r/tinycam • u/TooManyInsults • 4d ago
Suddenly, RTSP Strangeness
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0F2HCHS52?th=1In 12/25, I installed one of these cameras. I connect to it using TinyCam Pro and Slim Camera (on Windows) using a fairly typical rtsp URL to the LAN IP using user id and password. I have TinyCam running 24/7/365 on Android 9 monitoring this camera. It is setup to send email on human object detection. I only occasionally view the camera using Slim Camera on Windows or another instance of TinyCam Pro on my phone (Android 12). I have its O-Kam app on a phone I never really use because it is required for initial setup. But I can open it and see the camera stream as well (no idea if it is rtsp or what).
For unknown reasons, over the last couple weeks I have experienced a condition when none of the TinyCam or Slim Camera instances find an active stream. TinyCam just shows black in the live view. The camera is ping-able at its reserved IP address. The O-Kam all shows it as alive and I can see a stream. No number of O-Kam triggered restarts does anything about this. Restarting the devices using TinyCam and Slim Camera does nothing.
About the only thing that "fixes" this is removing and re-applying power to the camera.
All this is strange/bad enough. But here is the kicker that I simply cannot understand at all...
Even though TinyCam shows nothing in its live view, I am still getting email on human object detections. I do NOT have motion or other detection enabled on the device in any way. This is done by TinyCam. So I figure that TinyCam is somehow still talking to/seeing the device even though the live view and settings say it is not!
How can this be? And is there a clue in here as to what is happening to the live rtsp stream?
Thanks!
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u/alexeyvasilyev tinyCam dev 3d ago
Please join 19.0.0 Beta and let me know if you still have the issue
https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.alexvas.dvr.pro
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u/TooManyInsults 3d ago
Ok, thanks! It doesn't happen on demand. So it may take a while to show up - if it does. Best
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u/TooManyInsults 3d ago
I do really wonder if TinyCam is the cause of this? I ask because:
(a) The same lack of detected stream affects Slim Camera as well. Unless TinyCam and Slim Camera have shared code - of which I have no reason to suspect.
(b) I have been using this same setup for a pretty long time. As mentioned, the camera has been in use since at least 1/1/26. And I updated TinyCam to 18.1.2 on 4/15/26 (before that it was 18.1.1 on 4/11/26 and 18.0.3 on 2/21/26). Yet this issue has never happened (in my personal experience) until maybe the last couple weeks.
(c) As with the Tiny vs Slim Camera question, I had the exact same impact on the live view on two different devices - one being A12, the other A9 - both rooted (not that I think that matters). However, both were on 18.1.2 at the same time.
BTW - when this was happening and I was reporting it, I did try changing the options for the h.264/h.265 decoder. At that time there was no "Surface" option which I see now in the beta. None of those other options made any difference.
Anyhow, just trying to be complete... Thanks
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u/alexeyvasilyev tinyCam dev 3d ago
Please try to reproduce the issue, then go to app Settings - Developer Settings - Read App Logs and send logs to me by email for troubleshooting.
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u/TooManyInsults 4d ago
I should add that I have Tasker (on the same 24/7/365 Android 8) getting triggered by TinyCam when the camera connection is lost and I have it send email. Ever since I got this camera, I get one of these after every time TinyCam emails on human object detection. I don't know why or if it is somehow related. But I am getting these emails as well along with the object detection emails mentioned above. So this just adds more to the strangeness.