Other people can stream your feed.

[cheddar-caveman]

I have an IPCAM in a nest box and would love to share the feed with friends but can't get it to work.

When I stream the video using IPCams App it says the stream info is as the below image.



On my (Apple) computer, when I paste that URL into the address bar and press enter, it opens the stream in the VLC player bot nobody else can get it to work.

Do I need to do something else to make it work please??

 

[elvisimprsntr]

Don't cross the streams.

 

[cheddar-caveman]

That was as useful as a chocolate fire guard, no idea what you're talking about, sorry!

 

[EagleEye7]

Lookup local vs public IP addresses.

192.168.1.78 is not routable across the Internet, hence your challenge.

 

[bp2008]

Consider doing a youtube livestream. There are also some dedicated IP camera streaming services out there but they charge a subscription fee whereas youtube will let you livestream for free.

Many other solutions are going to involve a much bigger learning curve and potential risks. For example you could forward port 554 through your router to the camera, but then you expose security vulnerabilities in the camera to the internet. Not a good idea because sooner or later the camera would get hacked, and through that, everything on your network is at risk. A little safer would be running software that can proxy the video feed (such as MediaMTX) on a computer in your house (keeping the camera from being accessed directly by the internet) and forwarding the appropriate port or ports to that instead of to the camera. Or you could set up a VPN server for safer remote access, but then everyone who wants to view it needs to connect to your VPN.

 

[The Automation Guy]

I agree that the easiest solution is to "live stream" the feed on something like Youtube. This way your local network can be locked down and you don't have to do anything special to give people access to the feed. You can make the stream "private" on Youtube and give out the URL as needed (vs having the URL be publicly searchable/findable). But that's probably overkill for a bird nest camera.

If your NVR/DVR cannot handle something like that natively, you can use a free software called OBS (Open Broadcasters Software) to broadcast the stream on Youtube (or whatever online solution you want).

 

[cheddar-caveman]

Thanks TAG. My problem is that at 87 I'm not exactly computer savvy so would probably struggle to set something like this up

 

[Alaska Country]

Thanks TAG. My problem is that at 87 I'm not exactly computer savvy so would probably struggle to set something like this up

One is never too old to learn new tricks! What is now helpful is the use of AI. Look into either Copilot, Claude or others. Most have a free trial where technical questions can be asked and answered.

Many use these same AI engines for writing computer code without the need to know the language. What is amazing, for the most part, that the output generally works......