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Ask Slashdot: Are There Any Open and Affordable IPCams?
New submitter criticalmess writes: I'm about to give up on any decent hardware to be found to roll my own web-based camera setup around the house and office — and thought that the nerds and experts at /. would be my last resource I could pull out. Having bought multiple IPCamera (DLink, Abus, Axis, Foscam, TP-Link, ...) and always getting the 'requires DirectX' treatment, I'm wondering if there are any open and affordable IPCams out there? I've been looking at BlueCherry and their kickstarter campaign to create a complete opensource hardware solution, I've been looking at Zavio as they seem to offer the streams in an open enough format while not breaking the bank on the hardware. Anything else I should be looking at? I can't for the love of it understand why most of these hardware companies require you to run DirectX — anybody care to enlighten the crowd? Should be simple enough really: hardware captures images, a small embedded webserver transforms this into an RTSP stream or HTTP stream, maybe on h264 or similar — done.
The panasonic ones are fairly decent. They can be had really cheap too, as long as you don't get in the view of the camera itself when you're obtaining them...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
"Build a Raspberry Pi Webcam Server in Minutes"
http://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-webcam-server/
Do you mean ActiveX?
Hikvision.. Very cheap on alibaba.
No idea why an IP camera would require DirectX, but some of them do have web interfaces that require ActiveX, but you only need that if you actually want to use the web interface to view the video. Most IP cameras (certainly including Axis, I'm not familiar with the others on your list) also implement RTSP, and H.264 is pretty standard, so you can view the streams using e.g. VLC player.
There is a fairly large amount of documentation on hardware compatibility on the zoneminder forum, if that's the route you're going for capture and control of your cameras: http://www.zoneminder.com/foru...
There was also a rather nice camera that was kickstarted a while back, but I forgot the name of it.
If you want full control, they're not too difficult to make using an Raspberry Pi and modules
I've had great luck with the modules from Leopard Imaging. They have a REST interface for configuration and stills. RTSP works perfectly with clients like VLC. Nice range of lenses. Designed to be embedded. Sweet.
While I can't speak for "most", the limited experience I have had with IP cameras is that the stream coming off many of them is a bone-standard MJPEG stream. That is simply a stream of JPEG images, and any app that can interpret them should be fine. Microsoft has actually published a very small demo program, based on dotNet 4, that displays the output from a webcam.
Rosewill's webcam, by the way, uses a Java applet normally to show what's coming off the camera. I don't believe they use DirectX, or ActiveX, as the image output shows up fine on Firefox.
I have an Axis M1054, and it works fine with VLC to view rtsp:///axis-media/media.3gp
I'm not sure what Axis cameras you have, but the Q6034-E (which is what we use where I work) absolutely do not require DirectX or ActiveX (which is what I presume you actually meant). They will fart out a mjpeg stream if you configure them to, and something like VLC will play the stream just fine.
I Use VLC to access all my ONVIF-compliant security cams. Mostly Hikvision, but also many others. The only time I need ActiveX is if I am in the config, and want to play with the zones for motion detection. I do that from a VM or from the spouse's laptop. After initial setup, I never need it again.
I have had decent luck with these cameras, PoE. Dahua 1.3MP Megapixel 720P HD Outdoor http://amzn.to/1MoOsQH Basically the same as the Q-See QCN7001B 720p http://amzn.to/1SCW5BG
Yea I hate all these cams that are so outdated! I have been saying this for years now! Mostly all that I have touched require java or ActiveX. The ActiveX crap just infuriates me! Why none of these companies haven't done something else by now to be more open standard is beyond me!
I have been trying to get Apple to do something about it for years now with the rumored Apple TV as the hub of all cameras and now Homekit to connect to the cameras and they are slowly getting there, but just too slow. But with Apple you would probably not have all the needed options. Google I wouldn't trust!
I'm surprised a startup company hasn't started and did html5 on the things or something yet. Even enterprise cams suck and the recording software isn't much better.
Get some cheap Chinese IP cams that support h.264 and ONVIF profiles.
I've got a real beef with the IP camera industry. High cost, large size, relatively low resolution, and the poor interface issues that the OP describes. A 5MP Axis or Hikvission IIP camera will set you back $300 or more and higher resolution will trip the $1,000 mark in a hurry. For a home security camera system that can read a license plate on the street you'd have to spend thousands, probably tens of thousands.
