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Try unlinking and relinking the Alexa skill in the Alexa app, ensuring your login credentials are correct and the skill is properly configured. stay in touch for more info!

Just got my Echo Show 8, and already had a Swann DVR8-4980. I had some success after many trials, so I thought it may help others to briefly describe.

I couldn’t get a direct connection to work at all, so I have installed Monocle Gateway to a Raspberry Pi (a version 2 model B Rev 1.1). Aside: In doing so I found that it was still on Raspbian Wheezy, which being well out of date was lacking quite a few necessaries, so I had to burn an image of Raspbian Buster to get the Monocle Gateway install to work for me.

I tried the Tunnel tag first, but couldn’t get that to work.

With the Proxy tag, I have the substreams working ok at 704x480. This is as high as the DVR will set the substream.

I haven’t yet managed to get a mainstream working; I’ve set the DVR mainstream to 1920x1080 (lower resolution than my cameras), and can’t get the Echo Show to show it. Mainstream works fine in VLC.

For this Swann device, the RTSP urls are:
rtsp://<IP>:<Port>/ch<N>/<M>
Where N is 1 to 8 for the camera number, and M is 0 for the mainstream or 1 for the substream
e.g.
rtsp://192.168.0.10:554/ch3/0

Updated:
I noted that the Echo Show was disconnecting after the client response for the describe, and the significant difference appeared to be the profile-level-id.
Mainstream: profile-level-id=64001F
Substream: profile-level-id=42001E

Modifying the mainstream compression level and bit rate on the DVR did not change the profile-level-id. So I added the fakefmtp tag for the mainstream. This overrides the profile-level-id with 420029.

This now has the mainstream working at fullHD.

I chose to go this route: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MU2WVO7?pf_rd_p=ab873d20-a0ca-439b-ac45-cd78f07a84d8&pf_rd_r=98DGZJ8VVS4CY8V92KJT

If you need an HDMI source fed into alexa/firetv using monocle

@Dayhunter, @wolfe4656

This change is now in place. You can edit your camera feed in the web portal and remove port 554 and save the camera entry. It should no longer force the default port in the URL if it is omitted in the string.

However, there is one caveat … the existing version of Monocle Gateway does not play nice with the RTSP URL string with no defined port number. So we have made additional changes to force the default RTSP port number back into the URL string if sending this URL to a Monocle Gateway instance. Please note, the camera entry is not altered, but the URL will be updated at runtime when sending to an existing version of the gateway. We have also thus made updates to the gateway software to handle this case where a default RTSP port may not be defined. So new versions of the gateway will handle this condition and the server will send the un-altered RTSP URL to new versions of Monocle Gateway. If you are using Monocle Gateway to test this change, you will need an updated version. I can provide an experimental version upon request, just let me know what platform you are running it on.

Thanks, Robert

@aquazi said in Just wanted to say thanks! Hikvision, Show 5 and Synology setup:

I know a lot of effort goes into getting something like this off the ground and running and then providing support. So thanks Monocle team!

So it took a bit of effort but i finally have all 8 of my 8mp Hikvision camera’s running on this via the gateway on my Synology NAS.

A couple of bit which may help others outside of the guide:

The gateway on my Synology kept getting the ping timeout error - I had my NAS setup with a bond on both my ethernet - but it was set as load balance. I changed it to link aggregation and I could then ping my FQDN.

Next issue was the DNS binding - I have an ASUS WRT Mesh setup - my NAS is on a second node not using DHCP - which I had to setup to use the Google DNS.

After all that i still couldnt get any of the camera’s from Surveillance Station to work - 404 file not found error - even though the streams worked on VLC. Gave up and just connected directly to my Hikvision camera’s internal IP - using stream 2 at a lower resolution and H264 and that allowed me to keep H265+ for my Surveilance Station Recording - to save space on the NAS.

Thanks for the kind words and providing some useful info to other/future readers!

Thanks, Robert

@ijhammo

Based on the log snippets you posted, it does look like the Alexa devices are not able to connect to the Monocle Gateway instance. We should see additional lines of log data showing TCP connections and RTSP negotiations between the Alexa devices and the Monocle Gateway and then out to the IP cameras.

So the typical problems for these symptoms are :

DNS REBINDING - the network is not allowing the unique hostname (FQDN) to be resolved to your local/private IP address running the gateway instance Alexa device and Monocle Gateway are not on the same network or one is on a Guest network or isolated VLAN. Something is already using port 443 or port 443 is getting blocked by a firewall on the machine running the Monocle Gateway software.

Thanks, Robert

@sdesalve

That’s great! Sorry for missing your last posts — My attention has been taken away from this project due to personal/family reasons … what can I say, its 2020 and this year has been a disaster. However, I plan to resume work on this project at the beginning of the year and hopefully I can revisit the Alpine binaries compilation.

Thanks, Robert

It always responds to my North Idaho “Red Neck” accent! Go figure?

That’s great, can confirm all cameras back up and running now.

Thanks a lot, great support as always 👍🏻

@billyc66 sorry that should say 10 seconds lag in the last post

@brianjd My experience with Monocle has been that it always tends to work perfectly with the Echo Show 10 and not with the 5 or 8.

I’m using the Ring Doorbell 2 - Home Assistant have a “component” which links to their API…it brings with it, “doorbell press”, “motion trigger”, but only the “last recorded video”, no live stream is available via this API as far as I know. You also get things like WiFi signal strength and battery life too.

So currently, my trigger is the bell being pressed, HA detecting that, and then HA pulls the Hikvision feed for the driveway as a static image and sends it to the Fire TV via the “nfandroidtv” component.

I’ve no idea how the various components do all the clever stuff, i just know how to script it all in yaml to do what i want lol. If you wanted to try and explore more with the details, I’m sure if you posted on the HA forums they’d be helpful - the HA community is amazing…some really willing and clever guys there.

Regarding your second post - the FireTV is capable of displaying the Ring bell live stream, but only by using the utterance “Alexa, show me the front door” etc.
and as you know, the FireTV can display the Hikvision camera, via Monocle by saying “show me the driveway” etc.

My personal requirement, is to be able to load a camera stream via Monocle without having to do so via voice…if it was possible to create an Alexa Routine, which starts the monocle stream, that would be perfect, at least for my requirement anyway :)

@Monocle I still have to re-boot my camera every day, this happened all of a sudden after it was working fine for days, anyone have any ideas what I can try? I have tried re-installing firmware and downgrading it. I have also deleted the device from Monocle and re-entered it. I would set my camera up for a daily re-boot but I don’t believe it has that ability.

@Monocle
Hi Robert … mystery of the password solved.
In fact the password was blank (null).
Why onvif said it was ‘tlJwpbo6’ I have no idea or why it worked with that.
I reset password to ‘admin’ and used that and all is well (without the gateway and without the audio)

Kindest Regards
Graham

@hulkyto

I just moved it to a new “Yi” category.
https://forum.monoclecam.com/category/43/yi

@tlkg
Thanks for confirming … and you are most welcome!

If you’re facing issues with your Alexa not responding to your camera despite verifying the URL and testing with VLC, you may want to ensure your network settings are correct. Try rebooting your devices and checking for firmware updates. For more tech-related troubleshooting, consider reaching out to a locksmith in South Portland for expert assistance with smart home security systems.

@kd

FYI, if you are exposing your monocle gateway (port 443) to the Internet, you may want to have a look at this thread:
https://forum.monoclecam.com/post/2382

We have added additional security in the form of authenticated requests to the monocle gateway for users who want/need to expose the service to the Internet.

Thanks, Robert

Thank you very much for your help, I much appreciate it!! :-)