CCTV & Loxone

[Huw Bamford]

Hi All,

Has anyone set-up CCTV cameras to the Loxone system?

Thanks

Huw

[TomM]

Hi Huw,

I have 2 IP cameras attached to the loxone and they work well enough.  Just to note that i'm not sure there's any way to attach traditional style, non-IP cams.

What you need to do is create an intercom item and insert your camera details into that.  You should note that the only accepted formats are JPEG or mJPEG (motion JPEG) but the most common format RTSP (H.264) is not compatible (someone with more knowledge may be able to explain why).  So make sure your camera has at least JPEG protocol which is very basic but weirdly many of the basic, cheapo cams don't have.

Once you have the cams setup you'll be able to access them through the standard interface.  Frustratingly, the camera output in the interface is always landscape, whereas the interface itself is fixed to portrait so you get a stupid small image on your phone when all you want to do is rotate your phone to get it full screen.  No can do!

A nice feature is when you connect an input to the intercom such as a doorbell input, the miniserver automatically takes a snap from the cam however I have found that on 1 of my cams this is a cached image of the last image I looked at so is often not representative of the person actually at the front door.

Last thing to say is that one of the coolest things in my house is that when the doorbell is rung a subset of all the house lights flash for 5 seconds, the actual doorbell ringer activates (but only if the baby isn't asleep) and the AV amps in the house automatically switch to the input that takes the output from the Fleureon NVR and thus shows the grid view of the 2 cams on any TVs that are on.  I can't decided whether to automatically activate all TVs in the house.  Seems a bit overkill.  All this is done using IP control and none of the items in the system was particularly expensive.

If you need any help setting up the cams, let me know and i'll help where I can, it's not always particularly easy.

Tom

[Huw Bamford]

Thanks Tom, will find a camera and get come back on here.

Huw

[Oscar Avendano]

Hi TomM

This is Oscar, I am currently trying to install IP cameras to my loxone miniserver  but we tried many ways it doesn't work, any way need your help is possible to send the configuration of your set-up cameras through every TV, I will appreciated, thanks.

[Rob_in]

Hi,

Coming back to this because I'm still mulling over what to do with 'welcoming' people outside the house.

Traditionally this would be done with PIR sensors. However, I notice many IP cameras have very good 'night' (infrared) vision so am thinking... why bother with PIR, just get an IP camera and have it turn on exterior lights, etc. when motion is detected.

Maybe that is easier said than done ;) Anyone managed this?

There are so many IP cameras available it's hard to know where to start. I want something that just works with a very simple NAS (needs no IP cam software and doesn't require dedicated PC to control or setup). Just for the sake of argument I found a HK Vision camera...

http://www.hikvision.com/en/Products_accessries_760_i6142.html

... this can be configured to send emails on motion detection. Does anyone know how to get Loxone to instantly pick up email? I can't find anything in the docs about doing this. Only having the Miniserver send email.

I think I could easily rig up something that acts like a dummy SMTP server and throws out UDP packets that the Miniserver could act on.

NB: That camera does actually come with a model with a physical 'alarm' wire coming out of it you could connect to a Miniserver digital input, but where's the fun in that? ;)

Just curious if there are any success stories around this?

Cheers,

Robin

[DavidL]

You could always look in to the motion detection, line crossing and other functions the hikvision cameras do very well internally.
I can't remember off the top of my head if you can notify a remote server on either of those activating, but I'll take a look in the morning on some of the cameras we have here.
I know they notify the Synology Surveillance station running on the NAS drive, so in theory they could also notify another external device such as Loxone.

David

[Russ]

I tried out a Dahua PTZ web cam and was impressed with the quality and features.  Dahua publishes an HTTP API so your cam can make API calls to the Loxone server for various functions.  I was heading that direction in my implementation when I discovered that the cam I purchased (SD29204-T) was less waterproof that I had hoped. :-(  Not Dahua's fault, they clearly said it was not IP65 and to keep it in a dry sunlight-protected place, but I forgot to move it out of harm's way while testing.