Yet a Samsung Galaxy has a tiny and great 16MP camera, computer, on board storage, WiFi, cellular connectivity, environmental sensors, and LOTS more in a tiny package for about the same price as the previously mentioned 5MP camera..The only thing they lack is a PoE port and IP66 case.
There just doesn't seem to be a valid reason for the lack of low cost high quality IP cameras.
Get a Synology or QNAP NAS (I prefer Synology) fill it with whatever hard drives you want, get a PoE switch and plug in pretty much any IP camera.
You then get a web interface to the video that will work in standard browsers, and you can access it from mobile apps too.
https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility/camera
Firstly I assume you mean ActiveX and that your gripe is the streaming system used by the cameras which requires plugins to use a browser. Have you dug into the operation of any of the cameras? Some of them may provide other interfaces not documented or immediately obvious from their default web interface. For example: My cheapo Chinese Foscam PTZ camera requires ActiveX on the web interface, but the video stream is available via http://w.x.y.z/videostream.cgi... and that spits out a rolling JPEG (I think, I can't remember) stream which does not require any browser plugins.
I came across this while setting up my next suggestion: Zoneminder.
If you have a server located somewhere then I suggest you centralise the security camera management via some program like Zoneminder. This will allow you to capture data from multiple cameras with multiple interfaces and multiple vendors into one common platform. This common platform can perform things like motion detection, recording, and can even control a wide range of model's PTZ functions.
Basically an opensource solution presenting a front end to your closed source cameras.
Raspberry Pi 2 model B does hardware based h.264 encoding when used w/ their camera (options exist with/without IR filter). This results in about 3% CPU utilization on a RPi 2 model B. This encoding can then be piped to VLC. Once in VLC, the options are pretty endless.
Here's a real-world command that pipes the camera to VLC which makes it available via HTTP:
raspivid -t 0 -w 1920 -h 1080 -fps 25 -b 2000000 --exposure night -o - | /usr/bin/cvlc -I dummy --live-caching=500 'stream:///dev/stdin' --sout '#standard{access=http{user=youruser,pwd=yourpass},mux=ts,dst=:8080/}' :demux=h264 --sout-keep &
A key advantage of a RPi is the flexibility, versatility, updatability afforded by both the open hardware and the linux operating system.
~$35 for a RPi 2 model B, ~$25 for a camera. MicroUSB power supply/cable ~$10. WiFi ~$10 (or use integrated ethernet).
cheap
motion reads it from rtsp://192.168.0.80:8554//live0.264
I've used a couple of old android phones for this, some old ones from upgrades and old ones friends weren't using - have a look for the app IP Webcam, seems to do exactly what you're after.
Even older phones with ~2MP cameras on the back should be more than enough resolution for this task. The batteries also provide convenient UPS in the event of power cut too.
Single board computer of choice (pi)
Webcam
Software somebody else has already written for you
Suitable enclosure.
Most IP cams support OnVif. Basically there are http or rtp url schemes you hit the camera with that tell it what kind of stream to return. Like codec, frame rate, image size, data rate etc. Just find a camera you're interested in, download the manual (if they don't allow that, don't give them money) and look to see if a bunch of url schemes are outlined in there to that effect. Generally if it says it needs some directx or java applet support that's usually for a player app the camera will serve up in its web interface. But you generally don't need to use it after you get it configured the way you like. Also, some cams won't respond to icmp or inbound requests until you run special provisioning software from a machine on the same subnet. It's lame BS but just a heads up that if you plug the thing in and can't find it by pinging the broadcast address, that's why.
Usually a requirement for DirectX or ActiveX is for the viewer software they provide, not the camera itself. Either their application uses DirectX to handle the graphics display, or the standard Web page the camera puts around the stream uses an ActiveX widget to display the stream. Usually if you can get the manual for the camera and take a look at the Web page it generates you can find the URL for the actual video stream and use that in any video software. A little more work will give you how to configure the camera for resolution and stream encoding and such to get exactly what you want.
All of the camera manufacturers you listed, assuming you bought their cameras in the last 5 years, will support an H.264 video feed over RTP/RTSP. Here's a list of a whole lot of CCTV camera RTSP URLs. If one you have isn't listed, it shouldn't be too hard to find it elsewhere on the web.
> Should be simple enough really: hardware captures images, a small embedded webserver transforms this into an RTSP stream or HTTP stream, maybe on h264 or similar — done.
Now, a piece of anecdotal reality to show one or two things to some pundits.
