Can't get Foscam R4S working with Blue Iris, or anything else

bfollowell

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I'm not certain if this Foscam forum or the Blue Iris forum is the best place to start for help, so I'm going to start here.

Back before Christmas I purchased a Foscam R4S camera on sale. I read a lot of negative on here about Foscam cameras in general, but I got a really good deal on this one and I wanted to put a cheap camera in my garage and, basically, I wanted another camera on my Blue Iris setup to play around with and I wasn't quite ready to purchase and install all the more expensive outdoor cameras I'm looking at.

I remember tinkering with it the first day or two I got it several months ago, and having a video feed, but I can't recall if that was from their software or from Blue Iris. Then we got busy with the holidays, then a trip to Shenzhen to visit our grandson, then a quick trip back home for two weeks of quarantine after having to cancel over half of our trip. Fast forward to now, I'm having my garage floor epoxied in two weeks and I want to get this camera setup and recording with Blue Iris before then, but I don't recall anything that I've done, or where the software that came with the camera is or pretty much anything else. I can't seem to find any information at all on the R4S on the foscam.us site, and Blue Iris won't pickup an image from it at all.

So far, this morning, I've added a new camera to Blue Iris, I've entered my camera's IP address, which I confirmed with my router's network map. I have the username and password setup correctly. I have the camera Make set as Foscam and the Model C1/C2/R2/R4/... I left everything else as it was, either blank or default. So far I've gotten nothing from this camera. I just get a gray screen that says no signal and HTTP: 12029 Cannot Connect.

Is anyone familiar with this camera or does anyone have any idea what I may be doing wrong?

Thanks.
 

bp2008

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Please show a screenshot of Blue Iris's camera settings > Video > Network IP Configure (the place where you chose Foscam as the model).
 

bp2008

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You may be able to get a video feed by setting Blue Iris to use a generic RTSP/H.264 stream, with the path /videoMain, protocol rtsp:/ (upper-left dropdown box). Try RTSP port number 554 and if that doesn't work then try 88 because I saw that listed in a few google search results.

It can be helpful to install VLC media player and use it to connect to your camera first via the address rtsp:/camera_ip:port/videoMain. This will let you try different port numbers and be fairly confident that what you entered is actually working, and if VLC prompts you for a user name and password then you know you need to enter the user name and password in Blue Iris too.
 

bfollowell

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I finally noticed the "How to add camera to BI that is not in the drop down list" sticky thread on the Blue Iris Troubleshooting forum. That led me to ONVIF, which helped me get it going. I saw the /videoMain and copy/pasted that into the Path. That still didn't get me there though. I also noticed the :88 at the end of the address, so I added that to the address in Blue Iris and that's what did it. Now I have an image and I'm recording.

Here's my settings, just for the heck of it. Even though it seems to be working now, I'm certain there's probably something that isn't set as it should be or that could be better.

Thanks.


Capture.JPG
 

bp2008

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That is the problem with Blue Iris's camera configuration. It is a giant mess. There are many valid ways to configure a camera, and a lot of the options are simply ignored a lot of the time (like the "Params" and "Camera" fields below "Path"). The port number can go in the address bar, or in the RTSP port box, or in the ONVIF port box, and I really have no idea what decides which of those port numbers to use. The "Path" can also go in the address bar. The "Model" you chose may decide which protocol is used, yet you can have a different protocol selected in the dropdown box in the upper left. "Model" could also have hidden meanings internally, like some cameras use a non-standard streaming protocol which Blue Iris took the time to figure out and implement just for that one particular brand. Several of the "Network options" checkboxes do not apply to certain cameras. The audio stream doesn't typically require its own Path, or for you to specify the format.

The biggest problem is, every one of those options was added for a reason, and if they go away, it will break someone's configuration. So we all just get to live with the fact that configuring an IP cam in Blue Iris is a lot more complicated and fiddly than it should be.
 

TonyR

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Glad you got it running but I have info in case it sheds additional light or helps with other questions. Below, attached, is the PDF manual.

Note that page 7 lists your RTSP video stream URL for a player such as VLC to be (for the MAIN stream) as:

Code:
rtsp:/username:password@camera-IP-address:554/videoMain
NOTE: there's TWO "/" after RTSP, forum software won't allow 2 consecutively!
 

