7 ms·

Turning a Decommissioned iPhone into a UniFi Protect Camera

121 points by ingve 1y ago

VoidWhisperer 1y ago
> "At first, I was presented with an endless spinner, as I hadn’t configured things properly. The documentation on Github is enough, but frustratingly, the failure mode I ran into was the video just… not loading. However, I eventually got it nailed down, and now I have a new camera in Protect." ------------------------ It is unfortunate that they decided to omit how they fixed the last issue they mentioned. That could've been useful knowledge for others
- jakeydus 1y ago
  Honestly, I saw this and was very interested to learn how they actually solved the problem. Cool that OP did it! Bummed that they weren't willing to share how they did it.
- nodesocket 1y ago
  I also thought this strange to leave out the exact details and information that people would actually be interested to learn about.
- gerdesj 1y ago
  "The documentation on Github is enough, but frustratingly, the failure mode I ran into was the video just… not loading. However, I eventually got it nailed down, and now I have a new camera in Protect." Are you sure you want to go down this route: "Turn device into IP Camera"? - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ip-camera-lite/id1013455241 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ip-camera-lite/id1013455241 Anyway - this is likely the Github mentioned: https://github.com/p10tyr/rtsp-to-onvif https://github.com/p10tyr/rtsp-to-onvif ... its a proxy that takes a RTSP stream and makes it look all lovely and ONVIF (ie discoverable). The particular fix that OP mentions will be in that Github repo/wiki/issues but given I don't anything Apple, I can't be arsed to search I think that Frigate has recently had a proxy or proxy handling recently added. Zoneminder would also work with this approach. Please, whatever you do, put your cameras on their own VLAN, with no access to the internet. Especially if names like Reolink (int al) are involved. I own quite a few Reos and they live on a VLAN called SEWER!
- Belphemur 1y ago
  Might be a case of: tried so many things, no idea what fixed it.
Havoc 1y ago
Disappointed to see no discussion on battery. That's what is keeping me from implementing this. My old iphones are at 2+ years battery life. i.e. at the point where they're at risk of becoming spicy pillows and I'd love to not have a lithium fire in my apartment. In that context spending 50 bucks on amazon for a camera suddenly seems sound
- uz3snolc3t6fnrq 1y ago
  i could be wrong but you should be able to solder/connect the battery contacts to the output of a power supply at the same voltage as the battery you're replacing and just have it plugged into the wall or a UPS, but not sure if the battery manager would still think the battery is being spent and freak out after getting to 0%
- CameronBanga 1y ago
  I've not personally tried it, but there have been people who have had success removing their iPhone batteries and getting old devices to power via Lightning. https://www.reddit.com/r/androidafterlife/comments/zpya9p/i_made_an_iphone_6s_work_without_battery/ https://www.reddit.com/r/androidafterlife/comments/zpya9p/i_...
  - Havoc 1y ago
    oh that's fun. I had assumed ifruits would just decide nope if they can't see the battery edit: that's a rather old v6 in link...think they started with their authenticating components after that
- thebruce87m 1y ago
  > 2+ years battery life Is this considered old? I own countless devices with batteries older than this.
  - Havoc 1y ago
    Not an expert on this but my understanding is that at 2+ risk starts to increase, especially that have seen high use and fast charging. My layman understand is that dendrites accumulate over time so risk is incremental over use...and for phones use and time is basically same thing. Low use items I'd totally run for many more years.
thisislife2 1y ago
I have heard the camera modules get hot and degrade as they weren't created to be always ON in smartphones?
- high_priest 1y ago
  And the answer is as always, it depends. Mostly on the chip & sensor combo and if there is additional heat absorbing mass designed for the SoC.
xp84 1y ago
Casey, this is the most Casey thing I've ever heard, using an iPhone + some hackery when even cheap Amazon no-name PTZ cameras ($30-40 usually) natively support onvif! I'm happy it worked for you though.
- lgfr3000 1y ago
  Who the hell is Casey? ;)
  - catgirlinspace 1y ago
    The author of the article.
  - Arkanum 1y ago
    One of the hosts of https://atp.fm https://atp.fm
  - xp84 1y ago
    "Hi, this is Casey." -Casey If anyone does not listen to ATP, I cannot recommend that show enough. I'll add that you do have to have at least a tolerance for certain of the 3 hosts' assumptions, namely that one should be an Apple user for life. Not that they go easy on Apple, but they seem to be dedicated lifers no matter how bad Apple gets.
yapyap 1y ago
UniFi people are like the vegans of tech
- mmastrac 1y ago
  The joke for those who missed it: "How do you know somebody loves Unifi?" "Don't worry they'll tell you" Disclaimer: I do like unifi.
- nodesocket 1y ago
  It is really good though. Network has come a long way, and really is powerful, intuitive, and can support most advanced use cases. Protect is awesome, no cloud storage tomfoolery. AI features like license plate and facial recognition, and partner it with access and you can do some awesome integrations such as automatically open up your front gate, door, etc based on your car or face.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    Have they had a third party audit since a disgruntled employee did whatever they did? They had an insider threat situation a couple years back I think. I didn’t follow the story closely at the time, but I’ve supported end users and installs for Ubiquiti/Unifi stuff, and since that happened, I haven’t really been sure how much I should trust them.
    - aspenmayer 1y ago
      More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquiti#2021_alleged_data_breach_and_lawsuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquiti#2021_alleged_data_bre...
- gerdesj 1y ago
  Sorry? I run an IT company and a lot of my customers have Unifi APs (we sold them). Our in house controller has a lot of sites on it and it must be a good 10 years old now. Its certainly gone through at least three Ubuntu LTSs. I eat vegans for lunch.
- 1y ago
treesknees 1y ago
From some research, Unifi Protect doesn’t support live audio or audio playback for third-party cameras. It also lacks support for people and vehicle detections. I would likely consider using this setup for some inexpensive auxiliary cameras to enhance coverage. I’ve also had the desire to add a cheap remote camera while I’m staying in an Airbnb. However, I wouldn’t use this system for any serious surveillance around the house.
- varenc 1y ago
  If can support detection events on 3rd party ONVIF cameras, but you have to buy a seperate ubiquiti hardware product to run the detections. Either an AI Port or an AI Key.
  - gregoriol 1y ago
    You could also use the ZoneMinder (open-source), it supports many video/image streams from cameras and provides detections/alerting
    - varenc 1y ago
      I use scrypted! It's 'open source' but not free. Was just talking about getting detecting in the Unifi Protect NVR (which is pretty nice I admit)
- Mashimo 1y ago
  > It also lacks support for people and vehicle detections. I think they sell hardware to add that to 3rd party cameras. For the low price of 200 :)))) https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/up-ai-port https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/up-ai-port
- formerly_proven 1y ago
  Of course, it's vendor-locked consumer garbage ;)
thelastgallon 1y ago
Wondering if there is any way to run a webserver on old iphone?
- positr0n 1y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45022640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45022640 Or, even older! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473487 (2009)
  - raihansaputra 1y ago
    i think you pasted the wrong link for the first one, it links to the parent comment.
DrNosferatu 1y ago
Any list of cool uses for decommissioned iPhones? I would be actually quite interested in using my 6S as a tv box / HDMI dongle for streaming and emulation.

