WyzeCam and Pfsense

djskott

Thanks for sharing this.

I have the cam plus lite sub.

Before pfsense even with zero movement (while streaming via cell service) the clock would tick up in seconds and the bw on KBps would jump all around. Never to zero, never hang on zero.

I'll try to do some more pcaps this weekend and take some ss of the meters.

johnpoz

@djskott can you do a test like I did for actual bandwidth being used.. And get some sort of movement going on, etc.. I by no means am an expert with these wyze.. But it makes sense for them to compress and not continue to send a full live stream if there is no movement. So you bandwidth should be way lower when there is no movement.

You prob can't easy move your cameras around - but if you have one you can point to something where there is decent amount of movement, I pointed it to screen showing a video..

Sucks the model I got just happens to not show the kbps.. So I can not help to see if their are difference in what that shows and what actual bandwidth is being used.

Also - are you recording to a SD?

But from only the few minutes of playing with this - I really don't see how it could be a pfsense issue. maybe issue on your wifi? Kind of crappy that they only support 2.4..

I can see how the kbps could be useful, not sure why its not on all of their cameras - seems even the cheap 20$ has it.. But its also quite possible that the value shown is misleading in what is actually happening.

When I pointed it to the video, I could see the actual video and the video via wyze.. It was pretty damn close to actual realtime, and wasn't seeing any freezes or the like in the video feed..

edit: on a side note to self, to maybe look into it more.. When I was playing around on the traffic screen, I did get some php errors from pfsense.

16:04:48 PHP ERROR: Type: 1, File: /etc/inc/util.inc, Line: 2276, Message: Uncaught TypeError: format_number(): Argument #1 ($num) must be of type int, string given, called in /usr/local/pfSense/include/www/bandwidth_by_ip.inc on line 172 and defined in /etc/inc/util.inc:2276
Stack trace:
#0 /usr/local/pfSense/include/www/bandwidth_by_ip.inc(172): format_number('', 2)
#1 /usr/local/www/bandwidth_by_ip.php(36): printBandwidth('opt5', 'local', 'in', '', 'iftop')
#2 {main}
  thrown

I will have to take a look at redmine to see if anything reported. I don't normally play around in the traffic graph screen. But switched some stuff around because it wasn't showing the IPs that were moving data..

So if you play around in the traffic screen to look for data, you might see such same errors??

stephenw10

A wifi issue would affect local connections too though. It has to be something in the WAN link....

stephenw10

@johnpoz said in WyzeCam and Pfsense:

util.inc:2276

https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/14500

johnpoz

@stephenw10 true true.. I will have to read the thread in more detail.. So when on local the kbps in the video still fluctuates right. Just different numbers..

Maybe they will add the kbps thing to this camera with some new firmware? I looked and on the latest, 4.50.44767 and didn't see any newer betas or anything.

I wouldn't put to much weight on those numbers, I would be more interested in what the actual bandwidth is..

johnpoz

@stephenw10 when I get a chance I will add the notifications I got.. looks the same exactly from quick glance at the redmine. thanks!

djskott

@johnpoz

yes I am recording to SD.

I'm leaning to WAN link as well. I'm doing my wired lan cut over to PfSense this weekend and plan on moving the modem gateway to bridge mode. I'll do more caps and scree shots then.

johnpoz

@djskott maybe I missed it - but other than fluctuation in the video kbps value.. Are you actually not seeing video update, its skippy, missing stuff?

Love to see the bandwidth values, and example of video with movement in it.. Does show someone walking into the frame and then just appear at the far end of the frame, that sort of thing?

djskott

@johnpoz @stephenw10

Good morning Folks. First and foremost both of you have been great in walking this noob through this. Thank you thank you thank you!

I have completed my Wired cutover and moved the modem in to gateway mode. LAN speeds are working as expected, maybe seeing a 100mbps decrease to the internet, could be the traffic that is going on, (Kids with their fancy VR's and laptops gaming) but nonetheless I'm happy with the outcome.

I was able to open up the FW to allow Plex to work remotely. Seems like everything is good so far after that. I'm able to stream to twitch and shoutcast with no issues. File transfer over the LAN were top notch.

The Cam issue comes and goes now, mostly on the cams that are furthest away from the AP. There is an occasional stutter in movement, Im guessing that is just going to be a signal coverage Gap. I'll have to find a outdoor solution to pipe some signal out to the backyard to cover Said gaps. Any suggestions on an inexpensive solution? PoE is an option, however open to just a repeater that I plug in and leave alone.

stephenw10

I have had some bad experiences with wifi repeaters, I try to avoid them when possible.

I have had good experiences with Ethernet over Powerline. I know some people hate it though, maybe I've just been lucky!

Actual hardwired Ethernet is hard to beat.

johnpoz

@stephenw10 said in WyzeCam and Pfsense:

I have had good experiences with Ethernet over Powerline.

Same - not so much that its fast as they put on the box, but the same thing goes for wifi ;) But in the few times I have had to use it - its been stable.. And can be a solution for when you can not run a real wire, and wifi is not easy to cover in the area..

I would suggest to at least give it a go in a scenario where it could be helpful in cost saving or in ease of deployment. Your not going to get gig more than likely..

Do the outdoor wyze support poe? Or do they have to connect to wifi - if you they can do poe, then yeah that would be a rock solid solution..

djskott

So, It reverted back after a day or so. I haven't had time to dig until now.

I'm seeing in the pcap the cams are talking to 167.160.89.154.

