Raspberry pi FTP not working with IP camera

0
votes

I have been trying for two weeks to solve this problem and now I am quite desperate.

I want to set up a small home surveillance system that records video to a hard drive if it detects motion. So I bought a Reolink RLC-420 IP-camera.

Some facts regarding the camera:

  • It supports HTTPS, SSL, TCP/IP, RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol) DHCP, FTP, ONVIF and some more
  • I gave it a static IP in the same subnet as my router
  • I set my router as default gateway

Initial setup:

After I connected the camera to my router I was able to access it via its webinterface and via the "Reolink Client" on my Windows Laptop that is connected to the same network. Using the "Reolink Client" I was able to set up motion-detection and stream+record video onto my laptop.

Problem:

Since I don't want my laptop running 24/7 I had the idea to use a Raspberry Pi instead. I never worked with a Raspberry before but eventually I installed Raspian on it (Pi 3B+) and connected it to my network. I gave the Raspberry a static IP too.

Solution Trial 1 (ONVIF Software on Raspberry)

However I realized that the Reolink Client is not available for Raspbian/Linux. Neither is there 3d-party software that works (or at least I didn't get it to work).

Solution Trial 2 (MotionEye OS)

Next try was to install the motioneye-OS on my Raspberry which is a special OS build for camera surveillance. I followed a tutorial but got stuck where I had to add my IP camera to the motioneye software. The guy in the tutorial uses a USB webcam but I didn't find any tutorials with IP cameras.

Solution Trial 3 (Utilize RSTP stream from camera)

As the camera supports RSTP I asked the support for the RSTP-URL. When I tried to stream the video using VLC-Player I only received audio from the camera, the screen was black. Here is the RSTP-URL: rtsp://(user name):(password)@(ip address):554//h264Preview_01_main. See the mail from the Reolink support here

Solution Trial 4 (Use Raspberry as FTP server)

Since this didn't work neither I installed Raspbian again and tried a different approach. I followed this tutotial on how to set up an FTP server using the raspberry (I am sorry it is written in german). I installed ProFTPD as described but left out the last step which was to make it accessible over the internet. I only want to connect to it in my local network so that should be fine.

Using FileZilla I connected to the FTP server and moved some files back and forth to test it. Other than getting disconnected when not doing anything for a while it worked fine. See screenshot of testing here.

However when I typed in the same settings into the Reolink Client I got an error message when pressing "FTP-Test". See screenshot here.

In order to eliminate the possibility that my Raspberry FTP server is the problem I created an account on cameraftp.com which is an online ftp service specially for camera ftp-uploads. After creating the account there and typing in the new settings like ftp server address, username, password and so on I got the message "Login sucessful". But when I connected to it with FileZilla I saw that there are only text files instead of the camera videos. I suppose this is because I only used the test-trial of the website and didn't pay anything yet. However everytime the camera was supposed to upload a video a text file was created so the connection works.

Now finally to the actual questions:

  • Is there a possibility that something is wrong with my Raspberry Pi ProFTPD server? As I wrote it works fine using FileZilla. Is there something special to do if I use the FTP server in a local network?

  • Is there a NVR (Network Video Recorder) under 100$ that is capable to save the cameras 2560x1440p video when motion is detected? I couldn't finde one but if somebody happens to know one please tell me.

  • Any other ideas on how I can record the video from the camera when motion is detected? I don't want to spend more than 100$ but I already have a hard drive, router, ethernet cables and so on.

  • It would be cool if I could plug the IP camera directly into the ethernet port of the raspberry. This way I won't stress my home network.

If you can point out where the problem is in one of my solution trials I would be really happy. Other solutions are welcome, too.

I am sorry for any spelling/grammar mistakes but I am not a native english speaker. :)

2
ftpcameraraspberry-piraspberry-pi3ip-camera
You seem to have set up ProFTPD to require TLS, and I doubt the camera does TLS FTP by default. I can't see the other options on the camera's FTP setup page but maybe the TRANSPORTMODUS can be changed to TLS. Or maybe you can disable all the TLS stuff in ProFTPD either just to test, or permanently if the server is only inside your internal network. – Mark Setchell
I disabled the TLS and I was able to connect to it with FileZilla using the option "Only use plain FTP (insecure)" but again the camera failed to connecto to it. The TRANSPORTMODUS has two other options: "PASV" and "PORT". I assume I can switch between active and passive FTP with that. – Yannic

2 Answers

1
votes

I had the same issues with proftpd. I finally gave up and tried vsftpd. Worked like a charm. I used tcpdump to try and figure it out, but all I could see was reolink sending FIN,ACK right after the connection started. Reolink worked fine against filezilla on a PC. Also, windows ftp client worked fine with proftpd on the pi.

You don't need a router between the reolink and the pi. Just use static IP's.

If you try vsftpd, don't chroot your local users. I was unable to create directories when I did that.

0
votes

It might be a problem with using active FTP rather than passive. Active FTP requires a connection to a random data port that might be being blocked by a firewall. Try an active connection from FileZilla and see if this still works. Or select passive from the camera and see if this then works.

You could also try the IP Camera FTP service that I'm currently developing:

https://app.comsci.co.uk/camac

All free whilst in beta and if it goes commercial, subscriptions will be comparable to the electricity cost of running an NVR.

Supports alert generation, decoding video, automatic deletion of historic data, easy picture browsing via key files.

In addition to browser access, there's an Android App and a windows App available.