121 points by ingve 1y ago

> "At first, I was presented with an endless spinner, as I hadn’t configured things properly. The documentation on Github is enough, but frustratingly, the failure mode I ran into was the video just… not loading. However, I eventually got it nailed down, and now I have a new camera in Protect." ------------------------ It is unfortunate that they decided to omit how they fixed the last issue they mentioned. That could've been useful knowledge for others

jakeydus 1y ago
Honestly, I saw this and was very interested to learn how they actually solved the problem. Cool that OP did it! Bummed that they weren't willing to share how they did it.
nodesocket 1y ago
I also thought this strange to leave out the exact details and information that people would actually be interested to learn about.
gerdesj 1y ago
"The documentation on Github is enough, but frustratingly, the failure mode I ran into was the video just… not loading. However, I eventually got it nailed down, and now I have a new camera in Protect." Are you sure you want to go down this route: "Turn device into IP Camera"? - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ip-camera-lite/id1013455241 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ip-camera-lite/id1013455241 Anyway - this is likely the Github mentioned: https://github.com/p10tyr/rtsp-to-onvif https://github.com/p10tyr/rtsp-to-onvif ... its a proxy that takes a RTSP stream and makes it look all lovely and ONVIF (ie discoverable). The particular fix that OP mentions will be in that Github repo/wiki/issues but given I don't anything Apple, I can't be arsed to search I think that Frigate has recently had a proxy or proxy handling recently added. Zoneminder would also work with this approach. Please, whatever you do, put your cameras on their own VLAN, with no access to the internet. Especially if names like Reolink (int al) are involved. I own quite a few Reos and they live on a VLAN called SEWER!
Belphemur 1y ago
Might be a case of: tried so many things, no idea what fixed it.

