WISER Survellance Widget and the latest version of PICED

I've been running the same Wiser project files for a couple of weeks now without issue, however after upgrading to the latest version of PICED this morning, the surveillance widget is no longer able to pull images from out AXIS video servers.

The cameras are entered as
http://192.168.1.200/axis-cgi/jpg/image.cgi?camera=1

In simulation mode in PICED they display ok, however when the project is transferred to WISER and the camera address seems to be re-written to the IP address of WISER. So when accessing wiser through via the web, i get a bunch of error trying to access

http://192.168.1.100/axis-cgi/jpg/image.cgi?camera=1

(192.168.1.100 is the address of the wiser router).

With this latest version of PICED does Wiser now act as some sort of proxy for the camera server so that the camera server doesn't need a public ip address to be visible outside the local area network?

And if so, how does my config need to change to make this work again?

 

Hi, I have a suspicion of what the cause may be, although I don't have this particular camera to test with.

The issue is this, some cameras require a random parameter to prevent caching of images, this is more prevalent when using IE as it does not follow the prescribed caching rules. The result is you see old images in your webcam widget.

To address this, we have added a random parameter in the parameter list. In the case of your camera this would look something like:

http://192.168.1.200/axis-cgi/jpg/image.cgi?camera=1&random=1020930923892398

Can you attempt to try a URL such as this one on your setup. If the axis throws a fit about the extra parameter, then we know the issue.

Can I verify that this worked on previous versions? Or has it never worked correctly.

Thanks

 

It's not a caching issue as no image is present at all with the current PICED build of the wiser project and the the web browser debug tools show that wiser is now serving up the incorrect IP address when attempting to retrieve the URL of the camera.

A random number is appended the the URL that wiser is serving up.

It is looking for the images at http://192.168.1.100/axis-cgi/jpg/image.cgi?camera=1&random=1241492929963 (the ip address of the wiser unit itself) instead of at http://192.168.1.200/axis-cgi/jpg/image.cgi?camera=1 (the ip address of the camera server which I have entered in the setup).

This the security module worked well (without any caching issues) under the previous version of PICED.

I tried downgraded to PICED 4.5.0 and re-download the project to wiser but kept getting a Unable to connect to Wiser error (msgid: -1). Seems the new firmware and older PICED don't play nicely together so I'm back on PICED 4.5.6 with a disabled surveillance module.

Any further suggestions?

 

Forgot to mention ..

http://192.168.1.200/axis-cgi/jpg/image.cgi?camera=1&random=1020930923892398

when called directly displays the camera image as expected

 

ok, this looks like its trying to request a WAN url even though its on the LAN, but it shouldn't! The reason it works in simulation mode is that it knows it is running locally so does not attempt to mangle the URL.

Can you verify the IP address of your wiser, the subnet mask and the ip of the camera (i assume 192.168.1,200 for cam, 192.168.1.100 for wiser)

Thanks

 

That's right

192.168.1.100 for the wiser and
192.168.1.200 for the cam server

both are on the same subnet so subnet mask is set to 255.225.255.0

 

I have carried out some more testing here sumulating the ip addresses/urls you have sent me and all seems good here, which is a bit of a worry.

Can I confirm that you are accessing the webpage from the LAN URL and not a local dns entry.

The problem seems to be that the app seems to think you are accessing from the WAN side, when in actual fact you are on LAN - I assume that the port forward field is not set? is this correct?

Can you also send me another email address, I may send some files to assist in resolving this issue.

thanks

 

As discussed, the issue is you are trying to access the Wiser using an internal DNS entry. The flash UI knows very little about its environment, so we make do with the information we have. Specifically, the UI is unable to perform the DNS lookup to resolve your internal DNS lookup (unusual to have in most residential solutions).

What we do in s/w is we map the client IP (browser) with the IP of the router and its subnet mask. if it is on the same subnet we use the url as provided in the widget configuration.

In the event they do not match, we substitute the IP address with the router IP, append the port (as specified in the widget config) and do a port forward on the router from the IP specified for the camera.

Thus:

widget url: http://192.168.1.200/axis/image.cgi?camera=1
port: 9001

would be translated and exposed externally as:

http://external_ip_address:8080/axis/image.cgi?camera=1

In your case you had no port specified and your unit is set up as a LAN device (not a router) hence the ip address issue.

If you are using an external router, you will need to set the port forwards up manually on that router

Hope this helps, sorry about the limitation. Its all a trade-off with configuration simplicity and features...

 

Thanks for the explanation

.. so am I understanding this correctly ... it is NOT possible to access the surveillance module of the wiser via a DNS entry with the wiser setup as a LAN device (as I have it).

I've nominated the port 8080 for the camera server which the wiser now re-writes as
http://wiser.mycompany.com:8081/axis...20930923892398

But, to make this work, I would need to setup port forwarding on the wiser to redirect requests to

wiser.mycompany.com:8081 to 192.168.1.200:80 (the camera server)

Which I don't seem to be able to do in the as the wiser is connected on the LAN side (so the inbuilt routers port forwards don't seem to work)


While I can use my external router to map a public IP address to the wiser's LAN port to get access to the wiser from outside the LAN, what port forward rules could I put i place to access the camera server in this 'option b' setup on my external router (the port forward rules would need to be in the wiser to make this address-rewrite work .. wouldn't they).


And it seems there is not a way to configure the wiser so that one can access the surveillance module from outside the local area network when it's setup using the 'option b' network setup as outlined in the manual. Or am I missing something?

Is there a way I can turn this address re-writing off?