A friend of mine is a remarkable engineer (a Mechanics graduated one, more exactly). He's even respected in our line of work because he can deal with the intricacies of some calculations.
Very well, some dog poop had been appearing in front of his house gate for some time and he get very upset at the dog's owner for not being civilized and picking up the dog's feces.
Since he was planning to buy a camera for security purposes, and since I helped him with a small netbook on which we put a Xfce-based distro, he asked my help to buy a Linux-compatible camera and later configure the access to it.
A few day later I asked if it was still working and what he did about the pooping at his gate.
He told me that strangely a lot of days went by without any poop appearing again; he thought the camera was seen and might have prevented the dog's owner from letting the dog stop there.
Then, he told me, one day it happened again. There it was the clear image of the feces. All he had to do is look at the saved footage. He started looking at one hour earlier, then another hour and son until he came to a point where there were no feces shown. Then he started to scan the video forward until a little dog appeared at distance. It came alone, did its dog thing and went away happy. There wasn't a dog owner, it was just a street dog.
Next time you start mumbling about technicalities, remember reality can be a lot more cruel than you can imagine.
How about powering them, especially the exterior cameras? It seems inconvenhient to provide an AC outlet for each wall-wart. How about power over CAT5? Suggestions?
Zoneminder brings in a lot more than just itself. It's heavy enough that one can rule out using it on most embedded devices and lower-end PCs.
On the other hand, if you have something that can keep up with all the camera threads, it's worth a try.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I went the free route: used Android phones and "motion" installed on an Ubuntu server.
Their PoE Cameras are the most unreliable pieces of garbage.
Even if you use SHIELDED twisted pair, they burn out at around 18 months.
I would check out Ubiquiti. History of being open and have a decent line of IP cams. Centralized management as well.
https://www.ubnt.com/products/#all/surveillance
I've a number of Vivotek outdoor bullet IP cameras and they work really well for me using Zoneminder on GNU/Linux. I also use direct streams to browsers on multiple platforms. Has RSTP and HTTP. I've had them for years and they have worked rock solid for me all this time. I have some Vivotek IP8332 and IP7330 (discontinued?). The IP8332-C is the same as the IP8332 but with a much better mounting bracket. I don't do windows and similarly had a very hard time finding something, but these did the trick.
I've had really good luck with these cheap, roughly $35, 960p dome cameras off of bay. They've got a nice wide viewing angle with the 3.6mm lens. Then I just consume the RTSP streams with zoneminder.
I would slightly revise the question- are there any inexpensive IP cameras that don't require a Windows machine and a Chinese translator to set up and get on my Wifi?
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
yes.
Even though they might have activeX or Java controls embedded on their web interface, most cameras I've used still offer a HTTP or RSTP stream.
Look at the source of the web page in your browser and it will often give you hints to the underlying stream URL. Eg, the cheap standard definition Chinese FOSCAM cameras have something like: /videostream.cgi?rate=11&user=XXXX&pwd=YYYY
I have done similar with Chinese high definition cameras, using an RSTP explorer to find the stream URL. You can then plug this into VLC or similar and give it a try.
Once you have the stream details, I'd then recommend using the awesome open source security camera software Zoneminder as the user interface to all of the streams, as well as providing motion detection and recording.
1x RaspberryPi - model B+ @ 20.00
1x WiFi USB - @ 9.00
1x Raspberry Pi Camera Module - @ 19.99
1x IR Module @ $5.00 - ebay
2x Servo Motor, Pan/Tilt @ 6.00/pair
1x Misc Plastic Bits 0.00 - salvage
1x Tube Plastic Glue - 1.00 @ Dollar Store
1x 5V @ 1A/2A cell charger @ 0.00 - salvage
1x Case - Use Old Mentos Case @ 0.00 - salvage
For Cheapos:
-Omit Raspberry Pi Camera module - use repurposed usb webcam [crappy resolution and framerate], but next to free
-Omit USB WiFi - use Wired
-Omit Servos/Glue/Plastic Bits - Use Fixed Location
Made my own pan/tilt camera, with IR support, with an IR cutoff selectable filter, for about what you see here.
All open source software. I know exactly what it's doing. It's not using any Chinese/Taiwanese servers, sending my data to who knows where.
Total time investment, about 2 hours. Uses a custom ssh interface, and can also use a simple web interface.
