As an advertised service, the node complains about the configuration after you save it. (And the link is greyed out)  If I go directly to the IP address with my web browser, it works.

Oh gurus of BBHN, what might be the status of supporting this protocol in the Offered Services arena?

What are the parameters you put in for the advertisement and what is the message you receive back?

Some background information so my answer to your query will make sense:

I purchased a security IP camera. The camera streams the video via RTSP on the default port of 554.

Using a Linksys BBHN node (v2 firmware), I assigned the camera (IPC) one of the addresses from the block of addresses on the LAN.

I put into the Advertised Services:

[IPC]   [RTSP (as the URL)]  [554 (as the port)]

When I saved the configuration, it stated that the configuration was saved, but that there was a problem with the port.

Does that help? Or would you like screen captures? Or do I need to update the node with v3 firmware?

I tried changing the port from 554 to 5540 - both in the camera and in the configuration. I still got the same result.

If you are using anything in the 1.1.x release this is likely BBHN->ticket:53 which was fixed in 3.0.0.

i would suggest upgrading to 3.0.0 (for a number of reasons) and give it another shot. 

Of course 3.0.0 is not protocol compatible with 1.1.x so you will need to update all nodes.

Thank you. I was not sure about the situation. I'll update the nodes with v3 and let you how it goes with the camera.

I updated the node to v3 BBHN firmware and re-entered the IP camera. No difference. I captured some screen shots and attached them. The MAC and IP addresses were blurred out as they should not be relevant to the discussion - and I did not use the broadcast IP address for this node.

Any ideas?

Attachments
 Screenshot-N4FWD-2 mesh status - Mozilla Firefox.png [61 KB] :: No link in spite of correct set up
 Screenshot-N4FWD-2 setup - Mozilla Firefox.png [90 KB] :: Camera set up for Advertised Services

I am not able to duplicate the issue in my lab.

My first thoughts would be to clear the browser cache and try again (to be sure its not a caching issue)  if the error still shows up on saving than I would suggest a different browser as a test to see if its maybe something browser related.

If that doesn't solve it than it will require more in depth searching to the cause as it seems to work fine in my lab.

Edit: See that You are already using Firefox, so my other browser choice seems less likely a cause.

Attachments
 testserviceentry.JPG [57 KB] :: Test Service Entry

I tried clearing the browser cache, using 2 other web browsers besides Firefox (Opera & Chrome). The results were the same. The Setup page will accept the settings for the camera, but the Mesh Status page shows a greyed out server and no services listed. Makes no sense. If I hook up a Raspberry Pi running an IRC service, the node set up accepts the "server" and the mesh status page gives me a link.

I double checked the MAC address of the camera. If I bypass the mesh status page and point the browsers directly to the camera RTSP port, I get video.

It seems to me that I should get a link on the mesh status page which passes the necessary URL to the browser for resolution, just like - irc://<server>:6667 and the browser then talks to the server.

Again, the Setup page accepts the setting without complaining when you save it (unlike version 2). I just don't get a usable link on the Mesh Status page.

Maybe I need to reflash the BBHN node firmware.

I know about your problem as I have experienced it multiple times before. In fact, I just got finished helping someone else out with this problem earlier. I have identified your problem: You have a one-node mesh. Solution:  The second you add another node to the mesh, the link will become visible for the rest of the network. Until that time happens, you can navigate manually by typing the the link you specified in the setup page in the address bar.

Good catch Paul, thanks for the info.

BBHN->ticket:75 has been created for this.

Paul, you were correct about needing a second mesh node. As soon as I flashed another node and configured it, the service link appeared.

However, I am now experiencing what appears to be a DNS resolution issue. I uploaded a screen capture. Is there something configurable which I missed? Maybe on the laptop end of the link?

Background: the web browser is configured to start up the VLC program when a rtsp request is handed to it. A direct connection will produce a login request from the camera. Typing in the viewing account (no password) completes the transaction and video shows.

Attachments
 camera.png [35 KB] :: VLC is unable to resolve URL passed to it

N4FWD, The full URL to connect to the ipCam likely requires more information. Here is a guess for your cam:

rtsp://IPC:554/live/play1.sdp (for trendnet TV-IP862IC cam, use play2.sdp, play3.sdp, ... for lower resolutions)

rtsp://IPC:554/live/ch00_0 (for Ubiquiti airCam, use ch01_0, ch02_0, ... for lower resolutions)

Joe AE6XE

AE6XE, thank you for the input. I have been testing the various aspects of the camera and it's interaction with the mesh node URL.

