Watchout for your DNS + proposals for easier investigation

gege

Hi Monocle fans,

As some of you, I went through the various levels of troubles and spent hours on trying to fix things.
The problem I faced is well known ‘DNS resolution(!)’ but it was ‘hidden’ due to my networking setup: my test machine was using google DNS (for downloading etc…) while the rest of the network, including Alexas devices, were using my ISP DNS (not handling local addresses resolutions). After changing my DHCP DNS to google (8.8.8.8) for the whole network, my TV with alexa and echo show 8 2nd gen are now fine, but the PC version isn’t (don’t care but just in case you would try to setup your own environment with it).
My Cams are trendNet 310pi and 316pi, with @tunnel (hence a local gateway) & @noaudio tags. Interestingly they do not work with echo when proxied by synology surveillance station (still tunnelled behind monocle of course). Still investigating this aspect, any clue appreciated.

From my investigation process I’d then have a request for Monocle team: would it be possible to simplify the various levels of tests, for example below these log entries generated when alexa interfaces with the skill:

INITIALIZE RTSP STREAM: Portail

NAME : Portail
CAMERA.MFG : Trendnet
CAMERA.MODEL : 310pi
CAMERA.LABEL : PRIMARY
RTSP.URL : rtsp://192.168.0.201/PSIA/Streaming/channels/1?videoCodecType=MPEG4
STREAM.ID : STREAM:c31f696f-894e-4c5d-a159-df6fba61c0c9
SESSION.ID : 7007b98e-b27b-4aa6-9cdd-87194298bd04
LAST.MODIFIED : Wed Aug 24 2022 14:57:06 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
TAGS : @noaudio,@tunnel

(redacted)

display the full rtsps url like below :
rtsps://708e8f29-fb11-4c7e-9a17-f0b33086bb46.mproxy.io:443/STREAM:c31f696f-894e-4c5d-a159-df6fba61c0c9?session=7007b98e-b27b-4aa6-9cdd-87194298bd04
(it is later logged when alexa device actually connects to the GW, but this was not happening for me).

It would then be much easier to use ffplay and help validating monocle gateway is functional, accessible, and can connect to the various cam streams, not only that the direct cam streams are ok.

I was lost there as this ffplay command was working on my PC, but still I was quite confident monocle gateway (docker/Synology) was correctly setup.

HTH,
gerald