a lot of products like this on Alibaba that I wish I could put my own firmware on. I've messaged a few of them telling them "I'd buy 1000 of these if I can put my own firmware on them" but haven't gotten any good responses. What I'm aiming for sometimes gets lost in translation, but mostly I think they just don't get the premise I'm presenting to sales people who answer the Alibaba inquiries.

A lot of the seller in Alibaba are just buying camera OEM from a factory so they wouldn't be able to get you the software. The factory itself might be just copying the reference design from chip manufacturer and they might not have access to the code or under a NDA. The chip manufacturer does not have an incentive to provide you custom firmware. You aren't their customer.

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#47

Post by freehunter »

ericfrederich wrote: post #29
lozaning wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got the same thing going at home, tough to beat ~7 of these cameras flashed with OpenIPC for the cost of a single drop cam. Got the rtsp stream connected up to smartthings and blue iris and have had zero trouble with them. They're only $20 if you order from wyze.com

Do you lose the push notifications when you use the custom firmware?

Yes you lose complete access to the Wyze app. There is another recommended app you can use to replace it called Mi Home but the point of this for me was to replace any cloud stuff.

That being said if you have a video server like MotionEye or maybe Smarthome has it (that was mentioned before), you can likely do some alerting based off that. I know MotionEye has email alerts and might have some other alerting that I don't use.

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#48

Post by pdelbarba »

tjoff wrote: post #44
StavrosK wrote: post #43

There's a virtuous cycle thing going on here: Someone releases a product with hackable/open specs (Xiaomi has a good track record here), people are overjoyed because you can't easily get good hardware for cheap and build a bunch of software around it, thus (usually greatly) extending the capabilities of the product, other people buy that product because it's much more advanced than competitors (because of all the ext…

You forgot the part where the company uses that profit and market penetration to stifle competition, lock down the hardware and lock in the users. And boom, current state of affairs.

What does this have to do with making hackable products?

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#49

Post by GCU-Empiricist »

rb808 wrote: post #22
diggan wrote: post #4

Speaking about cheap cameras. I'm planning to setup some cameras at home. Anyone have any recommendations for devices that are cheap, can see moderately good in the dark, can be connected to a raspberry and doesn't force you to connect to some cloud service?

Outdoors - anyone have any suggestion for waterproof ones? Both of these look indoor only.

Glue-gun on the seams and a few desiccant packets inside?

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#50

Post by abawany »

diggan wrote: post #38
skykooler wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're planning on connecting directly to a Raspberry Pi, the simplest option is a NoIR Raspberry Pi Camera Module and a few IR LEDs.

Thanks! That's probably what I will end up doing, but the price will be much higher than just buying the IP Cameras.

I was able to find some RPi cameras on eBay for about $8 each, though they weren't NoIR. I also found RPi ZeroW for the official price of $10 (from pishop.us) and that combination worked well as an open remote cam for me.
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