+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title"><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Managing_and_using_ONVIF_IP_cameras_with_Linux.html">Managing and using ONVIF IP cameras with Linux</a></div>
+ <div class="date">19th October 2022</div>
+ <div class="body"><p>Recently I have been looking at how to control and collect data
+from a handful IP cameras using Linux. I both wanted to change their
+settings and to make their imagery available via a free software
+service under my control. Here is a summary of the tools I found.</p>
+
+<p>First I had to identify the cameras and their protocols. As far as
+I could tell, they were using some SOAP looking protocol and their
+internal web server seem to only work with Microsoft Internet Explorer
+with some proprietary binary plugin, which in these days of course is
+a security disaster and also made it impossible for me to use the
+camera web interface. Luckily I discovered that the SOAP looking
+protocol is actually following <a href="https://www.onvif.org/">the
+ONVIF specification</a>, which seem to be supported by a lot of IP
+cameras these days.</p>
+
+<p>Once the protocol was identified, I was able to find what appear to
+be the most popular way to configure ONVIF cameras, the free software
+Windows tool named
+<a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/onvifdm/">ONVIF Device
+Manager</a>. Lacking any other options at the time, I tried
+unsuccessfully to get it running using Wine, but was missing a dotnet
+40 library and I found no way around it to run it on Linux.</p>
+
+<p>The next tool I found to configure the cameras were a non-free Linux Qt
+client <a href="https://www.lingodigit.com/onvif_nvcdemo.html">ONVIF
+Device Tool</a>. I did not like its terms of use, so did not spend
+much time on it.</p>
+
+<p>To collect the video and make it available in a web interface, I
+found the Zoneminder tool in Debian. A recent version was able to
+automatically detect and configure ONVIF devices, so I could use it to
+set up motion detection in and collection of the camera output. I had
+initial problems getting the ONVIF autodetection to work, as both
+Firefox and Chromium <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1001188">refused
+the inter-tab communication</a> being used by the Zoneminder web
+pages, but managed to get konqueror to work. Apparently the "Enhanced
+Tracking Protection" in Firefox cause the problem. I ended up
+upgrading to the Bookworm edition of Zoneminder in the process to try
+to fix the issue, and believe the problem might be solved now.</p>
+
+<p>In the process I came across the nice Linux GUI tool
+<a href="https://gitlab.com/caspermeijn/onvifviewer/">ONVIF Viewer</a>
+allowing me to preview the camera output and validate the login
+passwords required. Sadly its author has grown tired of maintaining
+the software, so it might not see any future updates. Which is sad,
+as the viewer is sightly unstable and the picture tend to lock up.
+Note, this lockup might be due to limitations in the cameras and not
+the viewer implementation. I suspect the camera is only able to
+provide pictures to one client at the time, and the Zoneminder feed
+might interfere with the GUI viewer. I have
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1000820">asked for the tool to be
+included in Debian</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, I found what appear to be very nice Linux free software
+replacement for the Windows tool, named
+<a href="https://github.com/sr99622/libonvif/">libonvif</a>. It
+provide a C library to talk to ONVIF devices as well as a command line
+and GUI tool using the library. Using the GUI tool I was able to change
+the admin passwords and update other settings of the cameras. I have
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1021980">asked for the package to be
+included in Debian</a>.</p>
+
+<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
+activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
+
+
+</div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
<div class="entry">
<div class="title"><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_translate_the_Bullseye_edition_of_the_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Time to translate the Bullseye edition of the Debian Administrator's Handbook</a></div>
<div class="date">12th September 2022</div>
</div>
<div class="padding"></div>
- <div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_vlc_bittorrent_plugin_in_Debian__version_2_14_.html">Updated vlc bittorrent plugin in Debian (version 2.14)</a></div>
- <div class="date">14th February 2022</div>
- <div class="body"><p>I am very happy to report that a new version of the
-<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/vlc-plugin-bittorrent">VLC
-bittorrent plugin</a> was just uploaded into debian. The changes
-since last time is mostly code clean in the download code. The package
-is currently in Debian unstable, but should be available in Debian
-testing son. To test it, simply install it like this:</p>
-
-<p><pre>
-apt install vlc-plugin-bittorrent
-</pre></p>
-
-<p>After it is installed, you can try to use it to play a file
-downloaded live via bittorrent like this:
-
-<p><pre>
-vlc https://archive.org/download/Glass_201703/Glass_201703_archive.torrent
-</pre></p>
-
-<p>It can also use magnet links and local .torrent files like the ones
-provided by the Internet Archive. Another example is the <a
-href="https://archive.org/details/LoveNest">Love Nest</a> Buster
-Keaton movie, where one can click on the 'Torrent' link to get going.</p>
-
-<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
-activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
-<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
-</div>
- <div class="tags">
-
-
- Tags: <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/verkidetfri">verkidetfri</a>, <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
-
-
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="padding"></div>
-
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+
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+ <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (43)</a></li>
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+ <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (73)</a></li>
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+ <li><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (63)</a></li>
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