Blue Iris behind someone elses firewall

[Richard Aman]

Good Morning,

I would like to run Blue Iris on my Boat to to keep track of whats happening when I'm not there. The boat is sitting at a Marina and I don't have accesses to the router for any sort of port forwarding. NGROK was recommended to me by someone at Blue Iris support - though they have not personally used it. I downloaded the free version. I was able to get it working for only a few seconds before It crashed because it was overloaded. (I believe 429 error was flashing on the web interface) I'm only running one camera currently to test my setup. I'm kind of new to this type of thing. Any help would be appreciated.

I've also read about hamachi, but don't know anything about it.

 

[bp2008]

Ngrok's free service will limit you to 40 connections per minute which is not very much. Honestly I would not touch that service since their paid plans also have connection limits like that.

Your best bet is to run a VPN server at your home where hopefully you have a public IP address and control over the router. See this thread: VPN Primer for Noobs

Then you should be able to connect a Blue Iris server running on your boat to that VPN and thereby make it accessible. You'll need to do a little work to make sure it connects to the VPN automatically and reconnects automatically in case of connection loss.

Once the BI server is connected to the VPN, you will be able to access it from your home or from any other device that you connect to the VPN.

 

[crw030]

Richard, any particular reason you want the BI machine on the boat? I would work on having just a camera on the boat (lower power consumption) and working out how to reach the camera from a Blue Iris machine at your house possibly (video recorded somewhere other than the boat where it could get stolen, destroyed, sunk etc).
I feel like you are trying something like below, and hitting a bandwidth limit in the link from your boat to the marina, or from marina to the internet.

• camera -- Blue Iris -- marina-network -- internet -- home/wireless network -- monitoring device

Does the marina happen to be within eye-shot of your house (such that a private wireless network link could work?)
Maybe there is some type of:

• camera -- VPN device -- cellular-network -- internet -- home network -- Blue Iris
• camera -- VPN device -- marina-network -- internet -- home network -- Blue Iris

Anyway sounds like a tough problem to solve to me!

 

[Richard Aman]

Richard, any particular reason you want the BI machine on the boat? I would work on having just a camera on the boat (lower power consumption) and working out how to reach the camera from a Blue Iris machine at your house possibly (video recorded somewhere other than the boat where it could get stolen, destroyed, sunk etc).

The idea behind putting cameras on the boat is three fold. First I would like to keep track of whats happening at the boat when I am not there (people and weather). Second, when you are in the boat, you can not see what is happening outside the boat. I would like to be able to have a screen going down below showing outside cameras and whats going on. Lastly, I can not see the back of the boat when I am docking and would use a rear facing camera as a backup camera.

The plan...
I would like to install POE mini dome cameras on the front of the boat and the back of the boat showing my surroundings. The POE cameras are waterproof and 12V. I can power them from batteries on the boat. The cameras will be connected to a WIFI extender (also 12v) making my own wired and wireless network on the boa t (plus the wifi signal is kind of week inside the boat). A Laptop running Blue Iris will be at the heart of the system. While at the dock, the WIFI extender will be connected to the internet and my system will be remote view-able if I can get through the firewall. When the boat leaves the dock, everything will be view able using the local network wifi. Away from the dock, the TV/monitor will not work unless I have the generator working, but the laptop will be remote viewable from a smart device. When I return to the dock / marina, the wifi extender will connect again the to internet and I can view it from home again.

 

[Richard Aman]

Ngrok's free service will limit you to 40 connections per minute which is not very much. Honestly I would not touch that service since their paid plans also have connection limits like that.

Your best bet is to run a VPN server at your home where hopefully you have a public IP address and control over the router. See this thread: VPN Primer for Noobs

Then you should be able to connect a Blue Iris server running on your boat to that VPN and thereby make it accessible. You'll need to do a little work to make sure it connects to the VPN automatically and reconnects automatically in case of connection loss.

Once the BI server is connected to the VPN, you will be able to access it from your home or from any other device that you connect to the VPN.

I'm not sure how many connections per min Blue Iris needs to run? Is there a way to compress the outgoing stream to make it more stream lined?

I do have full access to my home router and can open and forward ports as needed. I would like to get another Blue Iris server running here as well. I have beautiful PC that would work great for this.

 

[crw030]

@Richard Aman Not owning a boat, I guess I'm curious how you plan to power the camera and computer etc. What I mean is the boat hooked up to marina power or something, or don't you risk running your boat batteries dead by powering lots of devices?

 

[Richard Aman]

@Richard Aman Not owning a boat, I guess I'm curious how you plan to power the camera and computer etc. What I mean is the boat hooked up to marina power or something, or don't you risk running your boat batteries dead by powering lots of devices?

When at the dock, the boat is plugged into shore power. Meaning it is supplied with 2 - 30 amps / 110v plugs. One plug supports the climate control and the other plug powers everything else (fridge, stove, tv, exct). When away from the dock, I have several batteries in a bank to power the systems. Everything runs on both 12v and 110v except the climate control & stove. For that we have to run a generator. Basically just think of it as a house that floats with battery backup.

 

[Richard Aman]

To give you guys a better understanding. The Computer for the surveillance system will be installed under the TV. Currently I have a Mac Mini in there, but Blue Iris only runs on a PC. So the mac is getting replaced with a Laptop running in clam shell mode connected to the TV.

 

[awahl101]

hamachi free or paid works well for me, just throw teamviewer on your blue iris server in case it ever does not reconnect. Mine always comes back as long as you throw it in the startup folder.


Sent from my LG-LS997 using Tapatalk

 

[Mr_D]

Ngrok's free service will limit you to 40 connections per minute which is not very much. Honestly I would not touch that service since their paid plans also have connection limits like that.

How do they define that? I've been using the free one for months and never been unable to connect when needed.

 

[vegachicago]

To the original poster, I have a similar situation but with a cabin that picks up wifi from a xfinity hotspot so I can't change router settings. What I did was to use the free version of Teamviewer to remote into my always running laptop and look at blue iris. Works great so far. Been running now about 9 months without any major problems.

 

[Mr_D]

To the original poster, I have a similar situation but with a cabin that picks up wifi from a xfinity hotspot so I can't change router settings. What I did was to use the free version of Teamviewer to remote into my always running laptop and look at blue iris. Works great so far. Been running now about 9 months without any major problems.

The only issue with TeamViewer is that it can use a lot of CPU. Changing the "limit live preview rate" under Options, Cameras can help a lot though. I have mine set to 2 fps which is enough to see what's going on, but keep the CPU usage down.

 

[vegachicago]

I'm using an MSIwind tablet as the laptop running at 1.4 megahertz and only use two cams. It gets the job done quite nicely for 900 miles away. Think I'll upgrade the laptop soon to see if it gets peppier and do the preview rate adjustment. Thanks