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ACTi IP camera snapshot URL

I’ve been toying around with those cheap LinkSys cameras, which are great… but they have bad low light and no IR light sensitivity. So, I got some ACTi ACM1311N IP cameras, which have great IR sensitivity. However, unlike other IP cameras, the video stream from this camera is essentially proprietary. This is changing though… after harassing the support techs, it turns out there is a way to pull/embed still images from the camera. Just in case anyone else is interested, here is the URL used to pull snapshots from the camera with;

http://x.x.x.x/cgi-bin/encoder?USER=Admin&PWD=123456&SNAPSHOT

At the time of this writing, they are working on a firmware update to support video streaming via URL pull, but it’s not expected to be released until late 2009. Boring post I know, but I also blog things like this as a memory aid for myself 😉

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3 Responses to “ACTi IP camera snapshot URL”

  1. Kyin says:

    Actually this post is very useful. Currently there is no other way to get video except using their own DLL or ActiveX. The SNAPSHOT is very slow. So technically it is not possible to simulate a live video by pulling stills at regular interval.

  2. Amal says:

    Thanks for commenting! When I spoke to tech support, they said they were working on a firmware update that would allow for “standard” video streaming codecs like MPEG/MJPEG. However they could not speak to including the audio stream under those codecs. I hope they get around to it soon.

  3. Roti says:

    Thanks for the tip. I assumed this function would be present as it is present in all other network cameras I have tried. Pretty disappointing from Acti.

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