I've been playing around with an old (circa 2009) netbook running atom with two logical cpus and 2GB of RAM, also using motion to get the pictures. I didn't try more than one camera, but I think it would work - meaning, i think atom would handle the task. Motion allows you to set up more then one camera at the same time. You can save the pictures as video, and only if there is any movement, if you want. Try changing the values, the conf file is very well commented. Pay attention to sudden light changes, because they trigger false movement (you can adjust how much light change triggers video saving). I think the only issue is getting usb cables long enough for you needs. I don't know how long can a usb cord be. 2 meters (6 feet?) is a bet. Good webcams are expensive, so buying stuff and building a CCTV maybe is not cheaper then buying stuff ready out of the box.
If you don't need PTZ support, you can usually find cheap Android devices (prepaid CDMA, generally) that cost $10 - $15. The IP Webcam app (com.pas.webcam in Play Store) is free and will give you a MJPEG over HTTP stream, which can itself be run through VLC for viewing/saving/transcoding.
An added bonus is that they all come with a built-in UPS...
I'll give you 10 more hours and $100 worth more of budget to add recognition of license-plate numbers, if any, as well as detecting (and logging) Bluetooth and WiFi transmitters as they appear and disappear in the vicinity of the camera.
This would let me track cars entering my driveway and people walking by (those with smartphones in their pockets)... How about it?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
pretty much all network cameras including the ones you listed are compliant with the ONVIF standards, this is so they can be recorded on many manufacturer's recorders... So the stream that is used is usually straight H.264, and what you do with it doesn't really matter, you just need to lookup ONVIF and figure out how it is implemented.
It is Windows only, but it's open source and web/mobile clients are available. The list of supported cameras is huge. http://www.ispyconnect.com/
What, me worry?
About 4 years ago I came into a business where the security cameras were all older coax models that wired up to capture cards and into a ZoneMinder install. It worked but was cumbersome and I figured it was time to start us getting on IP cameras. We had a new "store" location being built right around the time so I moved everything to IP cameras and ditched ZoneMinder for BlueCherry.
I've never regretted that. BlueCherry is really nice and I see it constantly improving. I don't think I've seen a single new feature introduced in the 4 years I've been using it. Instead they just keep making it better at what it really needs to do. They won't make it limit FPS from a camera. The camera can do that. A timestamp on the image? The camera should do that. Do you want to delete video? Nope. There's no reason for that. The system will eventually cycle it out when the disk is full. They don't work on fluff or things you THINK you need. They work on stability and resource consumption and things that you absolutely need in a video recording system before anything else. I like their approach.
As to cameras I'm not much help. I run about 26 Axis M-1011 or M-1011W (wireless version) cameras one ACTi E33 outdoor bullet camera, and two TRENDNet TV-IP252P dome cameras. I have tried a junk Foscam and HooToo model or two in the past but they were junk and you had to power cycle them randomly to get them back online. A $60 Foscam with PTZ that works MOST of the thing isn't worth anything to me. An Axis M-1011 with no PTZ and smple 640x480 resolution but runs nonstop 365 days a year? That's worth $175 to me. My ACTi E33 has also been reliable for a solid year now and I'm buying more. My TRENDNet TV-IP252P are annoying as hell. They just quit working at random. Their web interface is up, they respond to ICMP pings, but their RTSP feed goes down or borks up bad enough that BlueCherry can't decipher it anymore. I have to powercycle them when I see they're not reading right and I do not like them.
My Axis cameras do go offline sometimes but that's where we power cycle between the grid and generator. We only have a 2 second gap between the two and that seems to catch some cameras in a weird state. Thankfully with them when they go whacky they stop responding to ICMP and HTTP requests to my Nagios install picks up on them being off and I can fix that before it's an issue.
Ubiquiti's UniFi cameras will do a direct RTSP feed, and are fairly inexpensive for the quality. You can also install their UniFi software on a server to capture multiple feeds, store video, and rebroadcast RTSP if desired. https://www.ubnt.com/products/...
I've had some great success along these lines string up security or pet monitoring with various Linux flavors and FreeBSD by simply using whatever Logitech webcam I had handy (confirm compatibility from one of the many forums first before you purchase a new one).
As for software, I have no idea what would be capable of interfacing with a video device in Windows without some bloat ware installed, but in *nix environments, use something like the v4l driver module and get yourself a copy of "motion". "Motion" works very well, I've used it for stills, video, web based remote viewing, with all kinds of different configurations.
