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OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

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Re: OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

#51

Post by protastus »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #49
protastus wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the rotten situation with embedded Linux. Nearly all silicon vendors ship a highly modified kernel with proprietary drivers and firmware. Nothing gets upstreamed. The code quality is low and the changes are not architecturally sound, so patches wouldn't get accepted by OSS maintainers in their current state. Vendors end up with countless forks of the kernel, system libraries and system services (at least one f…

This is such a weird market. Most embedded devices are purchased by randos who don't know what they're getting themselves into. By contrast, security cameras are disproportionately purchased by, I'm guessing, security professionals. Often the security staff at large corporations that are buying cameras in volume. If there was any camera that was otherwise competitive and had mainline kernel drivers and open source fi…

The camera manufacturers don't make the silicon and the silicon makers don't care about any specific camera manufacturer.

Not even Google can get Qualcomm to upstream their drivers. Let that sink in. And it's not because of confidential IP, because many of the drivers are already open source.

Silicon vendors could save a lot of time by mainlining their code rather than having hundreds of forks of every library. Security would dramatically improve. OEMs could update their products.

Maybe it will take legislation or a special interpretation of the 2021 executive order on cyber security [1] to force silicon vendors to take this seriously.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-action...

Re: OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

#52

Post by h317 »

bastard_op wrote: post #23

Having looked into this myself prior was mostly asking for disappointment. Getting a random Chinese IP camera to convert to open firmware is great in theory, but the problem is actually buying a camera or 10, or buying more over time. You never really know what hardware ships internally at any given time, ie what SoC a camera really is. They change frequently in random Chinese manufacturers with internal SoC hardware…

In case some other folks who are in need, we have a side-project dedicated to the completely open source camera: hardware: https://github.com/maxlab-io/tokay-lite-pcb firmware and software layer: https://github.com/maxlab-io/tokay-lite-sdk

And we will eventually ship them form here Crowd Supply at: https://www.crowdsupply.com/maxlab/tokay-lite

Re: OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

#53

Post by skywal_l »

bastard_op wrote: post #23

Having looked into this myself prior was mostly asking for disappointment. Getting a random Chinese IP camera to convert to open firmware is great in theory, but the problem is actually buying a camera or 10, or buying more over time. You never really know what hardware ships internally at any given time, ie what SoC a camera really is. They change frequently in random Chinese manufacturers with internal SoC hardware…

Stupid question from a noob: why not just use some raspberry pi zero, a camera sensor and some ONVIF server? That's what most of those cheap chinese IP camera are: a linux board, a camera sensor and some compression chip.

Re: OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

#54

Post by cfn »

skywal_l wrote: post #53
bastard_op wrote: post #23

Having looked into this myself prior was mostly asking for disappointment. Getting a random Chinese IP camera to convert to open firmware is great in theory, but the problem is actually buying a camera or 10, or buying more over time. You never really know what hardware ships internally at any given time, ie what SoC a camera really is. They change frequently in random Chinese manufacturers with internal SoC hardware…

Stupid question from a noob: why not just use some raspberry pi zero, a camera sensor and some ONVIF server? That's what most of those cheap chinese IP camera are: a linux board, a camera sensor and some compression chip.

Because the camera comes in a neat box with resonable weather tightness and it is easier to setup and connect. IP cameras also have the advantage of not needing a power brick.

Re: OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

#55

Post by gkhartman »

I was really hoping that the Pine64 PineCube cameras would gain traction in this space, but it seems like they only ever really shipped small batches of them. They'd need an enclosure/software to make them a reasonable choice.

Wiki: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PineCube

Re: OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

#56

Post by gkhartman »

spease wrote: post #47
bastard_op wrote: post #23

Having looked into this myself prior was mostly asking for disappointment. Getting a random Chinese IP camera to convert to open firmware is great in theory, but the problem is actually buying a camera or 10, or buying more over time. You never really know what hardware ships internally at any given time, ie what SoC a camera really is. They change frequently in random Chinese manufacturers with internal SoC hardware…

I’ve been thinking about something like this. Anyone else interesting in working on this?

I'd be interested. Even if it's just a Linux SBC + camera module, an OS image preconfigured as an IP cam would really reduce the DIY overhead.

Re: OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

#57

Post by dietervds »

bradknowles wrote: post #50
scottlamb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how hard it would be to run your own streamer pipeline or whatnot on these things? Agree with the_biot: The actual streaming component is not too hard. If this were the biggest problem, I'd be thrilled to contribute to (or just write) an open source streaming server to complement my open source NVR. [1] The driver situation is indeed a bit harder—these things don't just have mainline Linux support with v4l…

For me, I want cameras that will meet most of these same requirements, but are battery powered WiFi cameras, and don't require the use of a cloud service to operate. Reolink makes decent cameras, but their battery models don't work with the Reolink NVR. Arlo requires a cloud service. Eufy has a home hub, but I don't know yet how well it actually works. I've seen some reviews, and I've actually bought a hub plus a cou…

Eufy has been a pretty great experience for me. Except for the fact that they recently used their notifications (normally used for camera/motion events) to push a marketing message[1], which really ticked me off. Hence my interest in these threads now :-)

[1]https://twitter.com/dietervds/status/1707473093445230803

Re: OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

#58

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

bastard_op wrote: post #23

Having looked into this myself prior was mostly asking for disappointment. Getting a random Chinese IP camera to convert to open firmware is great in theory, but the problem is actually buying a camera or 10, or buying more over time. You never really know what hardware ships internally at any given time, ie what SoC a camera really is. They change frequently in random Chinese manufacturers with internal SoC hardware…

The Wyze cams seem cheap enough at ~35€ and with a stable SoC. A replacement for their (insecure) cloud stuff would be nice, otherwise the software is actually pretty decent.

Re: OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

#59

Post by fps_doug »

wtf_is_this wrote: post #35
bastard_op wrote: post #23

Having looked into this myself prior was mostly asking for disappointment. Getting a random Chinese IP camera to convert to open firmware is great in theory, but the problem is actually buying a camera or 10, or buying more over time. You never really know what hardware ships internally at any given time, ie what SoC a camera really is. They change frequently in random Chinese manufacturers with internal SoC hardware…

Couldn't agree more with this comment. I've had exactly the same frustration trying to get cameras months/years apart that will work. You have to open each one up and hack it yourself (and OpenIPC may support it or not), and nowadays they are protected from loading firmware easily (tiny UART/debug ports, disabled UBoot loader, etc.). I also wish there were an option for someone to buy cameras with open HW/SW, to get…

Not just that; I'd be OK with closed source firmware if I can just put it on an isolated network and be done with it, but from typical listings on Amazon et al you cannot even tell if the camera works without a mandatory cloud connection.

I've bought a router from TPlink a while ago that wanted me to install a fucking app, create a TPlink account and send all comms over some cloud servers to configure a router that's sitting right next to me, that all the traffic from the very fucking phone is going through. It did have a classic web interface, but it was completely crippled and basically just allowed changing the Wifi SSID and doing a firmware update. There was nothing in the product description about this, and none of the customer reviews mentioned it, because obviously this shit is now completely normal to the average joe.

Re: OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera

#60

Post by opan »

gkhartman wrote: post #55

I was really hoping that the Pine64 PineCube cameras would gain traction in this space, but it seems like they only ever really shipped small batches of them. They'd need an enclosure/software to make them a reasonable choice. Wiki: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PineCube

I think they mentioned in a blog post that they didn't get as much community support as they hoped so they gave up on it.
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