Found a decent "Tank Cam"

Zephrant · Sep 22, 2017

Can you record the video locally too? I'm not much for sending video of my home to a cloud provider. I use a program called BlueIris at work to record security cameras, their website does say they support at least some Zmodo cameras so maybe I'll try that.

JCGSO · Sep 22, 2017

Zephrant said:
Can you record the video locally too? I'm not much for sending video of my home to a cloud provider. I use a program called BlueIris at work to record security cameras, their website does say they support at least some Zmodo cameras so maybe I'll try that.

There is a record function which should allow saving to your computer. However I can not get the app to save pics or videos.

rkpetersen · Sep 22, 2017

Darwin stinton said:
These look like a great cheap camera, but if I understand correctly, they probably won't work with the Apex Fusion.

Had a heck of a time finding the actual specs for this ip cam, but it looks like it just outputs one signal, an MPEG stream with H.264 compression, which can be hard to integrate into the current Apex dashboard.

At present, the Apex requires either MJPEG or an HTML5 video from the cam. The Apex also needs a URL that can access the cam without additional user interaction. Doing that second step can be pretty easy if you just want video in your Apex Fusion display at home, but if you want get it outside your home, for example on your iphone showing off to friends at the lfs, it's a bit trickier, requiring port forwarding and optimally, signing up for a (free) DDNS service. Also, many ip cams are passworded in firmware. You can add username and password to the url so you don't have to enter them manually, but 1) anyone else looking at that url will now also know your signin details, and 2) some browsers won't accept the username/password at the beginning of a url.

Anyway, I've managed to get a video stream working in Fusion with this ip camera https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0145OQTPG/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 , because in addition to its beautiful 1080P video stream, it also outputs a second stream in MJPEG. MJPEG is pretty primitive; it's just a rapid series of jpg images streamed one after another. It's also limited to 640 x 480 resolution, and with this particular camera, it looks like it takes the entire 1080p MPEG frame and resizes it, so your tank will look shorter left to right than it actually is.

Still, after spending several hours figuring it all out and setting it up, I gotta say it was definitely a treat and brought a smile to my face seeing a little live video of my tank in that fusion display for the first time.

Of course, the undistorted full 1080p video stream is also available anywhere through the Amcrest View app. And it looks considerably nicer, although still much less than you might expect for 1080p because the cam is a good distance away and I've digitally zoomed the image to just show the tank.

But I'm still gonna show it to people in Fusion, because it's cool.

Oh, btw, this list is absolutely invaluable for figuring out how to access ip cams outside of their captive cellphone apps. http://www.ispyconnect.com/sources.aspx

Anyone who's gotten a 720p or 1080p video stream to integrate with the Apex, please let us (me) know how you did it.