[ImPostingOnHN]

If you want to bypass Unifi Protect, what sort of "adoption" are you thinking of? AFAIK, "adoption" is a Unifi Protect thing. Otherwise it's just a device on your network that you can configure Frigate etc. to connect to and pull streams.

[scottlamb]

Changing the credentials for web access (firmware upgrade, janky jpeg-based live stream, etc.) and ssh access from the default ubnt:ubnt. Surprisingly, I don't see a page for this in the web UI, and the `password` command in the CLI is ineffective. I haven't looked around the filesystem.

Setting where it sends the video stream.

Configuring video settings, zone detections, etc. I found a video going through them here: <https://youtu.be/URam5XSFzuM?si=8WK4Yghh9kidZe6c&t=279> Just about any other camera lets you change this stuff through the camera's built-in web interface and/or ONVIF. Ubiquitis apparently don't.

> Otherwise it's just a device on your network that you can configure Frigate etc. to connect to and pull streams.

No, it connects to you!

[ImPostingOnHN]

You want to change the credentials of the camera, so Frigate can log into it while it is connected to your Unifi network?

I did that for 5 different cameras yesterday, you're saying Unifi's cameras doesn't allow user management? That sucks!

> No, it connects to you!

I thought frigate connects to the camera's RTSP stream (maybe with ONVIF in the mix)?

[moonlighter]

Unifi cams don't stream RTSP, they stream FLV v1 (FlashVideo) on 3 streams over plain TCP on port 7550, one per quality channel. And yes, they stream that TO the NVR who adopted them only... then the NVR recodes and sends RTSP (configurable).

For the adoption stage, UniFi cameras broadcast on UDP port 10001 using a proprietary TLV (Type-Length-Value) protocol. The Protect console listens on this port and picks up new cameras immediately. 4 bytes `\x01\x00\x00\x00` sent as UDP broadcast to `255.255.255.255:10001`

The response then contains these fields:

  | Hex Code | Field | Data |
  |----------|-------|------|
  | `0x01` | MAC Address | 6-byte hardware address |
  | `0x02` | MAC + IP | Combined MAC and IPv4 address |
  | `0x03` | Firmware Version | String |
  | `0x0B` | Hostname | String |
  | `0x0C` | Platform (Short Model) | String |
  | `0x0A` | Uptime | 64-bit integer |
  | `0x13` | Serial | String |
  | `0x14` | Model (Full) | String |
  | `0x17` | Is Default | Boolean (adopted vs unmanaged) |

After discovery, the Protect console: 1. Connects to the camera via SSH (default credentials) 2. Configures the Inform URL (TCP 8080) 3. Camera registers with the controller

So conceivably at step 2 you could use your own modified URL to point to your own NVR and then grab the FLV streams from there.

[scottlamb]

Thanks!

> 1. Connects to the camera via SSH (default credentials) 2. Configures the Inform URL (TCP 8080)

Not what I expected but okay. Looks like there's a `set-inform` command. It looks like it opens a TLS connection, doesn't check the certificate, and tries to opens a websocket:

    GET /camera/1.0/ws HTTP/1.1
    Pragma: no-cache
    Cache-Control: no-cache
    Host: ...
    Origin: http://ws_camera_proto_secure_transfer
    Upgrade: websocket
    Connection: close, Upgrade
    Sec-WebSocket-Key: ...
    Sec-WebSocket-Protocol: secure_transfer
    Sec-WebSocket-Version: 13
    Camera-MAC: ...
    Camera-IP: ...
    Camera-Model: 0xa601
    Camera-Firmware: 5.0.83
    Device-ID: ...
    Adopted: false
    x-guid: be9d8e45-62a8-ae84-8b23-71723c7decaf

I might try accepting the websocket but I have a feeling I'll get stuck about there without knowing what the server is supposed to send over it. I'm debating if I'm willing to buy a Unifi Protect device or not.

...then again I did a search for a couple strings and ran across https://github.com/keshavdv/unifi-cam-proxy . It's the opposite direction of what I want (makes a standard camera work with Unifi Protect) but maybe contains the protocol details I'm looking for...

[scottlamb]

> ...then again I did a search for a couple strings and ran across https://github.com/keshavdv/unifi-cam-proxy . It's the opposite direction of what I want (makes a standard camera work with Unifi Protect) but maybe contains the protocol details I'm looking for...

Actually, yes. I got lazy and just asked Claude Code to write a server, using that as a reference...and it worked. It was able to change the password and have it start streaming flv video. Not exactly a production-quality implementation but as a proof-of-concept it's quite successful.

[moonlighter]

There you go! I wrote a proxy server to deal with Unifi cameras and also dewarp their 360 camera streams... and used Claude Code to reverse-engineer most of what's going on. Sniff the entire network traffic between their NVRs and cams via Wireshark/TShark, grabbing the NVR's web socket streams, and also had it write a custom METAL shader pipeline native to Apple silicon to replace ffmpeg which was way too slow to deal with 5K 360 streams and dewarp them. All in a matter of hours. Amazing times ;)

[scottlamb]

> I thought frigate connects to the camera's RTSP stream (maybe with ONVIF in the mix)?

Right, that's the expectation of Frigate, my own Moonfire NVR, and basically every other NVR out there. Ubiquiti decided to think different.

[ImPostingOnHN]

Well thanks for the heads-up to avoid their cameras.

[scottlamb]

I hear you, but on the other hand, I'd take a bit of interop pain over supporting genocide any day. It looks like with the hints from moonlighter and from https://github.com/keshavdv/unifi-cam-proxy I'll be able to get this to work.

Honestly it might be less work than some other cameras that (allegedly) speak RTSP. You'd be shocked how low-quality these implementations are. Never advancing timestamps, setting the RTP MARK bit arbitrarily, writing uninitialized memory framed as audio packets (on cameras that don't have microphones), closing file descriptors then writing data to them anyway (and so having it show up on the next accepted connection to be assigned that fd even pre-auth), etc.

[psd1]

> writing uninitialized memory framed as audio packets..., closing file descriptors then writing data to them anyway...

Thanks for the reassurance that I'm not such an incompetent dev as I feel.

Funny how companies tend to be competent at either devices or software, and rarely both. This sounds vaguely like the automotive industry.

[ImPostingOnHN]

FWIW, there are multiple other camera brands who don't manufacture in Xinjiang (or China for that matter), like Axis or Vivotek.

[ThePowerOfFuet]

Here's that YouTube link without the creepy Google tracking component:

https://youtu.be/URam5XSFzuM?t=279

[glottis]

Im using a g3 flex with frigate without use of unifi protect, works fine.

I think newer models like g4 flex dont support this thou.