No Image in IOS Push Notifications

[VladGur]

Yes. It is an unfortunate downside of not using a hosted service.
You essentially have only 3 options on IOS going from bad to worse to worst.
1) Bad: only rely on SMS/EMail.
2) Worse: Have your home-VPN always on and route all your phone data traffic through your home's internet
3) Expose blue iris to the world.

I am using option #1 which requires me to do do the following to get to a detailed video from the alert:
1) Find my VPN app and turn it on.
2) switch over to Blue Iris App and login
3) find the specific camera and specific clip in BI

This is a far cry from a single click solution that many of us have grown accustomed to in cloud-based solutions.

 

[Mike A.]

Right if you leave it connected 24/7, it should work. But is this what people typically do? I don’t know that I really want all my internet usage going through my home network

There's a setting in the VPN setup that controls whether other traffic goes through the VPN so you can set that as you want.

In my case I usually want mine running through my network since I have ad and site blocking that filters things plus the encryption.

 

[Post]

Thanks for confirming. So if the VPN app is running constantly on the phone any idea if it consumes a significant amount of battery?

 

[hikky_b]

You can create a VPN profile whereby it disconnects on specified Wi-Fi networks (LAN) and automatically connects upon changing to cellular or unspecified Wi-Fi SSID's. This means that you don't have to manually turn the VPN on/off.

Alternatively you could setup a reverse proxy and expose your BI install to WAN with forced https/ssl and additional authentication, if necessary.

 

[Mike A.]

Thanks for confirming. So if the VPN app is running constantly on the phone any idea if it consumes a significant amount of battery?

No huge added drain that I've noticed. I'm sure that there's some overhead given the encryption. But in practical use I've not really seen much difference. But I really don't drain my battery that much in normal use. Maybe if more actively using it there could be a larger effect. Easy enough to try and see how it goes.

There's a "Battery Saver" option in the OpenVPN settings which stops the connection to the VPN when the device is locked/not active. I've not used it.

Also in settings a selection to use it on WiFi/Cellular/Both which could limit when it's running. I keep it at both so I have my VPN when connecting to WiFi outside of my own. Again, I've not seen any huge drain so haven't really tried to optimize for battery life.

The above is for IOS. Assuming that it's the same or more flexible for Android.

 

[Post]

You can create a VPN profile whereby it disconnects on specified Wi-Fi networks (LAN) and automatically connects upon changing to cellular or unspecified Wi-Fi SSID's. This means that you don't have to manually turn the VPN on/off.

Alternatively you could setup a reverse proxy and expose your BI install to WAN with forced https/ssl and additional authentication, if necessary.

That sounds great but I'm a total newb with this stuff and that may be too much for me. I'm just thrilled I was able to get the basic VPN working.

No huge added drain that I've noticed.

Oh good, I tried it for a little while today and it used very little juice. Another inconvenience I discovered is that I use wireless android auto and it won't connect with the VPN on. I'm assuming it's the same for CarPlay. So, unless the connect/disconnect is automated (as hikky_b described), I can't imagine turning it off/on every time I get in/out of the car.

 

[Mike A.]

Might be able to use something like Tasker if you need to do some dependent connection like that. Not sure what you'd key it to though. When connected to Android Auto wouldn't work since it would be on the other side of the connecting.

I don't have wireless CarPlay to try it.

 

[VladGur]

You can create a VPN profile whereby it disconnects on specified Wi-Fi networks (LAN) and automatically connects upon changing to cellular or unspecified Wi-Fi SSID's. This means that you don't have to manually turn the VPN on/off.

Alternatively you could setup a reverse proxy and expose your BI install to WAN with forced https/ssl and additional authentication, if necessary.

Not sure if custom VPN Profiles are possible or easy to setup with IOS, but that would still send most of your traffic through your home internet connection. If ios allowed you to configure per-app VPN, that would be the saving grace, alas it does not.
In terms of reverse proxy -- that may be possible, but yet again requires you to be a very intentional at cutting a hole through your firewall to a windows machine that probably has full access to the rest of your network. This is something i do not want to spend my free time hardening.

 

[hikky_b]

Not sure if custom VPN Profiles are possible or easy to setup with IOS, but that would still send most of your traffic through your home internet connection. If ios allowed you to configure per-app VPN, that would be the saving grace, alas it does not.

Yes it's fairly easy and there are multiple tools/services available to generate them. As long as your home internet connection is decent I haven't seen this being a problem but it is not applicable to everyone. Per-app VPN would obviously be a great addition that would eliminate most issues surrounding a seamless VPN 'experience'.

In terms of reverse proxy -- that may be possible, but yet again requires you to be a very intentional at cutting a hole through your firewall to a windows machine that probably has full access to the rest of your network. This is something i do not want to spend my free time hardening.

I definitely don't recommend running a reverse proxy off the same machine as BI and I also do not see the need to allowing BI full access to your LAN, regardless. Nginx or Apache can be run on something like a raspberry pi or a VM. Using strict ACL's, authentication, SSL certs, good logging and proper firewall rules will be more than adequate protection. If this is not sufficient, then you may have bigger problems that a VPN will most likely offer no additional protection.