Getting Foscam IP Cameras to work from Linux (Ubuntu)
By Leo Gaggl
As with most hardware manufacturers of hardware Foscam utility software is Windows or Mac only. The actual unit tested with the below is a FI9805E Outdoor POE camera.
Installation
The installation is relatively painless as the unit is set up to get the IP assignment via DHCP (check your routers DHCP assignment list).
https://IP.ADDRESS.OF.CAM
should get you to the web-admin interface. The default user is ‘admin’ with no (empty) password.
Taking snapshots
http://IP.ADDRESS.OF.CAM:PORT/cgi-bin/CGIProxy.fcgi?cmd=snapPicture&usr=username&pwd=password
I had some issues with the color of the images in daylight (which for an outdoor camera is not really a good thing. A Firmware update (V2.14.1.5) improved this (you can disable the IR LEDs during daylight hours). Thanks for FOSCAM UK support via Twitter I found the download URL as the main site seems to have been down for a while.
Firmware URL: http://foscamuk.co.uk/downloads/
Streaming in H.264 video
The easiest way to get the stream appears to be the RTSP connection (using VLC or any network video player). MXPlayer on Android works very well too.
rtsp://username:password@IP.ADDRESS.OF.CAM:PORT/videoMain<br></br>rtsp://username:password@IP.ADDRESS.OF.CAM:PORT/videoSub<br></br>rtsp://username:password@IP.ADDRESS.OF.CAM:PORT/audio
Streaming in MPEG mode
The be able to use the MPEG streaming the stream format needs to be set first.
http://IP.ADDRESS.OF.CAM:PORT/cgi-bin/CGIProxy.fcgi?&usr=username&pwd=password&cmd=setSubStreamFormat&format=1<br></br>http://IP.ADDRESS.OF.CAM:PORT/cgi-bin/CGIStream.cgi?cmd=GetMJStream&usr=username&pwd=password
Resetting back to H264:
http://IP.ADDRESS.OF.CAM:PORT/cgi-bin/CGIProxy.fcgi?&usr=username&pwd=password&cmd=setSubStreamFormat&format=0
Next steps will be to make this work from a headless device with an Amazon S3 storage backend. This Github project https://github.com/phil-lavin/Foscam-FI8908W-Recorder is looking promising.
Watch this space.