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bp2008

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Note there's currently a bug on this forum which removes one of the forward slashes after rtsp:. There are always supposed to be two forward slashes there.
 

bfollowell

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Thanks guys. I really appreciate it!

I'll add notes to myself about ONVIF. that may help with the future cameras that are sure to come. I'll save the manuals as well, until I find mine.
 

TonyR

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Note there's currently a bug on this forum which removes one of the forward slashes after rtsp:. There are always supposed to be two forward slashes there.
I was adding the NOTE when you come back with that. :)
Mike's aware but still no joy, I guess.
 

bp2008

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Yeah, you can actually put three forward slashes in there and the forum will remove one of them and make it two. But if you later edit your post, you need to add the third slash again because the forum is going to take away another one each time you edit until there is only one left.
 

markproy

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I just bought a Foscam R4S, and I cannot connect to it via RTSP. I am able to configure it from both the ios app and the web browser interface. I have tried every combination of rtsp url that I can find or dream up (with or without username/password, using port 554 or 88, using "/videoMain", "/VideoMain", "/videoSub") to no avail. I found a youtube video showing someone connecting to the R4S from BlueIris successfully, and I see someone had success above. For me, I always get "connection refused" when using port 554, and with port 88, I still have no luck. I'm using VLC directly to test this. What am I missing?

One extra bit of confusion is that the Foscam documentation shows an RTSP port in the Onvif configuration page, yet when I visit the configuration of my camera, it is NOT there. Is this a hint that RTSP is NOT supported on my Foscam R4S? That seems pretty strange. I'm hoping the experts can set me straight here, as I'm new to RTSP.

Here's what the doc shows:

1589202117348.png

Here's what my configuration page shows (not there is NO RTSP port setting):

1589202148309.png

I've attached the VLC log output when I try VLC using rtsp:/my-ip:88/videoMain. Looks better, but still no output.

Thanks very much for your input.
Mark
 

markproy

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One more bit of news on this... still stumped, but somehow using VLC on a Mac, was able to solve half of the problem. Using "rtsp:/<username>:<pw>@<my-ip>:88/videoMain", I am able to have VLC give me the audio from the camera. That shows that at least the ports and connections are working. However, I'm not even interested in the audio. I can't get the video to display. And on ubuntu, VLC starts to connect and then VLC crashes. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Mark
 

markproy

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In case others run into this and still are trying to get VLC to work, one other thing that IS working is the use of gstreamer on ubuntu. It has no problem grabbing the rtsp stream.

gst-launch-1.0 rtspsrc location=rtsp:/<username>:<pwd>@10.0.0.193:88/videoMain ! decodebin ! autovideosink

Still stumped on VLC's inability. But at least more unblocked.

Mark
 

TonyR

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@markproy ,
Have you tried the free ODM? If your cam is, in fact, ONVIF-capable and it's enabled, when you log into cam with ODM and select 'Live Video' the RTSP stream URL should be revealed down at bottom right (I believe).
 

scott492010

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You may be able to get a video feed by setting Blue Iris to use a generic RTSP/H.264 stream, with the path /videoMain, protocol rtsp:/ (upper-left dropdown box). Try RTSP port number 554 and if that doesn't work then try 88 because I saw that listed in a few google search results.

It can be helpful to install VLC media player and use it to connect to your camera first via the address rtsp:/camera_ip:port/videoMain. This will let you try different port numbers and be fairly confident that what you entered is actually working, and if VLC prompts you for a user name and password then you know you need to enter the user name and password in Blue Iris too.
adding /videoMain is what it took to show on my BI even though it was connected ... Thank you.
 

vicos

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Had the same problems as everyone else trying to add a new Foscam R4 to Blue Iris v4.

TLDR; Had to use the Foscam app on my phone to connect to the camera and in advanced settings enable ONVIF.

After that, adding camera to BI can be done as usual: enter your IP and port number 88
Specify your user and passwd and then press the Find/Inspect button to have BI set the other config parameters.

BTW, my R4 no longer supports direct login using a web browser. It tells you to download the phone app or their Windows VMS product.
 
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