Ditching Foscam and Amcrest for Nest!

Hardware Weather Station Equipment
1

I just purchased a Nest Outdoor Camera 2-Pack, because last night was the straw that broke the camel’s back. My Amcrest went offline AGAIN and for the life of me I could not get the app to connect to the camera. I unplugged it and plugged it in again, and re-scanned the bar code, and still nothing. I rebooted my phone, and unplugged the camera from the wall outlet. I also opted to install it using a cabled set up rather than a wifi set up. Finally after 2 and a half hours of fighting with this damn camera I got it to work. But I can’t get it working in the wdwebcamcaputre app that comes with WD, as a second cam. The Foscam is set up as the primary camera, but it’s not the one I want to use as the primary camera. I tried all the links on the iSpy website for http and rtsp and fiddled with my router settings opening ports and so forth, and it simply will not work.

So after careful consideration and a relatively quick chat with the Nest support team, I decided to purchase the Nest Outdoor cam. The options that sold me were the live streaming, two-way sound, easy set up, easy mounting and excellent video quality. This seems to be everything I am looking for in a weather camera. Streaming with Foscam and Amcrest are nothing short of ridiculously difficult.

I want to thank Marian for his wonderful insight and Nest camera recommendations. Without him I would not have known what to do about my camera dilemmas.

I would like to know how easy it is to set the Nest camera up with the wdwebcamcapture app. I know I have to make my cams “public” but after that I’m hoping someone could help me if I run into trouble.

Expected delivery date is June 11th so I will surely be back here to let you know all about it.

Dan

2

Sorry can’t help with the Nest cams…but…interested in the Amcrest(s) cam depending on what you have…let me know if you want to get rid of them as I have had decent luck with mine…

3

I’ll keep you posted if I want to sell you my Amcrest and Foscam. That’s why I’m going to stop using them, I just haven’t been very pleased with them.

4

Hi

I have some experience with IP webcams.

I assume the NEST camera uses ONVIF in which case it may be a struggle. I have taken a quick look at the webcam setup and cannot see how to config my ONVIF webcams into the system. Brian maybe able to comment further but it does look like the RTSP stream from an ONVIF camera is not handled well…

For my webcam I pull the image straight from the camera to the web site. FWIW it is a Sony Starlight camera with a near fish eye lens used also for meteor watching…It is contained within a weatherproof dome. All from China and very cheap, about £50 complete…

Jon

5

RTSP streaming direct from the camera does not work with WD’s camera app (wdwebcamcapture.exe).

It must be an http protocol used.

@jonfear, what is the HTML code you use to display the image directly from your camera onto your webpage?

Dan

6

Dan

I moved away from Saratoga and now use https://pwsdashboard.com/. This has a webcam integration built in. Works a treat. It allows me to continue to use WD, clientraw and have a new template for the 21st century…

The webcam on my website is a near fisheye sky cam for both weather and meteor detection…

Jon

7

I’ve had 2 Nest cams up on my site for over 2 years now. Work flawlessly 90% of the time. You really can’t integrate them with much unfortunately.
Can’t even stream them to Youtube either without going through a 3rd party software like XSplit. (come on Google) You can check
out them on the front page of my site.

8

Apparently you can, you just have to make your Nest cams “public” and then use the free streaming cloud service URL to stream directly from your cameras.

This is the streaming URL: http://video.nest.com/live/xxxxxxxxxx

You should check into this. I’m going to just as soon as I get my cameras next week.

Dan

9

Are you talking about streaming to Youtube directly or what there Dan. Mine are public on my website.
What is the free streaming cloud service you’re referring to?

10

No, I’m talking about the streaming coming from Nest’s own cloud, the idea which I got from Marian of High Park Weather (Toronto). I’m dying to try it out.

I just had a look at your code. It seems you’re doing it the way I’m trying to describe already. Your image is served to Nest using the video.nest.com/live URL, then you take that URL and embed it into your webpage.

Am I completely missing the point? If so, let me know.

11

Yep, thats what i’m doing Dan.

My point was Nest Cams, you cant do much other than that with them. I’d love to stream it on Youtube or Facebook too, but
with the way Nest cameras protocols are set, you cant do that. Or at least, I’ve not come across for a way to do it.

You can finally use them with ipcamlive which some guys here use, at least with upgrading to the newest version of that.

12

Have you tried OBS Studio? It can stream to both Facebook and YouTube. (https://obsproject.com/)

It’s free.

13

I was using Xsplit with one of my old Hikvision Cams for a different project on an old computer.
I hadn’t attempted to get the Nest Cams on there.