Questions on RTSP firmware

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1

Hi there, I have a few questions and couldn’t find a FAQ that answers these as I am planning on buying a WZ2 to use with RTSP. Thanks in advance; if there is a document that has all these answers, kindly point me to it.

  1. From what I understand, if one installs RTSP the camera can still be added and used via Wyze app, is this accurate?
  2. The only feature while using RTSP fw that is lost is motion detection?
  3. I will be able to see the camera in the app even if the internet is down, as long as it’s on my local network same as my mobile device it will still show up and show video in Wyze app?
  4. Will it always work via TinyCam if Internet connection (or Wyze broker connection) is down?
  5. Is there any software I can run on Windows or on my Qnap NAS that will be able to take a snapshot at a pre-programmed time and name it according to my need? i.e. yyyy.mm.dd.hh.mm.ss?
  6. Same with 5, but to take video only during certain times? i.e. I only want to capture from 8pm to 8am.

This last one I guess Wyze may not know, but some of you are using apps via RTSP to capture stream/photo so you may know.

Thanks and cheers!

2
  1. yup
    2.motion detection, pan, and anything introduced since about June 2019
  2. don’t know
    4.don’t know
  3. I think VLC can be configured to do this, if not I’m pretty sure there must be something in the Android world that will do.
    /edit - for some reason my response was mangled by Discourse
    Must have something to do with numbered lists.
3

5 and 6 - I use Blue Iris to do this. One time payment and it’s a pretty amazing software.

4

Thanks for the replies - still waiting on #3
Maybe wyze can chime in on that?

5
  1. Already answered, but yes.
  2. Motion detection and notifications works just fine on my RTSP firmware v2’s. However newer features like person detection will not work.
  3. I don’t believe you will see anything in the app over only a local network (as in your internet connection goes down). Your RTSP stream should still work, but the Wyze app doesn’t utilize the RTSP stream, it’s still going over the internet.
    4/5. I have a QNAP connected to my RTSP streams from three v2’s using QVR Pro. It records 24x7 video. I don’t know if you could automate the saving of a still frame, but I know it can be done manually through the QVR Pro client.
6

Thanks for the feedback.

  1. I suppose TinyCamPro or any other IP camera viewer will work in that case. It just would be nice if the app had a setting to fall back or try the local network (RTSP stream as a backup if internet goes down) so that there is no need for additional apps.
    4/5. I have 2 QNAPs and neither support QVR unfortunately (as the free version support 8 cameras), only surveillance station which supports a single camera free (really all I need, always nice to be able to have more though.

Cheers

7

I also forgot to ask; can/does the camera still record on the internal SD card; is that feature still there with RTSP firmware?

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Mine do but playback doesn’t work so well, often resets when I’m using v2.6.371

9

Yes, record to SD option is still there.

Regarding #3. I’ve configured my Camera VLAN to prohibit internet access, and the RTSP feed from the Cameras still works just fine. Of course, the Wyze app cannot communicate so you cannot view/edit the settings that way.

My biggest issue right now is with the stability of RTSP, and getting it to “keep alive”.

I have had a Wyze Pan Cam running 4.29.4.41 for around 6 months now and this has been fairly stable when connected to Blue Iris. On the back of performance/quality I’ve experienced with the Pan Cam running RTSP and in Blue Iris 4/5, I decided to buy a couple of V2 cameras.

These V2 are flashed with what I believe to be the latest RTSP firmware (available for them) – 4.28.4.41. Unfortunately, these are no where near as stable as the Pan Cam. (I assume the 2nd set of digits in the version number equates to model?? If not, I wonder what differs between 4.28.4.41 and 4.29.4.41)

They each require that I stream the RTSP feed via VLC (rtsp://user:pass@ipaddress/live) prior to showing in Blue Iris. And then, after some time (~2 hours maybe?) both just drop, leaving Blue Iris showing ‘no signal’.

They mirror my Pan Cam when it comes to settings, but stability wise, they’re nothing like.

I tried flashing the Pan Cam firmware to the V2 earlier with no joy.

10

I think I saw a post that says if a camera is not connected to the net, it stops working after a while.

Maybe that also explains why your camera with RTSP firmware is “unstable”?

11

I do not know if RTSP affects it but I have done lots of testing on this and I have never had a cam stop recording after losing internet as long as the power is maintained, if power is lost then it must connect to start recording, again this may be different on RTSP

12

My camera VLAN has no internet breakout. Yet my Pan (RTSP, 4.29.4.41) remains rock solid…

13

Not experienced this with RTSP. I have no internet breakout, and on the occasional times I’ve had to reboot, my Pan happily reconnects to BI.

14

Great info all around, I will soon have an additional v2 camera so I can play around with RTSP!

15

Against my desire, I’ve installed Dafang CFW and this has been much more stable for RTSP.

I can only assume the specs of the chips in the V2 aren’t as good as the PAN… OR the firmware for the PAN has some better coding/support for RTSP.

16

I tested both Dafang and Wyze RTSP firmware. I didn’t have stability problems with either But the Dafang firmware has lower resolution.

17

Definitely lower quality (though you do get control over the quantization, bitrate and resolution with Dafang, so you can get it looking ok)

I didn’t and don’t want to keep Dafang long term, but I had zero luck in getting RTSP working on my V2!

As stated, my PAN is and has been rock solid with RTSP for around 6 months!

18

Ok, so I received the new Wyze cam 2 and put on the RTSP firmware on it - so far so good with limited testings.

I guess things were too good to be true, here I was thinking with 2 x QNAP NAS(es?) that are free with Surveillance Station (2 cameras only free licenses). Then I realized the files it saves are AVIs with a header for q264 instead of h264. I did find a small app that will make this conversion, but when I load it into Handbrake to see how I can compress the video to h265 it doesn’t even see the audio stream.

Very very disappointing, and I have no idea why SurveillanceStation does this - so there goes my idea of getting footage and snapshots saved on my NAS for easier archiving… UGH

Is anyone using Surveillance Station with Wyze and RTSP?? I had to use a Generic Camera on SS to add the Wyze cam; there is a spot where one selects:

Resolution / Frame Rate / Quality (and other cameras have a checkmark for “Record Audio” also).
All of these are empty, I cannot select R/FR/Q, and no checkmark for Record Audio.

Although when I look at the resulting file from Surveillance Station with Media Info (windows) it shows audio stream as 128kb/s, 8000Hz, 1 Channel, AAC

I wonder if this is also a header issue (audio) and this is why Handbrake doesn’t see it

19

I also record my Cam 2’s to a QNAP NAS using RTSP, but instead of Surveillance Station, I use QVR Pro which does offer the checkbox option to record audio. Unfortunately, I can report that all my Wyze Cams have the same issue you experienced of no audio getting recorded. It’s something to do with the stream. Either the bitrate, codec, or sampling rate that the Wyze cams output is not recognized by the QNAP, or perhaps the stream is slightly malformed or nonstandard in another way.
Regardless, until Wyze or QNAP make a change, I don’t think there is much that can be done to get it working. I would suggest contacting support for both companies so they are aware of the issue and perhaps take steps to resolve it.

20

This seems to be a Wyze issue using some weird non-standard Audio codec… I can’t even play (audio on) the files on the SD card if I open with Windows media player, I have to use VLC and also make changes when I concatenate them as the audio codec is not supported in the MP4 container according to ffmpeg…so I have to use MKV container…