Adding RTSP stream in Synology Surveillance Station got easier!

A major improvement in Synology Surveillance Station came in almost unnoticed (at least from me) since the release 7.1-4056.

For years, users have begged Synology to implement a way to add RTSP URL's.

The reason: most P2P entry-level IP Cameras don't come with an HTTP server anymore.

Synology has finally granted our wish!

Back in August 2015, I was reviewing the XiaoYi (aka Small Ant) IP cam from Xiaomi, one of those tiny and cheap cloud based IP cameras that does not have an embedded web server.

I got some success in getting its rtsp stream into Surveillance Station 7 by manually editing the configuration files but this method was of limited interest. Since then I concluded that an IP camera without HTTP server would not be good enough for Surveillance Station, ...

It turns out that 2 months later, Synology eventually responded to its begging customers by adding H.264 & MPEG4 video formats for user-defined cameras with no more advertising than a discrete  item #9 in the 7.1-4056 release note.

So, now you can add any 20 bucks IP camera to your Surveillance Station, as long as you know the right RTSP URL, which can often be found by checking web sites database like ISpyConnect.com, or by scanning them with utilities like Onvif Device Manager.

For example, the Sricam SP series use this URL: rtsp://ipaddr:554/onvif1

and /onvif1 will be used for the Source path with H.264 as the Video format:

The EyeSight IP810W uses the same main stream URL.

The Xiaomi Yi main stream URL is: rtsp://ipaddr:554/ch0_0.h264 

The suffix /ch0_0.h264 will have to be entered as the Source path.

There are some limitations though:

- HD stream via rtsp is not always available (Sricam does, EyeSight does not, ...) 

- SS 7.2 currently does not intercept the audio even while VLC will get it using the same URL.