Havoc 1y ago

Disappointed to see no discussion on battery. That's what is keeping me from implementing this. My old iphones are at 2+ years battery life. i.e. at the point where they're at risk of becoming spicy pillows and I'd love to not have a lithium fire in my apartment. In that context spending 50 bucks on amazon for a camera suddenly seems sound

uz3snolc3t6fnrq 1y ago
i could be wrong but you should be able to solder/connect the battery contacts to the output of a power supply at the same voltage as the battery you're replacing and just have it plugged into the wall or a UPS, but not sure if the battery manager would still think the battery is being spent and freak out after getting to 0%
CameronBanga 1y ago
I've not personally tried it, but there have been people who have had success removing their iPhone batteries and getting old devices to power via Lightning. https://www.reddit.com/r/androidafterlife/comments/zpya9p/i_made_an_iphone_6s_work_without_battery/ https://www.reddit.com/r/androidafterlife/comments/zpya9p/i_...
- Havoc 1y ago
  oh that's fun. I had assumed ifruits would just decide nope if they can't see the battery edit: that's a rather old v6 in link...think they started with their authenticating components after that
thebruce87m 1y ago
> 2+ years battery life Is this considered old? I own countless devices with batteries older than this.
- Havoc 1y ago
  Not an expert on this but my understanding is that at 2+ risk starts to increase, especially that have seen high use and fast charging. My layman understand is that dendrites accumulate over time so risk is incremental over use...and for phones use and time is basically same thing. Low use items I'd totally run for many more years.

thisislife2 1y ago

I have heard the camera modules get hot and degrade as they weren't created to be always ON in smartphones?

high_priest 1y ago
And the answer is as always, it depends. Mostly on the chip & sensor combo and if there is additional heat absorbing mass designed for the SoC.

xp84 1y ago

Casey, this is the most Casey thing I've ever heard, using an iPhone + some hackery when even cheap Amazon no-name PTZ cameras ($30-40 usually) natively support onvif! I'm happy it worked for you though.

lgfr3000 1y ago
Who the hell is Casey? ;)
- catgirlinspace 1y ago
  The author of the article.
- Arkanum 1y ago
  One of the hosts of https://atp.fm https://atp.fm
- xp84 1y ago
  "Hi, this is Casey." -Casey If anyone does not listen to ATP, I cannot recommend that show enough. I'll add that you do have to have at least a tolerance for certain of the 3 hosts' assumptions, namely that one should be an Apple user for life. Not that they go easy on Apple, but they seem to be dedicated lifers no matter how bad Apple gets.

yapyap 1y ago

UniFi people are like the vegans of tech

mmastrac 1y ago
The joke for those who missed it: "How do you know somebody loves Unifi?" "Don't worry they'll tell you" Disclaimer: I do like unifi.
nodesocket 1y ago
It is really good though. Network has come a long way, and really is powerful, intuitive, and can support most advanced use cases. Protect is awesome, no cloud storage tomfoolery. AI features like license plate and facial recognition, and partner it with access and you can do some awesome integrations such as automatically open up your front gate, door, etc based on your car or face.
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  Have they had a third party audit since a disgruntled employee did whatever they did? They had an insider threat situation a couple years back I think. I didn’t follow the story closely at the time, but I’ve supported end users and installs for Ubiquiti/Unifi stuff, and since that happened, I haven’t really been sure how much I should trust them.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquiti#2021_alleged_data_breach_and_lawsuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquiti#2021_alleged_data_bre...
gerdesj 1y ago
Sorry? I run an IT company and a lot of my customers have Unifi APs (we sold them). Our in house controller has a lot of sites on it and it must be a good 10 years old now. Its certainly gone through at least three Ubuntu LTSs. I eat vegans for lunch.
1y ago

treesknees 1y ago

From some research, Unifi Protect doesn’t support live audio or audio playback for third-party cameras. It also lacks support for people and vehicle detections. I would likely consider using this setup for some inexpensive auxiliary cameras to enhance coverage. I’ve also had the desire to add a cheap remote camera while I’m staying in an Airbnb. However, I wouldn’t use this system for any serious surveillance around the house.

varenc 1y ago
If can support detection events on 3rd party ONVIF cameras, but you have to buy a seperate ubiquiti hardware product to run the detections. Either an AI Port or an AI Key.
- gregoriol 1y ago
  You could also use the ZoneMinder (open-source), it supports many video/image streams from cameras and provides detections/alerting
  - varenc 1y ago
    I use scrypted! It's 'open source' but not free. Was just talking about getting detecting in the Unifi Protect NVR (which is pretty nice I admit)
Mashimo 1y ago
> It also lacks support for people and vehicle detections. I think they sell hardware to add that to 3rd party cameras. For the low price of 200 :)))) https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/up-ai-port https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/up-ai-port
formerly_proven 1y ago
Of course, it's vendor-locked consumer garbage ;)

thelastgallon 1y ago

Wondering if there is any way to run a webserver on old iphone?

positr0n 1y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45022640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45022640 Or, even older! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473487 (2009)
- raihansaputra 1y ago
  i think you pasted the wrong link for the first one, it links to the parent comment.

DrNosferatu 1y ago

Any list of cool uses for decommissioned iPhones? I would be actually quite interested in using my 6S as a tv box / HDMI dongle for streaming and emulation.