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Ideas & Feature Requests
Nest Cam cameras
Has there been any progress made on using NEST cameras that are not Public in Actiontiles? My Actiontiles setup is so close to perfect but not having my camera feeds makes it fall just short. I am hoping there has been some progress in the last year.
Answer
We have done minimal research on this because video is not our area of expertise or focus. ActionTiles is firstly a "view & touch" browser-compatible dashboard control app for SmartThings. Media Tiles are a convenient bonus feature subject to the limitations of a web-app / browser viewer.
There are a few articles on the net which refer to either official APIs for Nest products and/or unofficial hacks.
We invite any tech savvy readers to develop "proofs-of-concept" which stream a Nest Cam in a plain browser window, iFrame, <img> or <video> embeds, and if the concept is sound, we would be inspired to explore it further.
A few example starting points:
- Official "no streaming API is available" per Nest: https://nestdevelopers.io/t/streaming-from-indoor-outdoor-cams/1074 - "Unfortunately there’s no way to directly stream the live camera feed within a non-Nest application using the Nest API. You have to redirect the user to one of the two browser options as you described (public_share_url or web_url)."
- https://dennisdel.com/blog/nest/ - This refers to a hack which grabs the stream for the purpose of self-cloud storage. However, it includes the use of "ffmpeg" which has real-time transcoding abilities, and could perhaps be used to serve an MJPEG to ActionTiles. The user would require a server (rPi, Linux, Windows?) on their network to do the transcoding.
- https://medium.com/@smhillin/connecting-to-nest-camera-api-and-getting-live-url-d69e58d093d
- https://www.binarypower.com/2017/02/record-google-nest-cam-from-blue-iris.html
Most likely feasible: 1 fps snapshots served via tinyCam Monitor Pro:
The clever developer of the Android App - tinyCam Monitor Pro is the only application which supports logging into and streaming Wyze Cams; even though tinyCam has open sourced the unofficial API they discovered & used:
Well, tinyCam Monitor also supports Nest Cam but, consistent with the API limitations described above), only at a maximum of 1 frame-per-second. In other words, it probably grabs JPEG snapshots and assembles them into a stream. Since tinyCam Monitor Pro can transcode to MJPEG by spinning up internal web server, this stream should embed into ActionTiles just like Wyze Cam - including basic user/password protection.
- Here is the list of tinyCam supported cameras: https://tinycammonitor.com/support.html
If similar to Wyze, then tinyCam must use your Nest credentials to login to your camera(s). This has certain risks, since you can't be 100% certain tinyCam doesn't leak your credentials or use them to access other functions of your Nest Account (thermostat, security, etc.). Whether this is more or less secure overall than just using a public live view of each Nest Cam, is up to you to decide.
The various examples above may be somewhat more direct in accessing JPG snapshots from a Nest Cam - but they are non-trivial. tinyCam is most feasible because we already know that it "gets the job done" (imperfectly) for Wyze Cam and local RTSP cameras, so I'm rather confident if they claim Nest works, it will work.
You can run the tinyCam Monitor Pro Android App on the same tablet as ActionTiles (though that does not increase efficiency and can hurt tablet performance), or on another Android tablet, Android emulator, or Android TV Box. I am currently testing this $36 low-end S904W based Android TV box with tinyCam (for 2 Wyze Cams), and so far the results aren't bad. I'll write up my results in more detail if the configuration turns out to be stable.
So... Why not give tinyCam Monitor Pro a try?
...Terry.
IHello,
I tried this method and almost got it working on my Android tablet. I installed tinyCam Pro app on the Android tablet. I configured the Nest Cameras using my Nest logon and could view my cameras in that tinyCam Pro. I then set tinyCam Pro into server mode on the Android.
The process is outlined in these two videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA5U-wp4eKc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCihsweu144
I went to my PC and I could browse to the Android Tablet IP address and see the cameras.
I then added a Media link for each camera. Then added an ActionTile for each Media Link.
The results look fine in ActionTiles when displayed on my Windows PC. I can see my camera feed. This is a great solution because it does not require making my feed public.
However, there is a problem. The action tiles fail to render the image when viewed on my Android Tablet.
Since the tinyCam Pro server is running on the same tablet as ActionTiles, I also modified the ActionTiles Media Link to use IP address of 127.0.0.1 instead of 10.10.10.17 (my local IP). This still did not fix the problem.
I am using an Android P10 with Fully Kiosk (licensed). Not sure what setting I need to get it to play the media.
Any ideas?
Are you using http://user:password@address:port
That won't work. You must use the
?user=id&pwd=password parameters instead.
Yes, that is exactly what I used. And I used ?user=admin&user=". It works fine when viewed in ActionTiles on my PC. It doesn't load on the Android tablet, the one running tinyCam Pro itself. The webserver it's authenticating to is running on same host.
I'm afraid I don't know what to suggest. This works fine for me and a lot of users, but there are so many things that can go wrong, I don't know where to start. Be sure to test in Silk (not just Fully). Try enabling https (SSL). Try the non-loopback IP address. Try the JPG snapshot address instead of MJPEG stream. Try running the tinyCam server on a different device (like your smartphone) - and vice versa - access your server from your phone, etc., etc.,
Customer support service by UserEcho
We have done minimal research on this because video is not our area of expertise or focus. ActionTiles is firstly a "view & touch" browser-compatible dashboard control app for SmartThings. Media Tiles are a convenient bonus feature subject to the limitations of a web-app / browser viewer.
There are a few articles on the net which refer to either official APIs for Nest products and/or unofficial hacks.
We invite any tech savvy readers to develop "proofs-of-concept" which stream a Nest Cam in a plain browser window, iFrame, <img> or <video> embeds, and if the concept is sound, we would be inspired to explore it further.
A few example starting points:
Most likely feasible: 1 fps snapshots served via tinyCam Monitor Pro:
The clever developer of the Android App - tinyCam Monitor Pro is the only application which supports logging into and streaming Wyze Cams; even though tinyCam has open sourced the unofficial API they discovered & used:
Well, tinyCam Monitor also supports Nest Cam but, consistent with the API limitations described above), only at a maximum of 1 frame-per-second. In other words, it probably grabs JPEG snapshots and assembles them into a stream. Since tinyCam Monitor Pro can transcode to MJPEG by spinning up internal web server, this stream should embed into ActionTiles just like Wyze Cam - including basic user/password protection.
If similar to Wyze, then tinyCam must use your Nest credentials to login to your camera(s). This has certain risks, since you can't be 100% certain tinyCam doesn't leak your credentials or use them to access other functions of your Nest Account (thermostat, security, etc.). Whether this is more or less secure overall than just using a public live view of each Nest Cam, is up to you to decide.
The various examples above may be somewhat more direct in accessing JPG snapshots from a Nest Cam - but they are non-trivial. tinyCam is most feasible because we already know that it "gets the job done" (imperfectly) for Wyze Cam and local RTSP cameras, so I'm rather confident if they claim Nest works, it will work.
You can run the tinyCam Monitor Pro Android App on the same tablet as ActionTiles (though that does not increase efficiency and can hurt tablet performance), or on another Android tablet, Android emulator, or Android TV Box. I am currently testing this $36 low-end S904W based Android TV box with tinyCam (for 2 Wyze Cams), and so far the results aren't bad. I'll write up my results in more detail if the configuration turns out to be stable.
So... Why not give tinyCam Monitor Pro a try?
...Terry.