Linux Security Camera Alternative: OpenRTSP

by intox

OpenRTSP doesn’t get much exposure because it’s just a (single file I think) library within the live555 library set. The scope of OpenRTSP is basically just to handle RTSP streams. Opens / streams / receives / records them.

More or less everything you need to record the stream from a stationary camera is included, and that’s all I need or care about. Zoneminder is big and difficult to configure, but includes more complicated operations and a web-browser interface… I don’t need all that.

Here’s the “scripts” I wrote / use to handle it:

startopenrtsp.sh:

#!/bin/sh
openRTSP -P SECONDS_BEFORE_FILE_TURNOVER -v rtsp://user:password@IPADDRESS:PORT/STREAMLOCATION &

stopopenrtsp.sh

#!/bin/sh
pkill -1 openRTSP

Easy peasy. The stop command is necessary because it terminates OpenRTSP in a safe way so the video recorded is written properly. Here’s the script I have in /etc/cron.daily/ to handle storage:

#!/bin/sh

do_it(){
  cd /some/location/Stream/
  /bin/bash stopopenrtsp.sh
  /bin/mv /some/location/video-* staging/
  for file in /some/location/Stream/staging/*; do
    /bin/mv -n -- "$file" "$file.$(date +%Y%m%d)"
  done
  /bin/mv /some/location/Stream/staging/video-* /some/location/Stream/old/
  /usr/bin/find /some/location/Stream/old/ -mtime +7 -exec /usr/bin/rm {} \;
  /bin/bash startopenrtsp.sh
}

do_it

The script, since it’s in cron, needs to include full paths to unix tools and needs to be in a function so directory changes work. It’s mostly self explanatory. If you want to change the number of days that video is stored in “old” before being deleted, change -mtime +7 to -mtime + whatever amount of days you want stuff stored. If you don’t want anything deleted automatically, just remove that line.

I’ve done minimal testing and so far this works for me. Pretty sure there aren’t errors. You need directories for the actual Stream, a staging directory, and an “old” directory for this script.

Here’s the docs: https://www.live555.com/openRTSP/

Also, if you have VLC, you can open up a stream to watch it live via:

Media -> Open Network Stream

And type in something like:

rtsp://user:pass@IPADDRESS:PORT/streamLocation

Depending on your specific camera.

Comments

                                                                                        
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