API and 3rd party access for Argus 2

Craig

Hi support.. I'm asking on behalf of the other 14 people who have asked the same question. Can you find out from your engineering R&D team, when will we get API access?

Craig.

Cynthia

Hello, Craig.We will transfer your requests to our engineers. Thank you!

Vincent Le Bourlot

Hi Cynthia,
I don't mean this as being aggressive, nor as it being your fault, but we have read the "We will transfer to our engineers" so many times now in different threads, and yet never got any feedback from them. Does that mean that they are definitely not interested?
This answers keeps us hoping for a miracle. Could you try to find a real answer? Even if it's just to say it will never happen?
Thanks
Cheers
V.

Craig

Hi cynthia, could I please have an update from your engineering team asap?

Regards
Craig.

Cynthia

Hello,
Because it is China's National Day, our engineers are on their holiday.
We will inform you as soon as possible if there is any update.
You can also submit a ticket via https://support.reolink.com/hc/en-us/requests/new so that your problem can get more attention.

Vincent Le Bourlot

Here's a more relevant answer:

Doris (Reolink)
Oct 8, 2020, 18:43 GMT+8

Dear Vincent,

Thank you for choosing Reolink.

I understand the needs of some customers for APIs, but for now, our R&D personnel is constantly improving the camera as planned. We can only say that the API function you mentioned is still under planning. So I can understand your urgency for this function, but we need time to evaluate and research. Hope you can understand.

Thanks for your patience.

Have a nice day!
Best Regards
Reolink Support Team-Doris

nospamthx01

Hi Cynthia!
So 20 days has past and i presume that your National day is over. Do you have any news?
Is this happening or can we just call it quits and get cameras that works for the purpose they are intended?

mstein

Hi @Cynthia,

any news?

@all others, did everyone already create a support issue about that?

Cynthia

Hello all,

Sorry for the late reply.

Reolink battery-powered cameras can’t work with third-party software due to the hardware limit.

All Reolink battery-powered cameras don't support ONVIF protocol, RTSP stream, and related communication protocols that third party software requires.
In addition, most third-party software doesn't have the battery management option that allows the camera to enter the power-saving sleep mode when no motion is detected, thus they can't work together.
Therefore, we recommend you to access Reolink battery-powered cameras via Reolink software.

If you still need help, please
Submit a ticket via https://support.reolink.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
Send an Email directly to support@reolink.com

Cynthia

Hello all,

Sorry for the late reply.

Reolink battery-powered cameras can’t work with third-party software due to the hardware limit.

All Reolink battery-powered cameras don't support ONVIF protocol, RTSP stream, and related communication protocols that third party software requires.
In addition, most third-party software doesn't have the battery management option that allows the camera to enter the power-saving sleep mode when no motion is detected, thus they can't work together.
Therefore, we recommend you to access Reolink battery-powered cameras via Reolink software.

If you still need help, please
Submit a ticket via https://support.reolink.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
Send an Email directly to support@reolink.com

Vincent Le Bourlot

Thank you for your answer. As previously said, i know this is not your personal doing, so no personal attack intended at all. But you realize that this looks like Reolink not caring about customers needs and requests. At the moment, battery powered cameras are able to send an email with snapshots attached when movement is detected, this is very heavy and unresponsive. But knowing this is possible means that a bare minimum of registering a webhook to receive these notifications is not a hardware limited impossibility. Webhooks are very light and fast, and this would already be an improvement.
Thank you for your patience,

Cynthia

Thank you for your kind understanding.
I will forward your idea to our engineer who working on the battery camera, thank you for your suggestions.

iguinslive

Hi
As a lot of member of this forum already mentioned. This does not make any sense the reason that as been given why the battery powered cannot have API available. Especially for the pro version where people are well awave of the battery drain while streaming.
It's easy feasible to add the necessary feature inside thirds party software to handle sensor and battery management as it's already done for a lot of device on battery!
As someone said already it's not at reolink to decide if yes or not you should restrict access to api due to battery powered supply!
Thanks you to return with an update to this issue.

bits

The network protocol, encryption, media format and basically all aspects of Reolink products has been fully reverse engineered already.
This includes NVR and IP cameras such as RLC/B/E/Argus.

Anything the official Reolink client, NVR or IP Cams send between each other is already documented.

Eg here is a tool that can log in and get a video stream from Argus cameras:
https://[censored]/jdillenkofer/camera_proxy

Some docs on Baichuan protocol:
https://[censored]/thirtythreeforty/neolink/blob/master/dissector/protocol.md
https://[censored]/thirtythreeforty/neolink/blob/master/dissector/messages.md

cams

Would like to call the camera via API to the IP address. Please give this your attention.

Cynthia

Engineering is reviewing the feasibility of implementing this idea. We’ll schedule to implement the request if it’s accepted. Otherwise, it goes to the suggestion pool and maybe reactivated if others make similar requests again.

FTI

@Cynthia what feedback did you get from Engineering?

Integration in other Applications/Systems is really a nightmare with this Battery Cams, even with the newer Argus 3 + Argus 3 Pro.

Does anyone have an Idea how i can trigger an (Motion Detection) Alert via Wifi?
I have some Smarthome Door Sensors and external PIR Sensors and i simply want to send an API Call/UDP Packet to the Cam, so it wakes up and starts recording.

Vincent Le Bourlot

Hi, unfortunately it's not possible as you describe it... Only workaround I've found was to use a dedicated Mac mini with the desktop client open, on witch I would remotely trigger a pre recorded automator action that would click on the snapshot button in the app. As you can imagine, not very responsive, nor reliable...

luca margoni

I am also interested in the release of API for battery-powered cams. Many other people are also interested (just follow the Neolink project on github). A simple MQTT integration would be sufficient to configure customized local push notifications and activate automations with home automation systems like HOME ASSISTANT. Sorry for my poor english

Vincent Le Bourlot

Just stumble upon the github project thirtythreeforty/neolink. Have a look at the pull request #199! It seems to work with argus 2!