Blue Iris MJPEG Video stream stops or locks up

Hi.

The MJPEG Video stream work to various degree and depend on infinite number of combinations of hardware, software and configuration used.

Unfortunately, the only thing I can recommend at this moment is to try to use a different browser. Our customers are reporting great success using the Fully Browser for Android.

We are considering to add an option to reload Panels periodically to kick start video stream, in case they are frozen.

Thanks

Alex

I have this similar behavior on a tablet with Fully browser. It stalls over time, hmm, maybe I need to find a way to restart the browser itself.

I have the same issue on a tablet with the Fully browser. It may have something to do with the horsepower of the tablet. I plan to switch to the Fire8 (2017) that I purchased when I can work it in. Then i will post an update if the same issue persist.

Brandon,

Are all your camera going through Blue Iris? I did not think that Wyze Cam was compatible with Blue Iris?

Yes Terry. Wyzecam works through BI. It has dropouts unrelated to this issue. I am not including those drop puts in this issue.

I see the same issue on windows box.

What do you mean "on windows box", Patrick?

Is that where you run Blue Iris? And/Or run ActionTiles? Which browsers have you tested? Have you tested more than one? What exact behavior are you observing?

Pardon the interrogation, but details are very important.

Thanks!

...Terry.

Seems most folks are using an tablet of some sort. I am just trying from my Chrome browser on my Windows 10 machine.

Ultimately I want to run it on a Samsung Hub Fridge browser but the images don't show at all on it. I am sure its Samsung issue on that platform. 

I also struggled with this and after testing a ton of different ways, found this to be working very well (knock on wood).  I believe Terry posted the login link suggestion at one point but I never saw anyone confirm it worked.  I made some other minor tweaks.

If you haven't already, create another user in your BI account.  I restricted mine to LAN access only and cut the max frame rate down to 5 fps to help lighten the load on my tablet.  

Use this login link in AT for each camera: 

http://IPADDRESS:PORT/mjpg/CAMERASHORTNAME/video.mjpeg?user=USER&pw=PASSWORD

I have found that my BI CPU usage goes up a bit, but I have plenty of capacity so it's not an issue for me currently.

this is still an issue. i'm using blue iris and a fire 8 with fully browser. it works great for awhile then the feed freezes up. the option to reload a panel periodically might solve a lot of problems people are having with media tiles. are you going to implement that option?

thanks,

pete

Have you tried just setting the Media type to Still Image (but use the streaming URL) so you can give it a refresh frequency?

I also think Fully PLUS has a timed reload option that night work in the meantime.

what is the minimum refresh time we can assign? 0.2 seconds to give an effective frame rate of 5 fps, for example?

For this situation, I'm suggesting to NOT use the "JPEG" URL, but use the MJPEG (streaming) URL.

Just set the refresh to 600 seconds (or 900, or more), to force a reload of the Tile periodically in case the streaming gets stuck.

Worth a try. Not sure if it will resolve the situation.

We don't recommend still image refresh any more frequently than 1/second. It's not likely to work reliably for anything less than 5 seconds.

Where is this option to reload the tile?  Is this new?

Not new:  It's in the Media definition (the box where you put the URL to the camera), not the Tile.

So you're saying to use the Still Image option with the MJPEG streaming URL and set the refresh rate to 600 (or whatever) seconds?  And it will still play the live video feed? 

I asked if this was new because this solution hadn't been suggested in the past.  Would be tickled if this solved the issue. =)

Yup... That's the suggestion we've made a few times in various places, but haven't heard confirmation that it helps.

I can confirm this has fixed the issue for me.  I have three streams and haven't had any of the three freeze up on me, on three different HD 10 devices, in the approx month since you posted this suggestion above.  I changed the refresh rate to something less (each of the three streams are different, something like 10, 30 and 90).  All three streams still stream at the same frame rate that they did when using the MJPEG option.  

Major win to have gotten this fixed.  Thank you.

I had also posted this in another BI thread, in case it helps:

I also struggled with this and after testing a ton of different ways, found this to be working very well (knock on wood). I believe Terry posted the login link suggestion at one point but I never saw anyone confirm it worked. I made some other minor tweaks.

If you haven't already, create another user in your BI account. I restricted mine to LAN access only and cut the max frame rate down to 5 fps to help lighten the load on my tablet.

Use this login link in AT for each camera:

http://IPADDRESS:PORT/mjpg/CAMERASHORTNAME/video.mjpeg?user=USER&pw=PASSWORD

I have found that my BI CPU usage goes up a bit, but I have plenty of capacity so it's not an issue for me currently.

I cannot get AT to consistently display my cameras. It randomly works then goes out. I've tried it with passwords and without. I've tried removing password in BI for the "actiontiles" user. I've looked at all threads I could find on google and tried their method.

Is there a definitive method to get a steady, reliable display of either refreshing still images or video feeds in AT tiles?  I really want to use AT, but videos feed in the control center are pretty important to me.  That's what my wife uses the most out of all the thousands of $ I put into home automation.  If there is a good method, maybe get a new current thread going describing it

I've seen the thread with the videos by TaylorTech, but I don't have WYZEcams (I assume it would work with any camera connected to BI), and I would really prefer not to have ANOTHER device I have to monitor or keep up with.

Thanks for all the attention you're giving to subscribers, and I'm sure I'll purchase this anyway, just really wanted video.

