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OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

github.com

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Re: OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

#11

Post by efrecon »

A long time ago, I built a business around off-the-shelf IP cameras. The field was full of buggy firmware with enormous security holes (biggest I found was to be able to acquire pictures without even being authorised!). Hardly none of these firmware would get updated, they were abondonware right out of the package.

Even though this doesn't seem to be entirely open, any kind of move into that direction is a bit of fresh air.

Re: OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

#13

Post by papercrane »

snthd wrote: post #9

https://openipc.org/support-open-source >It's Open Source >Price of the Firmware >The right to use the OpenIPC firmware and its components is granted to all users free of charge and only for personal, non-commercial purposes. If you are interested in using OpenIPC for your business projects, please contact our team.

That's confusing, because the GitHub repo has an MIT license. Is there some kind of secret sauce they add to the compiled binaries that the non-commercial clause applies to maybe?

Re: OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

#14

Post by jauntywundrkind »

alufers wrote: post #4
tpmx wrote: post #2

Seems like e.g. (most of) the sensor drivers are binary blobs. Some examples: Ambarella S3L: https://github.com/OpenIPC/firmware/tree/master/general/pack... Some HiSilicon chipset: https://github.com/OpenIPC/firmware/tree/master/general/pack... Edit: A smaller subset of sensors have some code here: https://github.com/OpenIPC/sensors

Yup, also the userspace application that does the actual streaming is closed-source as well: https://github.com/OpenIPC/majestic (The git repo is for bug reports only, no source-code there)

Oh man I didn't realize that when I last ran into this project.

I wonder how hard it would be to run your own streamer pipeline or whatnot on these things? How far a starting place do we get when we install our own Linux; do peripherals (camera networking) work or is there a bunch of special sauce in userland running half the hardware?

Re: OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

#15

Post by the_biot »

OpenIPC is one of those projects where the core team is Russian, and their communication is Russian, and they use Telegram (or a bridge) for everything. As a non-Russian speaker you're pretty lost trying to contribute, and as a result they attract hardly anyone outside the russosphere. I've tried telling them they're artifically limiting their project, but was predictably ignored. This project has so much potential, but it will never be achieved.

I've seen this before; projects like that tend to stagnate and die. Openinkpot comes to mind.

BTW not a rant against Russians; open source projects do best when they have a lot of contributors from across the world, and that means English.

Re: OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

#16

Post by orra »

papercrane wrote: post #13
snthd wrote: post #9

https://openipc.org/support-open-source >It's Open Source >Price of the Firmware >The right to use the OpenIPC firmware and its components is granted to all users free of charge and only for personal, non-commercial purposes. If you are interested in using OpenIPC for your business projects, please contact our team.

That's confusing, because the GitHub repo has an MIT license. Is there some kind of secret sauce they add to the compiled binaries that the non-commercial clause applies to maybe?

Their "Magestic" app, which sounds like it provides key functionality, is closed source.

Re: OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

#18

Post by bradknowles »

nirav72 wrote: post #3

For those curious if their devices are supported. The list is here: https://github.com/OpenIPC/wiki/blob/master/en/guide-support...

Wow. I've only heard of two of those brands of cameras.

And I didn't recognize any that were among the known thousands of re-brands/sub-brands of HikVision and Daihua, both of which have been implicated in the suppression of the Uighur people in China (and which have been banned by the NDAA, see https://ipvm.com/reports/ban-law).

Re: OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

#19

Post by the_biot »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #14
alufers wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, also the userspace application that does the actual streaming is closed-source as well: https://github.com/OpenIPC/majestic (The git repo is for bug reports only, no source-code there)

Oh man I didn't realize that when I last ran into this project. I wonder how hard it would be to run your own streamer pipeline or whatnot on these things? How far a starting place do we get when we install our own Linux; do peripherals (camera networking) work or is there a bunch of special sauce in userland running half the hardware?

That's the problem right there: the Linux kernel situtation. As OP noted they just use the vendor's (long outdated) Linux kernel, with the vendor's (typically crap) kernel drivers. They just don't clean up that situation in that project, let alone try to mainline the drivers. It's where I thought I could help, but... see my other post on why that didn't work out.

With mainline-supported cameras using a standard API, a userland application that does streaming and all kinds of neat stuff is just much more doable IMHO.

They're not the only project that builds a ton of userland stuff on top of a rotten kernel foundation: oe-alliance has nine distros downstream from it, and hundreds of supported hardware platforms. As far as I can tell it's all ancient vendor kernels with un-upstreamable drivers.

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