Re-Install Question

[Sam McGee]

Hello,

I am new to Blue Iris. My first installation allowed me to view my camera at the local computer but hung up before I could view on my LAN or WAN. With permission from Blue Iris, I installed on a second, stronger computer so I have 2 installations. That second installation and/or by inability seems to have led to conflicts with port assignments. I think what I need to do is uninstall Blue Iris from both computers and reinstall on the stronger one only. My question is , what to do with the Forwarded ports on the TP-Link TL-WR841N router. The UPnP ports 81 and 8081 seem ok but under Camera Properties => Video => Network IP -> 192.168.0.139:80 shows and BI says not to mess with port 80 (I didn't but it appears BI did). Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you,
Sam McGee

 

[looney2ns]

Turn off the Forwarded ports in the router, that's a big security risk. Also turn off UPnP as that is also a risk. Leave them off.

I don't understand why you believe you need to uninstall off of both computers.

Go here and study: VPN Primer for Noobs

 

[Sam McGee]

Sorry to take so long responding. Had a situation.

Let me see if I understand. You do not want ANYONE but you to view your camera. I understand that, after all, it is a security camera.

On the other hand, I want to use my camera as a Scenic view/Weather camera for you and anyone else on the internet. So, maybe you're trying to point me in the right direction and I'm too dense to see the path, but if I could use a VPN to send the camera stream to a "holding pen" to distribute to any interested party, I'm all ears. I would love to not have every Tom, Dick, and Harry on my local computer sucking up my bandwidth but I don't know how.

Thank You
Sam McGee

 

[hmjgriffon]

Sorry to take so long responding. Had a situation.

Let me see if I understand. You do not want ANYONE but you to view your camera. I understand that, after all, it is a security camera.

On the other hand, I want to use my camera as a Scenic view/Weather camera for you and anyone else on the internet. So, maybe you're trying to point me in the right direction and I'm too dense to see the path, but if I could use a VPN to send the camera stream to a "holding pen" to distribute to any interested party, I'm all ears. I would love to not have every Tom, Dick, and Harry on my local computer sucking up my bandwidth but I don't know how.

Thank You
Sam McGee

we need to know exactly what you are trying to do, sure you could have a vpn running to the house and then a computer, say BI, or an NVR then sending a stream out to the net.

 

[Sam McGee]

Ah, exactly what I'm trying to do. If you live in the D.C. area and own a weekend home on Smith Mountain Lake, you might like to "see" what the weather is like on the lake; If you live on the lake and want to know what the boat traffic is at "the bridge"; if you have heard that Smith Mountain Lake is a great place to retire; all of these are reasons people would like to view SML Weather PTZ on their home computer and I would like to facilitate that with a live PTZ camera view.

Sam McGee

 

[looney2ns]

Sorry to take so long responding. Had a situation.

Let me see if I understand. You do not want ANYONE but you to view your camera. I understand that, after all, it is a security camera.

On the other hand, I want to use my camera as a Scenic view/Weather camera for you and anyone else on the internet. So, maybe you're trying to point me in the right direction and I'm too dense to see the path, but if I could use a VPN to send the camera stream to a "holding pen" to distribute to any interested party, I'm all ears. I would love to not have every Tom, Dick, and Harry on my local computer sucking up my bandwidth but I don't know how.

Thank You
Sam McGee

Sam, the security risk is much bigger than someone being able to watch your cameras. Sending the video stream out of your network for public consumption is one thing, but having ports open is a risk to your entire network and everything on it. Such as cams, computers, smart TVs', your cell phone while using WIFI. You have some studying to do to pull it off safely.

You can absolutely do what you are wishing, but you have to do it correctly.
Please read this for more info: IoT attacks: 10 things you need to know

 

[Sam McGee]

You can absolutely do what you are wishing, but you have to do it correctly.

Yeah, but how do I do it correctly?!

 

[looney2ns]

Hopefully, someone that knows more about doing that will be along to help. I don't have any actual experience in that area.

 

[Sam McGee]

"I don't have any actual experience in that area."
Shucks!

 

[tangent]

Ah, exactly what I'm trying to do. If you live in the D.C. area and own a weekend home on Smith Mountain Lake, you might like to "see" what the weather is like on the lake; If you live on the lake and want to know what the boat traffic is at "the bridge"; if you have heard that Smith Mountain Lake is a great place to retire; all of these are reasons people would like to view SML Weather PTZ on their home computer and I would like to facilitate that with a live PTZ camera view.

Sam McGee

Allowing other people to control the camera is harder to do securely.

For live video, something like youtube live or ustream is a good option for allowing people to view the video but not control it. Each time another person starts watching the video feed the bandwidth used increases (bandwidth per stream * users), so you can quickly saturate your internet upload or hit the camera's limit. The other option would be to setup something like an nginx proxy and something to pass limited commands to the camera like switching PTZ presets.

A lot of scenic webcams simply host a static JPG image that get's uploaded once every 1-10 minutes. Sometimes people do this on their own website, sometimes they post to something like this: Webcam Directory | Weather Underground which is kind of nice as you get a calendar view of snapshots and daily time lapse videos.

You also have the issue of video codec support as browsers are dropping plugins and a lot of people wouldn't have the required plugins installed anyway.

 

[tangent]

You can also set the camera to do a pre-programmed tour

 

[hmjgriffon]

Allowing other people to control the camera is harder to do securely.

For live video, something like youtube live or ustream is a good option for allowing people to view the video but not control it. Each time another person starts watching the video feed the bandwidth used increases (bandwidth per stream * users), so you can quickly saturate your internet upload or hit the camera's limit. The other option would be to setup something like an nginx proxy and something to pass limited commands to the camera like switching PTZ presets.

A lot of scenic webcams simply host a static JPG image that get's uploaded once every 1-10 minutes. Sometimes people do this on their own website, sometimes they post to something like this: Webcam Directory | Weather Underground which is kind of nice as you get a calendar view of snapshots and daily time lapse videos.

You also have the issue of video codec support as browsers are dropping plugins and a lot of people wouldn't have the required plugins installed anyway.

if you stream to youtubes, and 500 people are watching the video, that uses their internet and youtubes resources, you'll still be streaming one stream to youtube, unless I have no idea how youtube works, lol.

 

[tangent]

Allowing people full control is trouble as it's easily abused. Either by people who try to deliberately cause damage to the camera or point the camera at inappropriate things, eg. zooming in on somebody's bedroom window.

Tour or preset would be the way to go

 

[tangent]

if you stream to youtubes, and 500 people are watching the video, that uses their internet and youtubes resources, you'll still be streaming one stream to youtube, unless I have no idea how youtube works, lol.

Correct

Lets say your video stream is 1mbps and your isp upload is 5mpbs. 5 people connect to the feed directly and your entire upload is used up.

If you stream to something like youtube live, there's only 1 connection to their servers from your network. They host/distribute the video to the 500 people watching the video (in reality it would likely be <10 people at any given moment).

The simplest option is just to set the camera to FTP the image at a regular interval but that's better suited for a fixed camera.