Update: I found a better streaming video client for Firefox. It is called "mpv". The camera insists on getting account / password before it will stream the video. With mpv, I can manually pass all the information in one URL, but the URL is more involved than what a BBHN link will pass to Firefox.

What the BBHN link passes:   rtsp://IPC:554/live

(Where IPC is the configured server in the BBHN node, 554 is the streaming port,  and '/live' is the extra connection info)

What the camera will accept is:   rtsp://[account:password]@IPC:554/live

(An 'mpv' example with a blank password:    mpv rtsp://iwantvideo:@IPC:554/live)

The 'iwantvideo' would be an account configured on the camera in the above example.

If I can get the URL formatted correctly from the BBHN node link, it would be simple to configure Firefox to use 'mpv'

My thanks to everyone who has helped so far.

Maybe I missed it...what is the make and model of the camera?

Dahua IPC-HFW4300S

Update: Please do not alter the BBHN firmware for this one particular case. Instead, I will write a Perl (or Python) script to parse the URL passed by BBHN and rewrite the URL in a format compatable with the target camera. And then have Firefox call the script to execute the video streaming client. Not a big deal.

The only downside to doing it that way is that the script would have to be installed on all computers needing access to the video stream from the camera.

Update:

I finished the translating program and it works flawlessly if the computer is plugged into the same node that the camera is plugged into. (N4FWD-2)

So, I decided to move the computer to the second node (N4FWD-1) and try using the advertised service link shown for the camera on that node. Dead in the water. After 2 hours of meticulously testing with various combinations, I have come to the conclusion that the RF portion of BBHN simply does not support the RTSP protocol. Both nodes are at the latest version of firmware for BBHN.

[snip]

I grabbed a copy of the firmware using the published svn link by David - AD5OO. The code seems a bit dated. The file, mesh-release, under trunk/files/etc says "1.0.0". Is that right?

One other thought, is it possible that the 554 default port is too low for linux and might be blocked as a system service? When I checked the firewall settings, I noticed that there are only a handful of ports listed.

Ok first off make sure on the SETUP screen you are in DIRECT mode, its the easiest way to set this up (otherwise you have to make sure you have port forwards correct) and should use that unless you have a reaosn not to. In direct mode the node provides no filtering it simply forwards packets direct to your internal network devices (such as your camera)

2) You mention the camera needs "rtsp://[account:password]@IPC:554/live" the Advertised Services link will not support an @ sign so you can't advertise it with a password so you would need to (manually) put the password in on your remote side.  Note however that Advertised URL's have no effect on if the node will permit the traffic or not, it only does a link for others to click on, nothing else, it is purely cosmetic. If you know how to run an RTSP client manually you can do so without the URL and that would be the way to test it.  

It is also possible your camera has security on it to only accept connections from the 'local' network (local in this case would be those on the same lan port as the camera can know by the IP address its given what is local)  this may not be the case but is something to consider. 

3) Port 554 is not relevant to us as the node is not the server (also everything runs as root on the node anyways so the <1024 rule doesn't apply 

4) Firewall, as noted in direct mode we don't add firewall rules for each connection only a forwarding firewall rule. If your in NAT mode it would require extra setup which can be done via the GUI but I recommend getting it working via direct mode first.

RTSP is simple UDP which we fully support over the network.

As for code, the Dave repo hasn't been used for some time (1.0.0)  I recommend checking out http://www.bbhndev.org/  it has recent code on it (everything from current/previous releases to  beta and alpha code)

Conrad,

Thank you for taking time to answer my dilema. As soon as I can get some free time, I will investigate further following your advise.

The passing of the logon information is very simple and can be done for any security camera model. My program takes care of re-ordering the information into a URL for use by the video client program.

I am excited about making the HD video (1280x1024) link work through the BBHN. 

Also, thank you for the new link.

Success! Thank You Conrad. You were correct in your analysis in that the camera needed to see a connection from the same IP address segment.

The fix: I changed the node to NAT, reprogrammed the camera IP to match the NAT LAN IP address range, then assigned a static IP from the DHCP range to match the IP of the camera. Then I forwarded the 554 port from WIFI to LAN.

Now, regardless of which node follows the Advertised Service link, the video streaming works to that node - with the help of my program to translate the URL for the video client.

So, now I will demo the live video link to my local mesh net group.

A big thank you to the BBHN group.

One other note: Multple nodes can watch the same live video at the same time.