Real-time remote access to all 3 Clary webcams is finally working. My tendency is to explain in excruciating detail WHY it wasn’t working and WHAT I had to do to get it working. Instead I’ll just say there was a port conflict and a few other issues which prevented operating 2 cameras on the same internal network at the same time, and leave it at that.
Remote access to firewalled equipment requires Dynamic DNS service, and that is notoriously flakey. When access to a camera is NOT working, it is almost always due to the DDNS being out of date. DDNS is a mechanism whereby a dynamic IP address (which most of us have) is mapped to a static host name (which most of us want). Foscam, the camera manufacturer, runs a free DDNS service for their customers but it seems like it often doesn’t update the static host name with the right IP address in a timely manner. I’ve setup an account with a 3rd party DDNS server for my two cameras (Clarycam1 and Clarycam2) which seems to be working well. If it continues to work well I’ll see if I can get David Hodsdon to signup with the same service. For now his camera which is using the Myfoscam.org DDNS service is working fine…
Bottom line: If you try to connect to a camera and it fails, try again in half an hour.
Because these cameras use a proprietary streaming protocol (H.264), you need a special plugin to view the camera video in a web browser. You can download the plugin from the camera itself when you first try to connect. It installs easily and works fine in Firefox but I wasn’t able to get it to install in the Windows 10 Edge browser and Chrome just refuses to install the plugin, period (gotta love Google).
Probably the easiest method for connecting to these cameras in real time is to use the VLC program which supports RTSP (real time streaming protocol) and runs on Windows, Windows Phone, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, and OSX. It’s a great cross-platform program that is free to download and you can also use it to stream all kinds of content from movies to radios stations. Many of you probably already have it installed on your computer, laptop, tablet, or phone. If you have an android tablet or phone there are a number of free webcam viewer apps which you can install. I use one called TinyCam Monitor which works great., I used it to take the 3-camera combo picture above.
Here are the URL’s used to connect to the cameras. You’ll note that the RTSP links include the username and password in the URL so you don’t have to enter them separately:
The username and password for all three cameras is the same: Username: guest
Password: 123abc
Clarycam 1
For access with a browser: http://clarycam1.ddns.net:88/
For access with VLC: rtsp://guest:123abc@clarycam1.ddns.net:554/videoMain
Clarycam 2:
For access with a browswer: http://id3143.myfoscam.org:88/
For access with VLC: rtsp://guest:123abc@id3143.myfoscam.org:554/videoMain
Clarycam 3:
For access with a browser: http://clarycam3.ddns.net:89/
For access with VLC: rtsp://guest:123abc@clarycam3.ddns.net:555/videoMain
If you have trouble connecting to these cameras, let me know and I’ll try to help.