I have read of several people using the HTTP API calls from webcams to replace things like presence detectors to turn lights off and on and to generate alarms, so I know it's possible, I just didn't get around to it myself yet.

Russ

[Kops]

Hi Robin,

I have been playing with HIKVision cameras a bit and have one monitoring the entrance of the house currently. I had similar idea to trigger actions (lights, etc) just using the action from the camera, by defining specific area or line crossing. However, it turned out that at night the B/W image is too noisy (despite the single powerful IR LED) that it constantly triggered an action. Of course you can lower the sensitivity in the camera settings (or in the Surveillance station) but then it is not ideal for standard daylight conditions.

So in the end I ended up adding additional PIR movement sensor to get the presence information. So not really a success story in my case. :(

[Rob_in]

Thanks for the info.

Can I ask which model you have?

I've seen example images from cameras at night and they looked super clean. This was on an Amazon review so thought the author had no reason to 'cheat'.

Cheers,

Robin

[Kops]

I have this one DS-2CD2332-I.

[Rob_in]

http://www.hikvision.com/us/Products_1_10508_i7705.html

"True day/night"? So that doesn't work so well? :(

How far away was the line you defined? They claim 30m IR range so maybe if the line is less than 10m away it might be good? Or is this just hype from the manufacturer?

[smartbusinesstools.be]

Motion detection simply won't work at night if the camera has IR and is installed outside. The IR attracts insects which will trigger the motion detection frequently. It helps switching off IR from the camera and placing a separate IR light elsewhere.
Also, the Hikvisions have relatively poor noisy image quality in the dark.

[Peter]

Hi Tom

Can you explain how you set up your cameras in Loxone?

Many thanks

Peter

On Tuesday, November 24, 2015 at 9:09:57 AM UTC, TomM wrote:

[Sergey Rozenblat]

One major fault with Hikvision (maybe not all models, but mine have it) is MJPEG can only be streaming to one recipient. So if your home wall mount tablet is left on camera stream, you go out with your smartphone but cannot check the camera. This is very-very inconvenient, so be sure to check this issue when buying a cam. You'll never find this in specs so the only way is actually checking it.

[Peter]

I've got a Grandstream CCTV - Loxone interface working internally: I can use the App to view a camera as long as I'm connected to my Lan but cannot get it to work externally. I think this is a DNScloud issue or the required text in the properties of the function block is incorrect or probably a combination of both.
Anyone have a suggestion?

[Santeri / Finlandia Automation Ltd.]

Hi,

It is propably a problem with port forwarding on your router. You need a dns service or a static ip. You cant use Loxones own dns. Many routers and nas have own dns services (like Synology and some Asus routers), so you can use those instead. We got a few GXV3610 & 3611 and they work fine.

Santeri

[RSin]

Rob_in / Kops

Have you played around more with the Hikvision since these posts? Do they work well? I too have been looking at the 23xx series because they seem pretty good specs for the £££'s. 

 Also if not in Loxone how well do they perform e.g. a NAS surveillance station?

Cheers.

[Kops]

The DS-2CD2332-I from HikVision works with Synology Surveillance station as well as with Loxone without any problems, supporting both H.264 and MJPEG (which is a must for Loxone integration).

I am using this script to get snapshot from the camera attached to an email every time there is any suspicious activity detected by Loxone.

As regards overall image quality, I cannot easily compare. I am happy with the image quality throughout the day, however I had to play a bit with the settings to get quality output at night. The IR illumination, when used outdoors, attracts insects and these trigger the motion detection so for professional use I would recommend to use external IR.

[Russ]

Is there a list anywhere of IP cams known to work with Loxone?  I'm looking for an exterior IP PTZ and was thinking of the Dahua ones, for instance the SD59430U-HNI.

[RSin]

Those of you using additional IR lamps, which are you using? I notice good ones are expensive (£200+) and dubious amazon/ebay for £15. Do the cheap ones do the job?

Also all these cheap imports are 12v. Anyone seen any 240v or 24v (just to keep things simple with the rest of the project).

Thanks. 

[Seb]

Anyone know why my reply to this was deleted? It provided detailed instructions on getting a hikvision camera working on loxone.

