Remotely connecting into my home ip cams?

[SeanJ]

HI, from my home i run x2 ANPR cams and it all works satisfactory using HIK Connect (on phone), and using either a browser to view them locally or also if using iVMS-4200 software, again locally. The time has come where i now want to allow a family member to access my cam streams remotely using either their browser or maybe iVMS 4200 on their pc (if that's possible?)

I am a bit confused about what might be the best secure and simplest way of going about it.

I can only imagine 2 ways of doing this it but i'm happy to be corrected about anything here.

1/ They connect using their browser by punching in a fixed ip address or possibly a hosted domain (I'm guessing a VPN would likely be employed in this scenario?) so i'm guessing they would be addressing my cams in their browser with something like: https://80.253.625.**/192.168.1.**:800 and i would using fowarded ports and maybe a VPN

2/ This may be wrong but am I right in thinking if the remote family member has iVMS-4200 prog on their PC that they could enter the serial numbers of my cams and connect to my cams remotely? . That sounds just too easy to me so I won't explore that yet without some feedback first.

thanks. Sean

 

[David]

HI, from my home i run x2 ANPR cams and it all works satisfactory using HIK Connect (on phone), and using either a browser to view them locally or also if using iVMS-4200 software, again locally. The time has come where i now want to allow a family member to access my cam streams remotely using either their browser or maybe iVMS 4200 on their pc (if that's possible?)

I am a bit confused about what might be the best secure and simplest way of going about it.

I can only imagine 2 ways of doing this it but i'm happy to be corrected about anything here.

1/ They connect using their browser by punching in a fixed ip address or possibly a hosted domain (I'm guessing a VPN would likely be employed in this scenario?) so i'm guessing they would be addressing my cams in their browser with something like: https://80.253.625.**/192.168.1.**:800 and i would using fowarded ports and maybe a VPN

2/ This may be wrong but am I right in thinking if the remote family member has iVMS-4200 prog on their PC that they could enter the serial numbers of my cams and connect to my cams remotely? . That sounds just too easy to me so I won't explore that yet without some feedback first.

thanks. Sean

I remotely connect to my home VPN server then access the cameras as I normally would at home.

 

[SeanJ]

I’ve no experience of VPN’s and wondered do you get a fixed ip from your VPN or can you assign it a type of domain name to access your home network remotely?

Thanks

 

[David]

do you get a fixed ip from your VPN

I use a fixed IP address that costs £2 a month, a good price as part of a deal. You could use something like No IP, where possible I don't like to use third parties. Using your own domain just adds unnecessary expense and hassle.

Have you tried the HikConnect App? You can search the HikVision forum for threads.

David

 

[SeanJ]

Thanks, yes i use the HikConnect app locally and it's great, i just havent' ventured into remotely connecting in to my setup yet. I'm trying to let another family member have access to my cam streams who lives elsewhere basically. I know there is also the P2P feature for the IVMS4200 that uses the serial numbers of cams to establish a secure/less hassle method of connection but i've not gone that way yet. It it would mean the other person using IVMS each time instead of just using their browser like i'd rather,

My other half doesn't want a fixed ip for whatever it costs per month and looking on uk vodaphone i think it erred towards business use instead of home but either way they weren't making the cost of it clear when i had a dig around. I'll check out NO IP and have a read thanks.
Sean

 

[Juiceof2limes]

Your family member can also use Hik Connect, they register with their email and then you via your Hik Connect share the camera to them. This is the easy option. But if you don't want to do this then the options mentioned above are the alternatives and you will need either a fixed IP address that family member can use (but rare for a home user to have fixed IP) or a DDNS name from a service like NOIP that can be referenced. Your router would need to update NOIP with your real IP address if it changes.

 

[SeanJ]

thanks, yes HIK Connect (mobile app) was not the aim here but I wanted to give the remote family member access with their browser, hik connect is great though.
I got a free account at NOIP so can now give my noip address to the remote user and they have the same view as myself now. However I use just 2 cams and do not own an NVR or DVR so the next hurdle is displaying access to both cams at my noip address instead of just the one login page I currently see. On my home network I use 2 browser tabs (or sometime ivms4200) to views of both cams so i'm just working out how that might work with NOip. Am really trying to avoid buying an NVR as my setup won't grow past 2 cams but I can see how it would help me here!

 

[Juiceof2limes]

And I assume you have setup DDNS in your router so that it updates NOIP should your IP change etc.

Ok, so now you need to be a bit clever, with port forwarding on your router. When I had this setup previously, I used a unique external port numbers which was then mapped to a specific IP of a camera. Then when accessing your cameras externally via the NOIP you would add ortnumber (web port) on the end.
Think you need to forward web port 80, RTSP 554 and poss the server port.

A bit of experimentation needed by you

 

[SeanJ]

Hi, yes I'm setup with the router DDNS fields and they are showing as updated plus all my relevant ports: (HTTP, RTSP, SRTP, Server and SDK) are all forwarded and un-shared on the router config as well as the cams own config pages of course. My issue seems to be addressing and calling up Cam 2 from the ddns address on the internet.. Maybe i need to add a port number at the end of the internet address to call up he 2nd cam, I havn't worked out how to do that yet unfortunately.

BTW this guys tute on YouTube regarding configuration of all the above was the best i've seen for anyone new to this like me.

 

[SeanJ]

Oh wow, it worked by appending the port number after the virtual address which gave me cam2, so i've learnt a bit there and i'm home and dry!

 

[Juiceof2limes]

You should only need to forward Service port (default 8000) and RTSP port (default 554) but if you want to use browser access like if you were local then you also need to forward port 80.

But if you want to view to different cameras, you need to create unique ports to address in the router which forward to the IP of the camera you want to view.
So you could say forward 8080 to port 80 and ip of camera1 and 8081 to port 80 and ip of camera 2.

And then to get to it externally, it would be your ddnsname:8080 or ddnsname:8181

But be very careful opening ports like this, it's not really a very secure way of going about things. You really should go down the Hik Connect route.

 

[SeanJ]

Thats a better way of using less ports you mention there and yes i do have 1 extra port forwarded that doesn't need to be.

Security wise i should probably end my honeymoon after actually obtaining a remote connecton using ports and maybe go for IVMS4200 at both ends and use that..

I thought worst case scenario if i were hacked using open ports and a vpn with my current browser method and someone got past my login page (brute force attack or similar) is that they could change my cam settings or hard reset the things as I'm not running them through a PC but as standalones. I've no doubt there's more caveats using ports than i'm probably aware of and am always learning.