It used to be that cameras were VGA resolution and that was easier to handle on wireless connections. The RLC-411WS has a resolution of 2560x1440 and a bit rate of about 6144K bps. That’s a lot of data and excellent for reading those auto license plates at distance if you need to zoom a frame. The downside is that on a wireless connection, you will drop frames due to environmental conditions. Consider wiring those cameras. I have three Reolink cameras on my NVR which is a QNAP NAS.

@medic61

On the plus side, you Monocle Gateway appears to be working properly and everything is configured correctly :-) It just can’t access that camera stream over the network.

Hi Robert,

Great suggestion. I went ahead and sent Reolink that feature request for RTSP access to the Argus cams.

Yes the instructions from that link are what I used to get up and running and were super helpful. Many thanks for including. People with IP cameras may already be using a NAS to act as the NVR so it’s nice that it can also be used to run Monocle. Only step that didn’t exactly match my scenario was in the “Configure docker-compose.yml” section, step #6. I didn’t have a physical network interface named “ovs_bond0” but instead just “bond0”. But wasn’t a big deal, it’s easy to SSH in and verify.

A helpful tip for troubleshooting, logging into the Synology NAS web page, going to Docker, and viewing the log via the GUI interface is ok but if one prefers the terminal like I do (I use Putty), you can pull up the same log using the commands below, if anyone is interested.

sudo su -
docker logs monocle-gateway --follow

Thanks,

@Gunn

Hi Tom,

There were some issues with a SSL certificate on the servers yesterday, so you may have better luck today. Also the monocle-proxy error you pointed out is often related to some missing runtime dependencies … please see the note below:

Please note when starting the service/application, if you get any errors that say the file MSVCR100.DLL is missing, then you will also need to download and install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Runtime Libraries available here: Download Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86) from Official Microsoft Download Center

https://www.microsoft.com/en-hk/download/details.aspx

Try installing the MS C++ runtime and then restart Monocle Gateway and see if that error goes away.

Thanks, Robert

@DavinD

Based on the log everything appears to be working.

The Monocle Gateway is fully working. (token, network, listeners, etc) The Alexa device is connecting to the gateway. (port 433, SSL, TCP connectoins) The gateway is connecting to the IP camera. (digest auth, RTSP negotiation) RTSP stream setup and playback is completed. (DESCRIBE, SETUP, PLAY)

However, despite all this success the stream is timing out after just under 1 minute. (see log snippet below)

--> IP CAMERA PLAYING STREAM ... 2019-12-10T05:58:23.620Z [INFO] [192.168.0.113:50322 <H1D-4h3pr>] RTSP ENDPOINT PLAYING MEDIA STREAM: Front Door (STREAM:010625b6-4e4d-4bf4-92b1-58395af45e63) --> IP CAMERA STREAM FORWARED TO ALEXA ... 2019-12-10T05:58:23.620Z [INFO] [192.168.0.113:50322 <H1D-4h3pr>] RTSP CLIENT PLAYING MEDIA STREAM: Front Door (STREAM:010625b6-4e4d-4bf4-92b1-58395af45e63) --> ALEXA TERMINATES CONNECTION TO GATEWAY ... 2019-12-10T05:59:27.840Z [INFO] [192.168.0.113:50322 <H1D-4h3pr>] RTSP CLIENT SOCKET CLOSED 2019-12-10T05:59:27.842Z [INFO] [192.168.0.113:50322 <H1D-4h3pr>] RTSP CLIENT DETACHED FROM STREAM: Front Door (STREAM:010625b6-4e4d-4bf4-92b1-58395af45e63) --> GATEWAY TERMINATES CONNECTION TO IP CAMERA ... 2019-12-10T05:59:27.844Z [INFO] [192.168.0.113:50322 <H1D-4h3pr>] RTSP ENDPOINT SOCKET CLOSED [192.168.0.113:50322 <H1D-4h3pr>]

It’s the Alexa device that is terminating the connection. Presumably there is something about the stream that Alexa does not like.