[LoxoneN]

Can you post again?

[tkn]

I'd like to see this too. I was all set to do Dahua cameras, but they have been removing MJPEG support from their cameras.

My plan was to use them multicasting to Loxone and a Blue Iris NVR at the same time.  For general usage, the Loxone app would be fine, and for any more detailed security usage, the Blue Iris server would work in tandem.

I think Hikvision can do this as well, so I'd love to figure this out since it has thrown my IP camera plans in disarray.

On Tuesday, April 3, 2018 at 2:32:09 PM UTC-7, LoxoneN wrote:

Can you post again?

[Seb]

Hi, on the hikvision cameras you need to log onto the camera and change the substream to mjpeg and create a user on the camera that has live view permissions.

You then add a User Defined Intecom with a URL for that mjepg feed. On my camera, that was http://ipaddress/Streaming/channels/102/httppreview, you then add the username/password as defined.

To test the feed you should be able to put the above URL in a web bowser (or VLC player, but prefix the ipaddress with username:password@)

NOTE: the camera can only support one connection like this. Therefore, if you have the stream open in VLC and try to connect to it via Loxone, it will not work.

To get the streams to work from the Internet you need to add firewall rules for each camera (a different port for each) and add that URL:port to the external url setting in loxone for the intercom.

Not as detailed as my last post, but hopefully won’t be deleted this time.

[James Mitchelmore]

If you have a Blue Iris server running then you can use it to re-stream whichever cameras you need as mjpeg for Loxone.  Removes the requirement for the camera to support mjpeg, allows more than 1 concurrent view and means you only need to port forward for the blue iris server rather than the individual cameras...

James

[tkn]

Thank you - that was the one thing that I was looking for! Back to Dahua for me.

Now to figure out a good Blue Iris server build.

[denver]

I messed around for ages to get this to work with a Hikvision feed and found I had to use the ISAP protocol in the address. ie http://ipaddress/ISAP/Streaming/channels/102/httppreview 

Not sure why it wouldn't work without it.

[Seb]

If you just want to re-stream from an existing system and you have a server on your network you could use FFMPEG [1] with the config at [2] (will give that a go later and post up the full config.

Seb

[1] https://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html

[2] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29699980/ffmpeg-restream-rtsp-to-mjpeg

[Kevp]

Is there any program out there that can be loaded onto a raspberry Pi that can take a a stream from a hikvision camera and allow it to be streamed to multiple people to allow them to view it at the same time?

It seams to be one of the very few issues but also one of the most annoying when only one person can view the camera feed at a time.

Thanks

[Seb]

Yes - ffmpeg, just had a play with a single camera, what I did was:

1) Download FFServer & FFMpeg [1]

2) Created a config file called ffserver.conf (see full example at [2])

HTTPPort 8090
HTTPBindAddress 0.0.0.0
MaxHTTPConnections 2000
MaxClients 1000
MaxBandwidth 1024
CustomLog -

##################################################################

<Feed camera1.ffm>
  File /tmp/camera1.ffm
  FileMaxSize 50M
</Feed>

<Stream camera1.mjpg>
  Feed camera1.ffm

  Format mpjpeg
  VideoCodec mjpeg
  VideoFrameRate 15
  VideoBitRate 256
  VideoBufferSize 80
  VideoSize 640x360
  NoAudio

</Stream>

<Stream stat.html>
  Format status

</Stream>

4) Start the server:

./ffserver -f ffserver.conf

5) Stream the camera feed to ffserver (note you need to create a user/password for the NVR that has access to the live stream). For HikVision you can stream directly from the NVR and don't need to access the camera directly.

./ffmpeg -i "rtsp://user:password@nvr-ip-address/Streaming/Channels/101" http://localhost:8090/camera1.ffm

6) Access the feed at: http://server-ip:8090/camera1.mjpg

The above is rough and ready, it would need to be improved such that:

1) The stream is better quality

2) The stream has a user/password as when you expose it through the firewall, you want it protected

3) More than one camera in the config

4) Scripts added around ffserver & ffmpeg

[1] https://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html

[2] https://www.ffmpeg.org/sample.html