If you are having issues viewing a direct video stream from your IP camera  (i.e. http://mycamera.com/videostream.cgi is not working), have a look at this site to see what varying modes your IP Camera has (be sure to search for your camera).   If none of these work, you can setup a webpage to auto-refresh your camera in snapshot mode and then use the URL to the website in BT Bot Control / WiFi Bot Control.  First, you must find the URL that your camera uses to view a snapshot.

Steps:

  1. You need a website – either a personal or access to a remote webserver / website where you can put some files.  In this case, we will assume you have a personal webserver and use the following URL www.yoursite.com.
  2. Note:  If you are setting this up on an internal server, you can refer to internal IP addresses (i.e. 192.168.x.x). However, if you are hosting the page externally, you will have to a) enable port forwarding from an external IP to your camera and b) refer to the camera (within the file below) by your network’s external IP and port #.  For this example, all references will assume you have a personal webserver and the IPs are internal.
  3. Download these files and place at the root of the website you want to use.
  4. Open default.htm.
  5. You will need to change only the highlighted parts to the full URL that will be used to take a single snapshot image from your IP Camera.  Before moving on, be sure that you are able to see a snapshot within your PC’s browser window.
  6. Once complete, call the www.yoursite.com/default.htm file in your web browser (not BT Bot Control / WiFi Bot Control).  Make sure you see the snapshot image and it should be refreshing.  The refresh rate is configurable at the bottom (currently set to 100 ms). If it works here, then you can plug this URL into BT Bot Control / WiFi Bot Control and you should be able to see the video stream.
  7. Note – don’t expect fluid video here folks. This is a crude approach to getting video streaming working in these apps.  Also note that this is not a limitation of BT Bot Control / WiFi Bot Control but rather the web control implementation from Android.

Video Stream Sample HTML

Posted in: BTBotControl - FAQ, WiFi Bot Control - FAQ