Unbranded MD81 Wifi Mini

I got one of these tiny little cheap cameras to play around with. If I can get it working, it would be cool for some small projects. They are very commonly available but of course I cannot find an actual brand name. It works correctly with both the Android client for plug&play IP cameras as well as the Windows client from http://www.scc21.net/

Looks like this:

The problem is I cannot determine the URL to get the stream, even with Wireshark. The only communication is on UDP port 5000 and I cannot see anything that appears to be a URI or request. I keep mucking variations of an RTSP URL in VLC, but seem to be missing something. Seems like rtsp://username:password@ipaddress:5000/ should be the base.

It shows up in the device browser under Lan (not uPnp or ONVIF) as an IP address/MAC address only. Does anyone have any clue at all how to proceed with this little bugger?

Forgot to mention, having read some of the other topics here already, the closest I have come to getting it working is with a custom URL set to RTPS_UDP:
rtsp://username:password@ipaddress:5000/videoMain

This at least doesn’t result in the red connection failed screen. It just hangs at the blue “Connecting…” screen no matter what I put for the URI. I have tried everything I have come across on this forum so far (videoMain, 0, 1, etc)

Thanks, Scott

Hi Scott,
That was a cute little bugger :slight_smile:. First, if it´s just a typo, but use rtsp not rtps.
Do you have a link to this cam, I cannot find it. Is it video and audio? The info I have on similar cams is the resolution 640x480 and then I am not sure if rtsp is correct, rather mjpeg or mpeg4.

If you get the blue screen then user/pass is probably correct, but the protocol or port is wrong.
If you use the url without videoMain ? If they use videoMain they also usually have videoSub

Henrik

Indeed it is a typo. Working on a different computer than the NCS server here, so had to type it in manually. :wink:

The problem is finding anything useful out about the hardware. It’s SOOO generic that I cannot even find a brand name. Searching for MD81 WIFI brings up quite a few hits and they all seem to be for the same device…just nothing useful. Just lots of variations on the same generic descriptions.

You are probably on to something with the mpeg4 comment. This is why I am here. I am strong in Linux and networking…not so much with cameras. The only interesting data I could sniff with Wireshark is this response from the device very early in the stream:

d2:id7:BT513083:ver3:83311:Sensitivity1:010:Reselution1:04:rate1:03:hue1:010:brightness1:010:saturation1:08:contrast1:09:frequency1:07:qualite1:04:Flag1:25:irate1:07:bitrate1:09:highorlow1:04:ioin1:08:cbrorvbr1:09:ControlPT1:010:audioAlarm1:012:ThermalAlarm1:07:channel1:15:event15:eventInbandDesc7:MainCmd2:1711:subResource19:video.vbVideo.MPEG4e

FYI, BT51308 is the user id.

Thanks, Scott

That was a lot of interesting words there like mpeg4. Does it have a microphone?
If it is http then you start this scc21 program and it sends commands to the camera and then just stop wireshark there. Filter the stream for http which usually is green and see if you get a hit. The interesting part is what the program sends to the camera.

-Henrik

It does have a mic that is every bit as crappy as the camera.

I have spent a good portion of my life looking at HTTP (and FTP) streams in tcpdump/Wireshark and this looks like nothing like that. Not a single HTTP packet to be found in the stream. Other than a MAC address announcement before that block I pasted, nothing appears to be useful to me. It’s mostly just a binary stream with some occasional pieces of text that I cannot figure out. Literally, every single packet transmits over UDP 5000.

Is GVSP a useful piece of information? Wireshark says it’s a GigE Vision Streaming Protocol and just shows a lot of unknown format payload packets.

If you are interested, I can send you the dump of a run through starting up the program, opening the video stream, opening the mic, closing the mic and closing the program.

Thanks, Scott

I searched for GigE Vision Streaming Protocol and it a streaming protocol and you can read more about it here

I have never heard of this protocol before and it is nothing that is in NCS. So, I think I pass on this one :slight_smile: ). But, another lesson learned.

-Henrik

Also surprisingly never heard about it.

Well if it gets supported by ffmpeg (and by extension to vlc) then there is a chance that we can support it in the future but first thing is to be able to play the stream using ffplay (using the complete build not our version which contains only what we support / need).

Here are complete ffmpeg builds to try playing with ffplay and see if by chance this protocol is supported:
https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/

Just bought the same cam from banggood for less than 10€. I intended to use it to watch my (mechanical) water counter, and possibly run OpenCV to read the actual meter digits… But now I have this issue of unknown protocol, ran through about the same investigations with UDP port 5000 to no avail… Does the GVSP yield anything?

Well, nothing new here. P2P cameras are always difficult. The camera uses h.264 for compression, but that is enclosed by some other encrypted tunnel between the camera and the software. Wireshark might be able to handle GVSP, but I have only information from searching the Internet.
-Henrik

I looked at the GVSP would-be standard, it looks way too sophisticated for a 10-€ chinese device…

I come to think they’ve implemented their own little protocol. The fact that there are at least two different Android clients lead me to think that this is a little bit more widespread than a single company/vendor though…
I can see in the frames returned by wireshark that there are some counters that increment/decrement from one frame to the next, but not sure what to make out of that.

Also this MD81S seems identical to the K7 (https://www.banggood.com/K7-WiFi-1080P-CMOS-Wireless-H_264-IP-P2P-Mini-Camera-Module-Real-Time-Monitor-95-Degree-View-Angle-p-1049421.html?rmmds=search), which has another android app, P2PCAMAP (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.g_zhang.P2PCAMAP&hl=fr), which looks very similar to p2pCamViewer, or the eyeclub which seems to have the same UI…
The p2pCamViewer apk can be decompiled, but there are a bunch of libraries in there, most of which don’t seem to be very relevant…

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Hi, I have the same camera. I used to use a desktop program to connect and view the cam but lost it after doing some work on the pc. cant seem to find the site to download it again either. now I can only use the iMiniCam app on android. I have tried using wireshark to get moire info on the stream, but I don’t know anything about the tool to make use of it. some searching online though, HiSilicon chip. THIS LINK explains how to upgrade FW, view stream in web browsers, and telnet into device. although some things aren’t explained enough for me to fully understand. I also found ANOTHER LINK which has a tutorial on config/accessing the cam. The url paths wouldn’t work with my devices info still. I do like this camera, but cannot rely on it to record and save consistently. the SD card’s files are usually 50% corrupt, and unplayable. I need the pc software again. If these links shed some light and you end up figuring it out, please don’t forget to update us here. Thanks.