That is of course operating under the assumption that I've correctly understood your problem statement. Either way, the last few years have brought some serious driver advances since last time I set up one of these, so these days it should be fairly easy if you have the time to go do the proper research and setup first.
ONVIF is the standard for IP Camera security systems, it handles everything from pan/tilt, video streams, motion detection, removing fish-eye etc.
The trouble with many of these cheap Chinese cameras (Hikvision, Foscam, etc.) is they claim to support ONVIF but are not certified and DO NOT WORK with ONVIF recorders as a result. Sometimes its just one or two features, on mine its pan-tilt, on the first one I bought and binned, it was the HD stream wouldn't connect when the preview stream was running! Making it completelt useless.
So they work with their own (often crappy) interface but try to use them with a big autorecorder box like a Synology raid and they don't work properly.
IMHO, best one I have is a Samsung 95% wide angle PT camera shallow dome camera, waterproof, anti-fogging. The hardware is what makes it great, the software is just the ONVIF standard stuff.
This is old technology. I was involved in a "security project" to protect remotely installed equipment racks by putting webcams in the racks. The "kernel team", who basically spent their time shuffling whitespace around and calling it "enhancements", had us stuck on an old kernel and refused to upgrade to support new hardware, and refused to sign off on even testing the new kernel for the new technology. What was the new technology, you ask?
USB.
I was compelled to support only parallel port webcams because these pinheads insisted they could port new features back to the old kernel, and keep us "stable" that way. The introduction of USB to the Linux kernel was a huge revision across numerous subsystems, and these clowns couldn't backport spelling errors. This was as new hardware kept failing compatibility tests because it was supported in all the commercial Linux kernels, but oh, no, not *these* bozos, they were apparently being paid by the numbers of lines changed, and counting changes introduced by enabling and disabling keyword expansiion.
By the time I finished disassembling their code and clearing the white space changes, I found *one* significant change in their last 3 years of work, and they didn't introduce it. And the project had been dumped in favor of very expensive commercial webcams that were then ejected outright by the datacenter owners, which recognized the equipment and did *not* want webcams in their data center that they didn't control.
I always did wonder what the datacenters were trying to hide: it was only later when I learned more about AT&T's collaborations with the NSA and learned about Carnivore and similar datacenter hosted "national security" programs that I understood that the data centers with banking or other core business did *not* want to allow cameras.
Elphel makes open source hardware/software cameras.
I run dlink cameras and pull the jpg feeds in to iSpy open source camera software. Have not had to deal with active/direct x at all.
Hi, I have used Axis 213PTZ and 207W and they are through VAPIX API (actually mjpeg -> mime multipart jpeg) open source friendly. You definitely do not need DirectX. I have used it through C++/Golang and VLC. For the cheaper models I do not know though.
Already mentioned, but I thought I'd add my experiences... I've been messing with the Raspberry Pi A+ and the official camera. (The "normal" one, not the "NoIR" one, which paradoxically _is_ the IR one.) And the set cost me $60 or thereabouts, plus a plastic case to put it in, which is pretty darn good for the result. (cheaper than a mobius)
The A+ is capable of recording something almost like HD at 30FPS using the "raspivid" utility, which if you want to do this stuff, you'll become intimately familiar with. That uses most of the little machine's CPU and GPU, and it gets noticeably warm with the effort, even hot. If you want to go higher framerates, the "Pi 2" series with quad cores might be better, but I don't have one of those. The A+ has the same power as the B+, but is cheaper and smaller if you don't need the ports.
The downside is all the futzing around with raspian (ubuntu) and working out what to do with the video stream... there's no real good standard for transmitting video over IP yet (or there are too many, depending on your point of view) but as long as the relevant bit of code you care about exists as a linux version, and can accept stdin, then you should be good. For great goodness, look for someone who's imaged a working system using the protocols you want, and just copy it to SD flash and pop it into the PI, and you're off. (the benefit of identical hardware..)
I've seen people FPV streaming live video from their quadcopters using the PI and a wifi access point, but that's a black art. (One I intend to learn.) There are "security cam over webserver" distros that give a few frames per second that are way down the easy end and you can slap together in an afternoon, if that's all you need.
