Anyone here running the Xiaomi XiaoYi Yi Smart Wifi Cam?

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I've just ordered one of these from Gearbest:

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Is anyone here running these yet? I've bought it to replace an older 480p Tenvis Wifi PTZ camera and hoping the picture quality should be quite an upgrade.

I've got to admit I'm not sure how they knock these things out so cheap though - I've got a Foscam 720p camera that has been used as a baby monitor camera for 2 years and it's starting to die a death with the IR cut sticking etc and I'm hopeful the image quality of this will stack up to that as well.
 
i plan to get a few of these, if u can share your view on this cam pros and cons once u got it, that would be great
 
Well the postman has just delivered another few toys today including this one - I bought this one from @GearBest as the price was great at just $33.71.

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It's an extremely nice looking unit for the price - a rubberised bottom etc and would fit nicely into any modern looking house.

There are no motors or anything as it's just a camera so I am looking forward to seeing how this one looks.

It's going to be tonight before I get any time to look at this one so I'll let you know how it goes.
 
Been waiting for this review..
 
Looking forward to your review as I'm thinking to get one myself..
 
It's been an absolute nightmare getting it configured with the app - it came delivered with firmware 1.8.5.1H - I eventually got it to 1.8.5.1I which is the latest version and it's much more stable.

What I didn't really take much notice of was that RTSP support is protected with a username and password in the recent firmware versions and unfortunately there's no easy way into the firmware to figure out what they are - in fact the RTSP port is totally closed in the latest versions.

1.8.5.1B fully supports RTSP with no authentication required and I've tested that here, although at a guess the older firmware may not support the IR side of the camera so we'll see what happens when it goes dark.

It may be that it's been an issue with my local configuration as other people haven't had problems like this - there are so many combinations of apps and firmware versions who knows.

The camera only works with 2.4GHz wifi so whatever device you use for the config must be already connected to a 2.4GHz network (the majority are)
 
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I got mine today (infrared version). Got it working fine with an android app, still on 1.8.5.1H firmware. Do you know how the motion alerts work? And is there a web interface for recorded and live streams?

Just tested infrared with lights off, works fine with 1.8.5.1H
 
anyone managed to telnet into it? Someone reported success but doesn't work on mine. The only open ports are 80, 554, 8554 and 18554 on H firmware
 
OK I am getting motion triggered alerts now and they are highlighted on the timeline, but scrubbing on the android app timeline doesn't work - it always starts from the beginning of the recording or goes to live view.

Also android app only connects to the camera if you are connected to the same wifi - so useless outside your house :/
 
In the RTSP supported versions these cameras are more useful but they have issues with the IR light pulsing and not staying static.

As the IR can't be turned off these are no good for pointing out a window as they'll blind themselves at night.

If RTSP comes back without requiring authentication and you get control of the IR then these would definitely be more useful.

These would be ok as baby cameras or something for monitoring something inside the house from your phone - picture quality with IR on is actually quite good internally.

The old firmware linked up to Blue Iris quite nicely but as soon as it gets dark the IR starts pulsing badly as the firmware isn't written to handle it and it just sets the motion detection off constantly.

Fingers crossed a better firmware version will come along.

For something better (but much more expensive) I am testing something else at the moment which I do like a lot - I'll get a thread up about that one next week!
 
OK something to get the ball rolling with the hacking - I just extracted the filesystem from the latest firmware for the camera (1.8.5.1I) so here it is in all it's glory:

https://mega.co.nz/#!JJQyBbCS!RSlRlkt_OqJg8BYUPbhbtzs_8DEEEz9O5rM9rQO9p7I

It'll need some daemon's adding to open more ports - the latest firmware (1.8.5.1I) has actually been rock solid for me and much better than the firmware it shipped with.

These things may have promise yet - I've noticed the video stream seems quite similar to my Hikvision cameras with the way the text changes colour depending on the background so not sure if they're related at all.
 
If you could have the stability of the latest version of the firmware (1.8.5.1I) which works with the IR sensor reliably as well as an unauthenticated RTSP feed that would be great wouldn't it?

And wouldn't it be even better if you didn't have to hack the firmware?

And could run whatever commands you wanted on the device?

Well I've had three beers and it's sorted :)

This is a seriously cheap Wifi 720p camera that you can hook into the likes of Blue Iris now.
 
Just need to work out how you can turn off the bloody IR light now - if you're not sticking this out of a window then you'd probably be happy with the quality of this camera - I'm away for a wedding for the next couple of days so will leave it running to see if it's stable for the weekend.

The Wifi doesn't seem the strongest and even with the latest firmware the IR does seem to go up and down a bit as though it's hunting.

On the plus side I cannot see the IR lights at all at night - they're on and working but I can't see them at all.

My poor old Blue Iris is getting hammered at the moment!

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The Xiaomi Yi Smart camera is the top left - top right is Hikvision 2.8mm, bottom left is Hikvision 4mm, bottom middle is the Transfluent U23 and the bottom right is an old Tenvis 480P PTZ camera.
 
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They released firmware J that stops this working now.

I got telnet access to the device but you need the root password so just trying to crack that.
 
Looks like the root password is 1234qwer on these.

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That would be a yes then :)
 
Full process list of 1.8.5.1J here:

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Seems like in the excitement I forgot to post how it was done.

Anyway - for firmware 1.8.5.1I (this doesn't work on J - see the end of this post for why)

Just download this file:
https://mega.co.nz/#!QARChRCD!4slw-kvKJDGGuAfZr7M-iTr0rRBAoBPVExVbCUikEFs

Extract the test folder and it's contents to the top level of the memory card.

Now just go and insert the card into your Yi Smart Camera and turn it on if it's not already.

The camera will now boot up and after a minute or so you'll be able to access RTSP streams in software like VLC or Blue Iris using the following URL

rtsp://<your Yi IP address>/ch0_0.h264

So my Yi is on 192.168.0.226 so I use the following in VLC

rtsp://192.168.0.226/ch0_0.h264

And the result is that with the latest firmware 1.8.5.1I you now have full RTSP access.

You can delete the test folder once this is working as it only needs to be done once - when new firmware comes out it will kill this off unless Xiaomi include it by default.

Doesn't work with J as there's not enough memory available and the rtspsvr process bombs out with an allocation error shortly after starting.

Here's a couple of comparison shots of the Yi against a Tenvis JPT2815W wifi camera - you can see how much larger the FoV is on the Yi - not always what you want for CCTV but good for smaller spaces when they're inside the house. In terms of the actual raw size they are very similar when you take the extra resolution into account - maybe matching the Yi with a different lens is a job for a different day.

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The eagle eyed will notice the time difference - the Yi sets UTC to Chinese time - you can add an ntpd command such as this to the end of the script: to bring it inline with UTC.

/usr/sbin/ntpd -d -p 23.101.187.68

You could add a new script to init.d to wait for the network and then fire it up - I'll play around tonight.

The framerates on the wifi cameras are totally reliant on the signal strength - they don't have the best internal antennas so you may get just 4-5fps - my PoE Hikvision cameras deliver totally smooth 25fps over ethernet.
 
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