Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by LinuxBender 1342 days ago
I don't know how complete it is, but this site [1] claims to verify which cameras are truly ONVIF compliant as apparently some companies make false claims about their cameras or gatekeep some ONVIF functions.

[1] - https://www.onvif.org/conformant-products/
1 comments
scottlamb 1342 days ago
The ONVIF SOAP APIs aren't really that important IMHO. They're mostly used for configuration. Configuring your camera is something you do rarely, and if you have to put up with some crappy web interface, proprietary plugin, or Windows-only desktop software for it, oh well.

The most important part is getting the video. The popular open standard is RTSP. Many cameras have astonishingly poor RTSP implementations. See https://github.com/scottlamb/moonfire-nvr/wiki/Cameras:-Reol... for some of what I'm talking about. That ONVIF page (https://www.onvif.org/conformant-products/) says everything is fine for several Reolink models, but I don't believe it!

After that would be some way to get the analytics, assuming the camera has them and they're any good. If the ONVIF API works well, great, but a proprietary API isn't that bad IMHO as long as it's simple.

link
LinuxBender 1342 days ago
proprietary API isn't that bad

My opinion differs a little bit. If I buy a PTZ I know some here think those are a waste I expect to be able to control it from an open source application. If I can control all aspects of PTZ audio and video then that is good enough for me, but may not be good enough for others.

link
scottlamb 1342 days ago
I don't think proprietary APIs are mutually exclusive with open source clients. These APIs tend to be a lot simpler than ONVIF (SOAP is a mess) so they're easy to implement and even reverse-engineer (though there's often some documentation on the web). It's just a bit of work for each manufacturer.
link