EDIT: BI is running on a Windows 10 machine, I'm trying to display AT on an old Ipad 4 with Chrome (or Safari), and an HD10. Any other info you need?

Please send a note to Support@ActionTiles.com with as much detail about your configuration as you can. We might have some suggestions specific to you.

Also be sure to start simple and test with just a single Media Tile on the Panel - though we have Customers with as many as 6 from Blue Iris... 

Well, after digging around in Smartthings, BI, resetting my hub (by accident, don't ever delete your geolocation, it's actually your "Home hub" with all your devices!), reloading my devices, then going through every single post about Blue Iris in Actiontiles, chatting with Terry, putting my head through the wall, fixing the sheetrock, then digging around in BI again, I figured out why I couldn't get any method of displaying mjpeg streams or refreshing jpg of any of my cameras.  I tried every single URL posted on all the discussions, and none worked.

And here's the culprit (drumroll please):

Click Advanced in the lower right of your Web Server:

My default was "All Connections".  I changed it to "Non-LAN only" and all the links started working!!!  You could also uncheck the Use secure sessions, but I'm sure that would be foolhardy.

The URL I like best came from HERE and cycles through all my cameras quickly.

Terry, thanks for your PM, and your attention to your subscribers. I'll certainly be purchasing!!

Hi;  

Has this option moved or been deleted?  I'm having the same issue as outlined and a reload/refresh option would be awesome!  Thanks!!

I'm having the same issue. I've tried as a still image (as well as MJPG) with a refresh frequency - but the refresh doesn't catch it. I am using Fully. This only happens with my 3 wireless cameras, all of my hard-wired cameras work great. The image on blue iris itself does not freeze. only the image viewed within actiontiles. It unfortunately has proven to not work very well as a triple baby monitor. There are 5 cameras in total on the panel, I tried dumbing it down to a single camera (picked one of my babies!) and it still did the same thing. Hmmmm.....

Test with Silk (and... Firefox?). It would be interesting to see if this is a browser specific issue.

Hi All, 

I've had similar issues with video feeds stalling on both an iPad and a Kindle Fire. I've had no  success in making the streams more stable, so instead I tried to find a way to kick start them when they fail.

My solution is specific to anyone with a unifi network setup & is comfortable with node-red. So its not for everyone.

What i'm doing here is querying my Unifi Network Controller for details of connected clients using the node-red-contrib-unifi node.

My filter devices code looks like this:

const client = {
"Adams-iPad": "Adams-iPad",
"amazon-04e1baafb": "amazon-04e1baafb"
};

return Object.keys(client).map(function(topic) {
let devices = msg.payload[0].filter(device => device.hostname === client[topic]);
return {
topic: topic,
retain: true,
payload: devices
};
});

I'm then relying on some extra nodes to get the data out including : 'JSONFilter' to get the rx_bytes-r value from the controller & 'bigsplitter' to make it usable.

The rest of the flow checks if the rx rate has fallen below 500kbps (which would mean a cctv stream has stalled) If it stays consistently low for 5 consecutive checks, it sends a command to either reconnect in the case of an iPad, or Block and unblock in the case of a kindle fire. This is enough to kick start the stream again (with fully kiosk set to refresh on network reconnect).

If you use node red, you can import my flow from your clipboard using this pastebin link.

I've also raised a ticket with the node-red-contrib-unifi github author to see if we can find a more elegant way to do things, you can follow this ticket here.

I hope this is useful to someone other than me!

Adam

For those of you that are looking to get just the image pulled to save TONS of CPU usage on your BI server use

http://IPADDRESS:PORT/image/SHORTNAME?user=USER&pw=PASSWORD

This way you can leave your server as ALL CONNECTIONS need authentication.

using the MJPEG approach described above with BlueIris / Fully Kiosk on a Samsung Tab A ... it has been working for me consistently.  Now, it freezes intermittently.  Sometimes it goes 8 hours, other times a few minutes.  I was trying to solve how to include a button to launch the app Storm Radar.  Not sure if I changed something or if the change happened elsewhere.  To unfreeze it, I just refresh the screen by clicking the "Home" button on Fully Kiosk.  Any ideas?

Nothing in ActionTiles has been changes on how video streams are handled. There could be many external factors affecting this:

Tablet OS changes.

Home network/router changes.

Camera firmware.

Fully Browser updates.

I can't offer any recommendations to fix the root cause of this issue.

One thing to try is to enable the Auto Reload setting of the app. It's available under App Settings > Auto Reload.

I hope this helps.

thanks, I already had auto reload set at 300, but I went ahead and enabled some of the other auto reload options to see if that helps.

Don't turn on "Delete Webstorage on Auto Reload" as that logs you out of AT each time it reloads!  But turning on "Delete Cache on Auto Reload" fixed my problem.

Recent experiences -- I have tried Fully Kiosk and more recently Wall Panel (from Github), but I have now changed to the Android app for ActionTiles.  With this app, and accessing my blueiris server using "still image or GIF", a refresh of 1 second, and this address format:

http://ipaddress:port/image/camera_short_name?user=user_id&pw=password

It has been stable and reliable for several days now, a new record.  I have also found that the weather radar and weather forecast work reliably with the app.  The responsiveness to tapping action buttons is much better than in Wall Panel.

Only functions I have found missing (or don't know how to use) so far:

+ open the panel when starting the app rather than the design page

+ would like to be able to lock the app so a code is required to exit

+ motion sensor using the camera to dim or turn off the display when there is no one nearby.