I suppose DX hurts you when you're trying to create some custom sw processing the cam feeds. Well, I've been using Basler IPcams, processing their feeds in c++ using their SDK, without the need to use any DX. You might also take a look at Allied Vision IPcams, they are pretty good as well.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Yeah, really - Android. And an old phone. It has WiFi (can even act as a hotspot), a decent enough camera and there's an app for that - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pas.webcam - which serves the video stream and a nice web frontend to it. You can even tell it to take a full resolution snapshot. I've been using it as a digital babysitter and were quite happy with it.
Most Chinese cameras use a HiSilicon 3518C SoC running Linux 2.6 (or 2.4, I cannot remember).
A year ago a reverse engineered the firmware of one of those cameras (it was not easy to persuade the seller in Alibaba to send it). With that, I built a compiler toolchain for the Hi3518C, re-generated the firmware and flashed it. There is a binary blob for the camera and it's not easy to replace it because it's not a UVC driver (it pre-dates UVC).
The plan was to get rid of the ActiveX and replace it with an HTML5 player and some other nifty stuff but then I got involved in another project and never finished that.
they are damn near perfect and the more people that actually buy them the better !
Without knowing what the OP means by affordable it's really hard to give suggestions. I've got multiple GrandStream cameras running on a ZoneMinder system. The cameras support 1920x1080, night vision with the IR LED's built-in, Power over Ethernet. I've used analog cameras plugged into a BlueCherry capture card. Resolution was low, night vision was OK (but not as good as the GrandStream), had to string the signal cable and power cable to the cams. Overall I like the new setup a lot more. Grandstream does require DirectX to view the stream through their web interface but I've never used it. I only use the web interface to set resolution, frame rate and other setttings. All the motion detection is done in ZoneMinder. When I want to view what the camera is seeing I either use ZoneMinder or vlc directly to the RTSP feed.
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, For you are crunchy and go well with ketchup.
DirectX is a requirement of the video player software.
All IP cams I've worked with (D-Link, Axis, Sony, and I probably forgot some) just deliver a video stream over http, DirectX has nothing to do with that.
At least Sony and Axis, probably the rest of them as well, offer a Java-based player as well as DirectX-based (the latter usually being Windows Media Player in disguise, as an ActiveX control).
hi sexconker
Do you actually know what state you're posting on? people don't like activex for a lot of valid reasons, including compatibility.
While not open, I was very impressed with what I could pull off with the Y-cam's several years ago.. Although not fancy with remote controls, they came with a built-in webserver for setting up the camera, including selectable areas for motion detection, multiple stream types, and RTSP output, readable in VLC. I've not used the camera for security applications, but theater. It was used to view the stage in complete blackout with a videofeed to the director so they could see when the stage was 100% clear. There was only a 1-2 second delay in the realtime feed. I would definitely consider the Y-cam for my home security as well. I haven't found a satisfactory solution that uses such universal and linux-friendly. Also, go with a wired setup, I wasn't too pleased with the wireless capabilities (drop-outs/lag/delays), but that may have been my terrible wireless setup as well. I had a Y-cam HD (Square-looking thing) ...and no, I am in no way affiliated with y-cam or the company. :)
We got some bttv (bt878) cards from them a couple of years ago. Putting one card in a Dell server, the server, in a matter of 20 min or so, decided that the card needed to be reseated. It works, fine, but.... In a rebranded Supermicro, I don't see the error.
And then... when I first called Bluecherry, they thought it might just be hot, and can I run the system without a cover! They also don't seem to know what a firmware update *is*, and they certainly don't have one.
I tried tracking the OEM of the chips, which had been sold, and the acquiring co sold, and the current owner does not respond to queries about the firmware.
But they do work nicely.
mark
Apexis IP cams have an HTTP interface where you can get about 5 - 8 images/s as JPGs.
So I have two cameras, a Sony QX1 and a Panasonic GH4, that I use for security cameras when they're not in my bag. (I have other cams too.)
Sony is nice in that their API is well documented and open. But they can't join an existing WiFi net and I have had limited reliability with the QX1 randomly stopping to work.
Panasonic can join an existing WiFi network, but the mostly closed API is more limited. Folks have reverse-engineered the basics to take pics and transfer them. I use my Pana for my main security camera, transferring the pics via my Linux server to a Dropbox folder for instant cloud backup. I know of no way to delete pics out of the camera, so every so often I have to clear the card before it fills up. But beautiful 16MP pictures or even UHD or C4K video (just can't transfer video over WiFi.)
Neither has pan or tilt but both can zoom and auto-focus.
Canadian made - with offices globally.
Read the reviews! Relatively cheap with the best quality - especially in low/no light!