Can you make sure the camera is configured to use H.264 video codec and not H.265. Some of these camera’s use H.265 by default. Base on the log it already looks correct, but let check and make sure.

You might trying the main stream instead of the sub stream. You may have to lower the stream resolution on the camera itself to 1080P or lower depending on which Alexa device you are using.

You can try adding @noaudio to the tags so that you have both: @tunnel, @noaudio. This will strip the audio channel from the stream. Alexa is very picky about audio stream, so it may be worth a try without the audio just to see.

Thanks, Robert

@womper

Did you manage to figure this out? It does seem very odd to work in VLC and then fail to work in VLC after changing the camera’s resolution. Some ReoLinks are now shipping using the H.265 video codec by default. You may want to check that and make sure you are using the H.264 video codec.

Thanks, Robert

I purchase 12 Reolink RLC-520 cameras because of the great price for the specs on Amazon and was hoping to integrate them on my network for use with Alexa and also on my Shinobi Docker instance running on Unraid.

First I created a new VLAN on my Pfsense router to keep everything separate and then made the VLAN profile on my Unifi switch to assign specific ports to that VLAN. I’ll use a DHCP with static MAC leases and bring each camera online one at a time and name them and test them.

I then installed monocle gateway docker onto my Unraid server inside the same VLAN with a static ip and found out Pfsense was blocking the DNS since it thought it was a rebind threat. I added the exception in Pfsense and voila I could ping the FQDN and the gateway seemed to be up and running.

Now to setup each camera feed add the Alexa skill and test a camera. The hard part. It seems nobody really has any success stories with a lot of information on their settings so I tried a lot of combinations.

Here’s what worked on my Fire TV stick:
RTSP stream: sub
Authentication: DIGEST
Video Resolution: 640*480
Codec: H264
Audio: AAC
Tags: @fake-fmtp, @tunnel

I literally had no success trying anything until I added the @fake-fmtp using the main feed with full resolution and that displayed a bright green video stream (obviously couldn’t interpret it) I switched to the sub stream and had success. I went and tried to load on my Echo Show 5 and it failed which stinks since the Echo Show is the most practical use.

In my journey with the Reolink NVR/Cameras (model RLC-820A), I had no luck connecting with the “_main” view, I needed to use the following in order to get the cameras to work: rtsp://192.x.x.x:554/h264Preview_01_sub. Hope that helps someone.

Maybe this will help:

The final thing that really solidified the stream was naming the camera “Reolink” anywhere a name for the camera was required. I kept the username as “admin” and a simple password that had only letters and numbers. I also gave my camera a static IP address on my router. The Monocle settings are as follows:

RTSP URL = rtsp://<camera IP address>:554/h264Preview_01_sub
Authentication = BASIC
Video Resolution = 640 x 360
Tags = @tunnel

Yes. I have an open call with Reolink. The issue is that the RLC-820A is H.265 only and does not and will not ever support H.264 compression. Alexa can only deal with video streams that are H.264 today. The monocle gateway only supports RTSP to RTP protocol with H.264.

That means that Monocle and mostly Amazon are not supporting H.265 today and that’s why a voice command for this camera is not possible. That being said, Reolink also acknowledges that the RLC-820A has problems today in its firmware. These directly affect voice recording and also create some video glitches. My call with Reolink is open pending a newer firmware for the RLC-820A. The RLC-820A is Reolink’s first H.265 camera and their firmware appears to be almost beta.

I currently record my RLC-820A with QNAP QVR Pro and I am able to record and view in with Shinobi also. Both of these softwares handle the video, but the audio is pop and crackles that are terribly out of sync. A new firmware should fix this.

I also use TinyCam Pro to view all my cameras on my Fire TV 4k Stick. This works perfectly, albiet no audio for the above reason. Because of the H.265 issue, don’t expect to see your RLC-820A viewable on any Echo Shows in the near term.

The increased resolution and field of view on the RLC-820A is fantastic, but it suffers in interoperability. All we can hope is that Amazon will embrace H.265 in the future and that Reolink will improve their firmware.