Best app to turn my old cell phone into RTSP streaming cameras?

D

D0T-C0M

Getting the hang of it

Feb 21, 2021

106

29

NB, Canada

• Mar 10, 2022

• #1

Looking for suggestions for the best rtsp streaming app for my old android phones.

Preferably I would need at least the following features.
-username and password protected
-ability to lock the phone while streaming
-video and audio streaming
-works with blue iris

Optional but nice to have,
-onvif capable
-ability to use the different cameras on the phone
-zooming in and out
-4k streaming
-ability to change FPS and keyframe rates

Thanks
DC

 

bp2008

Staff member

IPCT+ Member

Mar 10, 2014

13,550

15,687

USA

• Mar 10, 2022

• #2

It isn't nearly such an advanced app as you're hoping for, but I used Android IP Webcam once years ago. It can stream mjpeg to Blue Iris. Which is video only, and not efficient.

Here's something else that may be better or worse: IP Phone Camera – View Camera on PC - Apps on Google Play

 

D

D0T-C0M

Getting the hang of it

Feb 21, 2021

106

29

NB, Canada

• Mar 10, 2022

• #3

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll check those out.

 

BORIStheBLADE

Getting comfortable

Feb 14, 2016

869

2,297

North Texas

• Mar 11, 2022

• #4

I think Tinycam Pro can also be used. tinyCam Monitor | Home

 

D

D0T-C0M

Getting the hang of it

Feb 21, 2021

106

29

NB, Canada

• Mar 17, 2022

• #5

Wow TinyCam Pro is great and works really well. Super stable and very easy to setup. It fulfills almost everything in my list including video and audio feeds. To get it to stream the video and audio to blueiris I use the TinyCam webserver APIs to call up the streams. The only thing though, is I can only get the MJPEG stream from the camera to work with blue iris but if I use a browser and log into the TinyCam's web server directly it will show both MJPEG and H.264 depending which I choose in the camera settings. On the TinyCam github page where it lists all the APIs the webserver will accept they only list the API to call up a MJPEG stream and not the H.264. I want to use H.264 because the BVR files are huge using MJPEG.

Is there a way to sniff out what API the web server uses to call up the h.264 stream from the app on my phone?

 

Last edited: Mar 18, 2022

bp2008

Staff member

IPCT+ Member

Mar 10, 2014

13,550

15,687

USA

• Mar 18, 2022

• #6

You could try fiddler to see what URL it uses for streaming the H.264. It won't be RTSP though; web browsers can't consume it. Which means it might be either raw H.264 or .ts (mpeg2-ts) streaming over http.

 

D

djh_wolf

Young grasshopper

Jun 21, 2018

62

9

UK

• Jun 29, 2023

• #7

D0T-C0M said:

To get it to stream the video and audio to blueiris I use the TinyCam webserver APIs to call up the streams.

Click to expand...

I would be extremely grateful if you could elaborate on how this was done.

 

octostream

n3wb

Aug 5, 2026

1

0

United States

• Aug 5, 2026

• #8

I made one - RTSP & RTMP Cam - OctoStream. I know the OP asked about Android, but half the people landing here have an old iPhone in a drawer. The difference from the apps mentioned above: it serves real H.264 over RTSP - not MJPEG over an HTTP web server. So Blue Iris pulls it directly with a plain rtsp:/ URL and you avoid the huge-BVR-file problem that came up in this thread.

There's also an RTMP push mode (with mic audio) if you'd rather have the phone push out to a server instead of the NVR pulling from it - useful when the phone is behind NAT or on cellular.

Caveats: RTSP mode is currently video-only (audio works in RTMP mode), and there's no stream username/password yet. ONVIF and auth are the kind of things I'd bump up the list if there's interest from this crowd, so feature requests welcome.