Can I View Panasonic IP cameras from Nokia N800?

[upstatemike]

Does anybody know if the browser that comes with a Nokia N800 will work with the web server in Panasonic IP cameras? There are a lot of other apps for the N800 to let it control Logitech Squeezebox music players and Insteon lighting but I don't want to invest in any screen that can't view my cameras. Has anybody with an N800 tried it with Panasonic cameras?

 

[CollinR]

If it requires you to download an ActiveX control before you can connect to it you will need to have Internet Explorer. So now you can find out if IE can be run on N800.

Sometimes you can get alternate streams from the camera too.

 

[upstatemike]

Yes it does require an ActiveX control. In fact I don't know of too many IP cameras in this price range that don't. I guess I need to find a touch screen PDA or UMPC in the same $229 price range that runs IE instead of Opera.

 

[CollinR]

You would be better served by a decent DVR/NVR that gave you the option of doing either/or. The generally accepted method is you connect to the DVR/NVR and there is no path from the outside to any specific camera. We have been round and round about recording but other benefits come as well.

ActiveX is a stupid move on their part but what can we do? It's not a price range issue it's a codec issue. They have to know your machine has the capability to play/decode it before it works. Most if not all MJPEG cameras will allow you to pull the JPEG stills from them, you would have to search to find a browser that has no support for jpeg.

 

[upstatemike]

You would be better served by a decent DVR/NVR that gave you the option of doing either/or. The generally accepted method is you connect to the DVR/NVR and there is no path from the outside to any specific camera. We have been round and round about recording but other benefits come as well.

ActiveX is a stupid move on their part but what can we do? It's not a price range issue it's a codec issue. They have to know your machine has the capability to play/decode it before it works. Most if not all MJPEG cameras will allow you to pull the JPEG stills from them, you would have to search to find a browser that has no support for jpeg.

I know I can pull JPEG stills but that is not the application I need. I need a small cheap tabletop touch screen that lets me view the camera and operate the PTZ for a better view when something is happening.

I thought about analog cameras plus a DVR when I started (even bought baluns and a quad processor) but I couldn't make the numbers work. I need:

4 Outdoor color cameras good to at least 5 degrees below zero
PTZ (digital zoom is fine) and .2 lux low light operation
12V so I can use a cheap battery backed power supply
Web server for quick access from my desk PC
Distribution to a couple of CHEAP viewing devices in strategic locations (that's what the N800s would have done)

I ended up with 4 Panasonic BB-HCM331A at $485.65 each shipped. Any analog camera with PTZ, outdoor housing, and heater was considerably more than that plus I still needed to buy a DVR for the web server. My overall budget was $2,500 and so far I have spent 2104.40 for the 4 cameras, 12V battery backed power supply and 12V ethernet switch. I have $396 left for screens and was willing to go over budget by $105 to get 2 Nokia N800s. Maybe I will only be able to get 1 screen that can run IE for that but I still don't see where analog + DVR was anywhere close the this budget range.

(I also looked at using fixed analog cameras to eliminate the PT requirement and found I would need at least 8 of them to cover the critical points of interest and they would still need to be outdoors to minus 5 degrees so that just multiplied the housing and heater costs.)

 

[upstatemike]

I see the Asus A626 3.5" PDA runs Windows Mobile 5.0 and costs about $255. I assume this can do ActiveX? Anybody got one of these?

 

[jharrell]

I see the Asus A626 3.5" PDA runs Windows Mobile 5.0 and costs about $255. I assume this can do ActiveX? Anybody got one of these?

Sorry ActiveX by definition means Windows running on a PC since an activex control is basically just an DLL compiled for Intel x86 processors that is downloaded and run inside Internet Explorer only. I know of no PDA form factor devices that run Intel x86 instruction set processors, and even if they did they would need to run a version of Full Windows xp or Vista as Pocket IE and IE are no where near the same thing.

The smallest device you can get to do ActiveX is going to be a UMPC running Full Windows.

It is actually pretty rediculous to even claim that an ActiveX control is accessing the device through a web browser since it only runs in one browser on one type of computer and the browser is really just a application shell, in fact most of the DVR's web interfaces are identical to thier stand alone installed program since they are they same code underneith, might as well just install the full program!

