Cheap Genbolt Ip cam mystery

Soldato
Joined
18 May 2004
Posts
2,890
Location
Lincoln, Uk
Wondering if anyone can shed any light on how this is working,

We ended up with a cheap IP cam from amazon to keep an eye on the dog, the instructions are very much in chinglish, anyway seemed to get it set up, managed to plug it into the network, looked at the router log to find out what IP the DCHP had handed out to it, went to the config page at that IP and managed to set up the wireless connection settings and get it on the wireless network and set the IP to static (I set most stuff on the network to static so I know where to go for the config pages)

Now I can access the camara from a PC on the network, but it doesn't work on a phone (seeminly as the page needs shockwave) but there is a mobile app available, it scans the network finds the camara and can view it.

Now I forward ports for HTTP (80), RTSP (554) and RTMP (1935) that it says its using on the router, set up a dynamic DNS account and configure the router to use it. Now I can view the web interface anywhere, So far it makes sense.

Now, I look for a way to tell the phone app the ddns hostname, cant see one, in an effort to make it ask for a hostname disconnect the phone from the wifi, so its only on mobile data, open the app again, thats odd, its not asked for the hostname, yet its seeing the camara, think perhaps its 'cheating' somehow and using the wifi chipset in the phone to talk directly to the camera even though one has been told not to use wifi for data, so take the phone out of wifi range, and its still working..... HOW?

So, Camara on home internet connection, phone on mobile network data connection, phone is seeing the camera, but hasn't been told how to find the camera. All I can think of is that because when you connect to the camera initially, it comes up with a UID number which seems like serial number, is that the camera is updating a chinese server somewhere with a list of UID against external IP address, and once the app has found camera on local network, it knows teh UID and it asks the chinese server where the camera is?

Anyone a better idea, it just seems slightly underhand if its as I think it must be, and I guess if the company stops trading, the server gets shut down and it no longer works?
 
It's likely using a company server as a directory look up for your camera. Camera broadcasts to the companies server advertising its information / your external IP.

Curious how the it's making the link between your Phone App and your phone camera though. Have you tried force stopping the app and clearing the data / cache to see if it it asks for information?

Like you presumed, it's probably saved the camera data when it connected via WiFi.

Did you have to make an account at all?
 
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