Foscam 19831P MJPEG problem with iCam Pro

[abraun]

Today I received a pair of Foscam 19831P after having been assured they would work - only to find that as it's a H.264 setup, it's not officially supported.  That said, Raisin's support entitled "Foscam HD Cameras" would seem to provide a solution to that problem... so, yay!

After having read through his/her post, I put in the configuration URL into my browser and received a "<result>0</result> snippet in return (after having gotten -1 and -2 responses to incorrectly formatted URLs or bad name/password combos, so I am going to interpret a "0" result as "success". 

I then put in the access URL as described, but seem to be getting nowhere.  The preview area shows nothing and the area at the bottom of the configuration dialog (this is on OS X, by the way) shows no error or information messages.  I've tried this with the name and password in the fields specifically provided for that information as well as by leaving those blank (as you would expect would be the right way to go given that the name/pw are in the URL.  No dice.

Is anybody able to get any of the Foscam HD cameras to work with iCam Pro - and if so, might you be able to tell me what parts of the secret sauce I might be missing?

Thank you in advance!

[abraun]

So I've dug into this more and found that Foscam added support for MJPEG streams to their HD cameras in a firmware update last year.  According to this link on their site:

http://foscam.us/forum/how-to-fetch-snapshots-and-mjpeg-stream-on-the-fi9821w-02w-t4328.html

The setup is pretty straightforward.  You tell the camera to set up a sub-stream as MJPEG and then hit the sub stream URL to get the stream.  I did this and everything works as it should (i.e. return code of "0" and hitting the stream URL indicated in those instructions on my browser shows a live MJPEG stream as it should.

Unfortunately, iCamSource Pro still doesn't show me anything other than a field of gray.  I've tried putting the camera name and password in the URL as well as the fields provided by iCamSource Pro for that purpose and nothing.  The only kind of reaction I get is the following error message at the bottom of the window:

Cannot find JPEG data.  Your network IP camera may not be supported.  Please click the "?" button to verify your camera's Camera URL.

As you might expect, the button doesn't help much.  I tried SKJM's MJPEG test tool (at http://skjm.com/icam/mjpeg_test.php) and get nothing back but a whole series of 404s.

I'm kind of starting to hit my head against a wall now as I'm not sure what to try next.  Does anybody have any advice as to what to try next?  Help!

[abraun]

One last follow-up: I spoke with the Foscam people today and while they were not in a position to offer support for software not their own, I got assurances from several people that the MJPEG stream their cameras provide conform to industry standards and that no special handling is necessary for software that supports MJPEG.  Seems to me that that should be all we need to know to be confident that it can be made tow work with iCam/iCam Pro.

[Stefan]

One last follow-up: I spoke with the Foscam people today and while they were not in a position to offer support for software not their own, I got assurances from several people that the MJPEG stream their cameras provide conform to industry standards and that no special handling is necessary for software that supports MJPEG.  Seems to me that that should be all we need to know to be confident that it can be made tow work with iCam/iCam Pro.

We were able to find a demo 9831 camera on Foscam's site, and tried the following two URLs:

http://50.197.211.181:9831/cgi-bin/CGIProxy.fcgi?cmd=snapPicture2&usr=user&pwd=foscam
http://50.197.211.181:9831/cgi-bin/CGIStream.cgi?cmd=GetMJStream&usr=user&pwd=foscam

The first URL returns a JPEG image, whereas the second returns an MJPEG stream.

The JPEG URL works in the iCamSource Pro, but the MJPEG one does not. Additionally, the JPEG URL works in Chrome, but the MJPEG one does not. (The MJPEG one does work in Safari and Firefox, however.)

The fact that it doesn't work in Chrome was strange, so we looked at the actually data coming back.

For the JPEG URL, we see this in the HTTP response header:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-type: image/jpeg
Content-Length: 65217
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2015 04:26:12 GMT
Server: lighttpd/1.4.31

......JFIF...............

Everything looks good, the header appears complete, and the image data starts after the header.

For the MJPEG URL, however, the response looks like this:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-type:multipart/x-mixed-replace;boundary=ThisString

--ThisString
--ThisString
Content-type:image/jpeg
Content-Length:18263

......JFIF.........................!..#,J0,))

There is the problem. The MJPEG URL's HTTP response header is injecting the multipart boundary string into the header instead of after it. This is likely why the iCamSource Pro and Chrome are unable to read it.

I would suggest that Foscam review the software, as this is not valid HTTP.

[abraun]

Thanks so much for looking into this!

So if I understand you correctly, to boil it down this camera won't work with iCam/iCam Pro until they issue some kind of firmware update that will fix the problem, correct?

If that is the case, that means I'll need to return these cameras and get a couple of others.  Fortunately, they have a 30-day return policy, so that will hopefully not be that big a deal.  Can you recommend other indoor Foscam cameras that you know work?  I'd prefer HD, but as it seems that they're trending toward H.264 for their HD products, I don't know if there are any that do.

Thank you so much for your assistance and I look forward to hearing your recommendations.

Best regards,
Aaron

[abraun]

Point 2: I reported this to the Foscam guys and they came back with the following:

We usually suggest users try Firefox to play the MJPEG stream, as Chrome sometimes could not run the script properly.
To play it on chrome, you can try the html to see if it'd work for you.
Refer attached files.

2.Beside fetch video via CGI, you can also try RTSP, if it's supported by  iCamSource Pro.
Refer this page for details.
http://foscam.us/forum/how-to-use-rtsp-and-https-for-hd-cameras-t4926.html

So unless this is an easy change that iCamSource Pro can make, I'm going to assume that we shouldn't expect a firmware fix from Foscam anytime soon as they believe that their stuff works as intended.  Given that, are there ANY Foscam cameras (including non-HD ones) that we know work with iCSP?

Thanks,
Aaron

[Stefan]

Interesting to know that Foscam believes that their software is working as intended, even though it apparently does not.

The FI8910W and FI8918W non-HD cameras have been confirmed to work with the iCamSource Pro.

[abraun]

All right, I took delivery of a couple of FI8910W cameras yesterday and while I'm not thrilled that they're not HD (not your fault), they are now up and running successfully!  Thanks for the help!

[Stefan]

All right, I took delivery of a couple of FI8910W cameras yesterday and while I'm not thrilled that they're not HD (not your fault), they are now up and running successfully!  Thanks for the help!

You're welcome! 

[Seth3377]

One last follow-up: I spoke with the Foscam people today and while they were not in a position to offer support for software not their own, I got assurances from several people that the MJPEG stream their cameras provide conform to industry standards and that no special handling is necessary for software that supports MJPEG.  Seems to me that that should be all we need to know to be confident that it can be made tow work with iCam/iCam Pro.

••••••••••••••••••••
    Having the same problem with iCam source/iOS iCam and if you found a solution please let me know. And you’re right on page 82 of user manual for F19821W and the user manual for F19831P balls say they support video format H .264 and I am JPEG, so nothing special should be needed at all. 
   iOS App Store has iCam and iCam pro, but where do you get them back iCamsource for either iCamsource and iCamsource pro  for the Mac OS X ?