It would be nice to know which IP Cameras/DVRs/NDVRs support a pure HTML with JPEG streaming when a non Windows/IE browser connects as I cannot seem to find any.

I would love to get a DVR/IP Camera I can access through my iPhone or a iPod touch, these are ideal WiFi video viewing devices that have mpeg4/h.264 support built in, but you would need to stream that mpeg over port 80 through http not the oddball port/protocol most DVR's stream the video on.

There is hope for the iPhone though, in June with the SDK you could write a compiled app for the IPhone that can talk to the DVR if the manufacturer decides to do so or if the protocol the use is documented and some third party can do it.

BTW any DVR's that have a documented protocol, do most of them use RTSP or the like to stream video? I know many IP Cams usually tend to publish thier interfaces one way or another.

 

[upstatemike]

Looks like my best bet is to get the Panasonic TV adapter for their IP cameras which costs about $250 and then send the video from there to my TVs through a modulator. For anyplace that doesn't already have a TV I can get a cheap LCD countertop model for viewing the camera image.

 

[jharrell]

Looks like my best bet is to get the Panasonic TV adapter for their IP cameras which costs about $250 and then send the video from there to my TVs through a modulator. For anyplace that doesn't already have a TV I can get a cheap LCD countertop model for viewing the camera image.

Actually there is one option I forgot to mention, you could take the analog video out of a dvr or the ip camera adapter then send it to a slingbox for reencode, I believe slingbox has Windows,Mac,Pocket PC, and Symbian(Nokia) clients. I believe there are some who have done this with DVR's and programmed the DVR's remote into the slingbox allow PTZ through IR commands. It's very hackish but slingboxes work very well.

Justin

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Looks like my best bet is to get the Panasonic TV adapter for their IP cameras which costs about $250 and then send the video from there to my TVs through a modulator. For anyplace that doesn't already have a TV I can get a cheap LCD countertop model for viewing the camera image.

Actually there is one option I forgot to mention, you could take the analog video out of a dvr or the ip camera adapter then send it to a slingbox for reencode, I believe slingbox has Windows,Mac,Pocket PC, and Symbian(Nokia) clients. I believe there are some who have done this with DVR's and programmed the DVR's remote into the slingbox allow PTZ through IR commands. It's very hackish but slingboxes work very well.

Justin

I plan on doing something just like this. As a matter of fact I ordered THIS video switch selector with the hopes that I can learn the IR commands in my Ocelot, then be able to switch the channels via my SlingBox's IR output (to the Ocelot). Not exactly sure how this will all work out but will hopefully get to play around with the components later this week.

Like you stated the SlingBox mobile client works very well!

 

[eufreka]

Hey, I kinda glazed over scanning through this thread, but....

My panasonic IP cams are linked to zoneminder and can be viewed directly in firefox (mozilla) which I believe is available for the N800...so that would not cost anything. They are even remotely viewable via internet...

 

[upstatemike]

Hey, I kinda glazed over scanning through this thread, but....

My panasonic IP cams are linked to zoneminder and can be viewed directly in firefox (mozilla) which I believe is available for the N800...so that would not cost anything. They are even remotely viewable via internet...

Can you operate the camera PTZ controls when accessing them through zoneminder from the Internet?

 

[DeLicious]

good question... i'll check that when i get home as I also have Panasonic IP cams recorded by ZM...

 

[CollinR]

Zoneminder is a DVR/NVR software package as I mentioned above, but turnkey package zoneminder is usually not.

 

[Michael McSharry]

Zoneminder is a DVR/NVR software package as I mentioned above, but turnkey package zoneminder is usually not.

I view my Panasonic on a 3Com Audrey that uses GNX for OS and HTML 3 for the browser. Pure HTML can be used for this. In my case I use the Audrey touch screen touch location to indicate center positon for the camera rather than using a set of direction buttons. For this capability I use asp rather than html so I can convert the x/y coordinates into commands to the camera. If the buttons were dedicated then pure html could be used which should run on any browser. The touch recentering can also be done with JAVA if your browser suppors JAVA. Audrey does not do JAVA.