Example: 192.168.200.104.55902 > 167.160.89.154.10001: UDP, length 1117

Traceroute takes it to some server farm at dedicated.com

Tracing route to 167.160.89.154 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 10 ms 11 ms 5 ms 10.68.88.1
3 15 ms 16 ms 12 ms 100.127.74.82
4 28 ms 40 ms 13 ms 100.120.100.16
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 23 ms 24 ms 24 ms 64.124.129.53.IPYX-288174-006-ZYO.zip.zayo.com [64.124.129.53]
8 23 ms 23 ms 20 ms po2.lax-csla2-bb5.globalsecurelayer.com [206.148.25.94]
9 48 ms 51 ms 47 ms e50.sea-drtsea10-bb1.globalsecurelayer.com [206.148.25.7]
10 49 ms 55 ms 49 ms po10.sea-drtsea10-cr1.globalsecurelayer.com [206.148.25.16]
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 56 ms 53 ms 107 ms core.sea.dedicated.com [167.160.89.2]
13 46 ms 51 ms 51 ms 167.160.89.154

I don't ever see my phone external IP address appear in the PCAP.

So I did a PCAP from my phone targeting the Wyze app. It's saying the Source is 92.119.177.210
which is another serverfarm/cloud solution at M247.

Tracing route to 92.119.177.210 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 9 ms 11 ms 8 ms 10.68.88.1
3 10 ms 7 ms 14 ms 100.127.74.82
4 13 ms 16 ms 8 ms 100.120.100.16
5 13 ms 16 ms 11 ms phx-b6-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.173.20]
6 7 ms 9 ms 13 ms lumen-ic-358768.ip.twelve99-cust.net [62.115.176.123]
7 * 73 ms 71 ms ae1.3511.edge2.NewYork6.level3.net [4.69.209.78]
8 69 ms 68 ms 69 ms 4.8.5.142
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 94 ms 91 ms 85 ms vlan2918.as15.nyc1.us.m247.com [193.9.115.225]
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 66 ms 63 ms 69 ms 92.119.177.210

Here are the caps

Here is a video of my Traffic Feed in PFSENSE
The target ip for the cam I was viewing is x.200.104

Youtube Video

stephenw10

Hmm, this still 'feels' like it's falling back to sending all video via the remote servers at a much lower data rate. But if it was that I'd expect to see some indication it was like 'indirect' or 'proxied' etc.

johnpoz

@djskott still waiting to see what your actually sending out your wan, be it direct to the client device, or their servers.. Like I did above vs what your gauge says in your client..

When I gets a chance will look to see if can actually do a direct connection via a port forward..

djskott

@johnpoz

Here is a WAN Cap WAN Cap 9923.zip

Here is the video taken at that time of the WAN Cap

YouTube Video

johnpoz

@johnpoz not really what I was looking - can you not just look at your traffic graph? Or the package dartstat would also be useful..

What I am curious on does the gauge match up with the amount of data your actually sending out or not.

And says video is not stable - points to a internet connection or wireless problem if you ask me.. There is nothing in pfsense that would care where or what data your sending that would interfere with specific traffic like a video stream.. Unless your running an IPS.. And the traffic is inside a https or would be encrypted tunnel (or freaking should be) - so IPS really not going to do anything either.

And as mentioned before.. Really need a sniff on the lan side same time your doing a wan sniff, if you think pfsense is dropping traffic..

nullcure

@djskott I notice that Wyze website https://view.wyze.com/live

the captcha disappeared (I am not a robot checkbox) it seems they are doing work on their side.
that URL i mentioned keeps auto refreshing the page can you confirm is this happening for you? I'd like to rule out the possibility of a pFsense + issue ( i upgraded since it's free) since I setup a proxmox bare metal(Couldn't lay waste to 8 cores 16 threads etc) and am now running pFsense VM as the topmost headend on my network...

nullcure

@johnpoz @djskott The network not stable message is due to the android / iphone app not getting a consistent video feed I'm not sure what metric it monitors to hit whatever threshhold said metric is set too to display that message but I get it a lot.

In fact it is because of these damn cams and that net unstable message I ended up installing pfsense in the first place. I ended up first trying one of those new gen $280 ish wifi routers to see if it would fix the problem when it didn't i got my money back took the wifi router i've had for awhile now TP-LINK Archer AX21 put it into AP mode because I wasn't about to re-wire everything just so I could move the wifi router from the basement to the first floor where all 3 of my cameras are mounted under the eves on the corners of the roof of my house.

This GREATLY increased the wifi signal to the cameras I moved 2 cables installed pfsense and here I am now in this forumn and currently with proxmox now lol

All cause these cams.

WHEN they work they work great. Wyze has been putting in a lot of new firmware upgrades to greatly increase how well the cams works.

How I test the connection to the cams is like this.

go over to https://view.wyze.com/live
quickly hover the mouse in circles across all 3 embedded video players until the control bar pops up (This means the connection was successful) how quick those bars pop up will tell you how well the connection is to the wifi router.
starting all 3 live streams and seeing that the seconds on the date and time are almost exactly synced (minus some 200-400ms) tells me I have optimum connection.

djskott

@johnpoz

Here is a video of the WAN and VLAN traffic graphs at the same time as well as what my phone is doing at that time when not connected to the Wi-Fi.

YouTube Video Example

When I went to the Live Page, it tells me that I have to subscribe, I didn't see a free option available.

Just as a side note, When on Wi-Fi there are zero issues with streaming the cams, Zero Lag, Steady stream of video. So wouldn't that indicate no issues with the Wi-Fi Signal?

nullcure

@djskott no its free you just. login with the same creds as on your wyze app.

are you using Stand alone ip cameras or a central base station?

i use wyze pan cam v3
wyze cam v3
both models stand alone ip cameras