What are the steps to monitor a camera from another location in Blue Iris?

[Weather_Junkie]

So I currently have a 4 camera set up with Blue Iris on my home network. My PC runs Blue Iris and all cameras record to external drives. On Saturday, my 78 year old father is going home after 3 months in the hospital and he's got a serious case of hospitalitis and has been yanking out his cath ( I know, HOLY CRAP). My mom can't afford 24 hour home healthcare and she can't watch him 24/7 so she asked if my wife and I can set up a camera remotely to check up on him from our house.

I can take one of my indoor Amcrest cameras and put it in his room to monitor him from BI on my PC and Android app. Once I port forward her router, do I stunnel it too and, even though I don't use VPN on my system, I have NordVPN with 5 additiona licenses so I can add that too. I don't currently have Nord running on my network because it messes up my BI remote login as the IP address changes and I haven't figured out how to reconfig that. I do however have it running on my phone all the time.

So, is this doable and if so what are the steps?

 

[J Sigmo]

The Nord, and other VPN services are for a different purpose, and do not accomplish what you want for securely viewing your cameras from outside of your LAN.

For this, you want to set up your own VPN. It is relatively easy to do this on the newer Asus routers. But will you be setting their home up with a Blue Iris PC, or just viewing a single camera?

 

[Weather_Junkie]

Viewing just a single camera through their wifi. I'd just like to operate in BI like the rest of my cameras. May be just a reeeeealy strong password?

 

[bp2008]

The strength of the password isn't the main concern. It is like installing a better lock on your front door when all the windows are unlatched and the back door doesn't even have a lock.

How to Secure Your Network (Don't Get Hacked!) | IP Cam Talk

 

[looney2ns]

Viewing just a single camera through their wifi. I'd just like to operate in BI like the rest of my cameras. May be just a reeeeealy strong password?

Have you checked to see if your router or you moms has Openvpn built in? If so, it would be fairly straight forward to setup.

 

[Weather_Junkie]

Mine does not and you helped me big time a couple months ago to at least set up my rig to at least Stunnel. I will be checking her router tonight and think hers is a Netgear she rents from Charter/Spectrum.

 

[J Sigmo]

We have charter/spectrum here, and for us, the cable modem is provided by the company, but we supply our own router.

Even if her router is provided with the package, you can buy your own router and use it with her system. Even if you have to buy a new Asus router with the OpenVPN facilities built-in, it will make things so easy that it's worth the expense.

VPN in the router is a really good way to go to get secure remote access to cameras and the like. Depending on what they have on their network, you most likely don't want to open up their network to easy attack. Really, the less computer-saavy a household is, the more protection their systems need.

 

[Weather_Junkie]

About to order two Asus routers for my house and theirs. Do I get just a router with onboard VPN since they have a separate modem from Charter? For me, I have the all-in-one Pace router from AT&T so I know I'll need the combo one. Even though I have my one port going through Stunnel, it's overwhelmingly obvious from all the forum talk that a router with a built-in VPN is the only real way to protect the network.

For now, I just have their camera running through the Amcrest Pro app on my phone and will just use their motion alerts for my purposes. I didn't open any ports to do this so should this be safe?

Once I get the new router running at their house, I will still need help connecting their camera to my Blue Iris interface at my house. Is it as easy as just creating a new camera in BI and entering in the camera's static IP I made and then the user name and password?

 

[J Sigmo]

I'm afraid my expertise about what you're trying to do is pretty much exhausted at this point. I've never tried to link a camera in, remotely, and have it show up as a camera in BI. But I do believe this is possible.

I'm hoping some of the experts will chime into this thread because I want to see what the answer is, too.

Does the charter/spectrum setup at their house seem like mine, with a separate cable modem and router? Or do they have an all-in-one modem/router? I suspect Charter/Spectrum uses different equipment in different areas.

I have this router:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FB45SI4/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And it's been excellent. But a thread on here not too long ago showed a newer/faster/better ASUS router that folks were recommending as being better at this time. So take that for what it's worth!

I'm hoping @fenderman, @bp2008, or one of the other true experts with Blue Iris and this remote camera business will chime in with some advice about the exact thing you're trying to accomplish and the most recommended router to get at this point in time, too.

Don't buy anything yet. Those guys (and others with more knowledge about your exact application) will likely have good ideas for you here.

 

[Weather_Junkie]

Does the charter/spectrum setup at their house seem like mine, with a separate cable modem and router? Or do they have an all-in-one modem/router? /QUOTE]

It's a separate modem and router.

 

[looney2ns]

I would buy two of these: https://www.amazon.com/Dual-Band-AiMesh-Router-AC1900-System/dp/B00FB45SI4/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1540229074&sr=1-4&keywords=asus+router

You would then setup the one at your house as a OpenVPN server, and the one at your folks house as an OpenVPN client.
This would provide a full time connection to their network devices as if you were at their house on their network.

When the time comes, we'll get into more details about setup.

You can read the manual here: RT-AC1900P Manual | Networking | ASUS USA see what questions you have.
It's not really as daunting as it sounds.

Someone will be around here to help. One of us could do a teamviewer session, if need be, to help out.

 

[J Sigmo]

That's the router I use. It has worked well and was pretty easy to set up as my VPN server.