I recently picked up two IQ031S cameras, a model that supports full-motion H.264. I've always been a fan of the standard MJPEG IQeye cameras and wanted to try these ones out. They are the H.264 entry-level cameras featuring the Ambarella SoC solution running Linux. MSRP around $400-500 I think. I picked mine off eBay for about $100.
IQ031S Version V4.0/069(140501) Platform: 6b
At the time of this writing (late 2014), this model is still sold and supported, but some more interesting models like the Alliance-mini, and 7-series are more up-to-date in terms of hardware and features.
As usual with IQeye H.264 cameras, the streams are accessible with RTSP over HTTP tunneling (port 80)
rtsp://<camera_ip>/rtsp/now.mp4 primary stream
rtsp://<camera_ip>/rtsp/stream1 primary stream
rtsp://<camera_ip>/rtsp/stream2 secondary stream
When using this method, make sure you tell VLC to "tunnel RTSP over HTTP" in Settings, and set the tunnel port to 80 (or whatever your camera is on). See more on this in my "tunneling live video on a port forwarded camera" post.
Or directly with RTSP port 554
rtsp://<camera_ip>:554/now.mp4 primary stream
rtsp://<camera_ip>:554/stream1 primary stream
rtsp://<camera_ip>:554/stream2 primary stream
First Thoughts
My first thoughts are that the live motion with sound is amazing! It's a weird feeling to see live video when you are so used to MJPEGs low framerate. The keyframes seem to happen about every few seconds, and looking at the OID table for the camera, this is confirmed with the following:
| OID | current value | default value | range | description |
|---|
| 1.17.2.5 | 3000 | 1000 | | video iframe interval (ms) (read only) |
It's a bit strange that the item is read-only but the value is
not set to the default.
The form factor is nice. It's a compact camera, very similar to the IQeye 511 that I really like, but in a short bullet style housing, rather than being flat like the 511. The rear of the camera has a reset button and an Ethernet port. That's all. It must be powered over PoE.
The Ambarella SoC has some strange artifacting. In all conditions, the image always seems to lean toward a blue/purple tint. I feel like the color adjustment matrices programmed into the camera are not tuned properly for the sensor. Changing the white balance settings doesn't seem to help. There is no way to set spot white balance and point to that spot.
Telnet Interface
The camera does have a telnet interface, but most of the 'SET' commands from old cameras are not implemented. For example, I do not know how to set the camera to put the log output to a syslog server as on the older cameras. The new telnet command line seems more suited to setting OIDs. But if you're going to do that, you might as well use the HTTP request method (ie /set.oid?OidTR1.2.9.1.9.2=Whatever).
> show logging
Info: cmd_show_logging not yet implemented
ret=-1
So it looks like the developers haven't gotten around to adding logging features. See the post on "syslog logging for IQeye" to see the use-cases and benefits of the IQeye on-board logging feature.
The command "monitor" was added, which is basically the same as the "show" command, but runs in an infinite loop.
The netstat output is much more Linux-y, and this makes sense: the camera runs an embedded Linux.
>> netstat
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:32008 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:554 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:943 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:8080 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:80 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:21 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:23 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:2300 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 192.168.16.137:36050 192.168.16.119:445 ESTABLISHED
tcp 0 0 192.168.16.137:23 192.168.16.119:44090 ESTABLISHED
tcp 0 24616 192.168.16.137:80 173.173.105.232:54754 ESTABLISHED
udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:32768 0.0.0.0:*
udp 0 0 192.168.16.137:32769 209.118.204.201:123 ESTABLISHED
udp 0 0 224.0.0.251:5353 0.0.0.0:*
udp 0 0 239.255.255.250:1900 0.0.0.0:*
udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:3702 0.0.0.0:*
Active UNIX domain sockets (servers and established)
Proto RefCnt Flags Type State I-Node Path
unix 9 [ ] DGRAM 2348 /var/tmp/log
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 2372 /tmp/.imager_server
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 2385 /tmp/.trigger_server
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 2387 /tmp/.image_server
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 2438 /tmp/.audio_server
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 2477 /tmp/.oid_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 24646870 /tmp/.oid_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 24646869
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 24639383 /tmp/.image_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 24639382
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 24639381 /tmp/.imager_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 24639380
unix 2 [ ] DGRAM 24639376
unix 2 [ ] DGRAM 2670
unix 2 [ ] DGRAM 2666
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2642 /tmp/.image_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2639
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2641 /tmp/.imager_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2638
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2637 /tmp/.oid_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2636
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2631 /tmp/.oid_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2630
unix 2 [ ] DGRAM 2616
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2607 /tmp/.oid_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2606
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2605 /tmp/.oid_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2604
unix 2 [ ] DGRAM 2498
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2494 /tmp/.trigger_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2493
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2495 /tmp/.oid_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2480
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2453 /tmp/.audio_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2449
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2425 /tmp/.trigger_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2424
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2408 /tmp/.image_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2407
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2406 /tmp/.imager_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2405
unix 2 [ ] DGRAM 2401
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2404 /tmp/.image_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2400
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2399 /tmp/.imager_server
unix 3 [ ] STREAM CONNECTED 2398
unix 2 [ ] DGRAM 2351
Image Sharpness
Even with sharpness set to "High" in the web UI, the actual OID for sharpness is not changed. They appear to be completely separate OIDs (1.2.3 and
1.2.40.2). The sharpness just never gets to the level I am used to on the older cameras unless I manually set OID
1.2.40.2 and make sure the Web UI sharpness is set to High.
http://cam_url/set.oid&oidTB1.2.40.2=0
 |
| sharpen 0/100 |
 |
| sharpen 100/100 |
 |
| sharpen 35/100 |
Again, it's a bit surprising that this is not exposed in the web UI.
Other
IQrecorder is completely absent from this camera. I think that IQinvision must have realized that their cameras are often used in centralized environments, so having onboard camera DVR wasn't as desireable as it once was, when megapixel cameras were a niche and expensive item where you'd own maybe 1-5 instead of a fleet of them.
Video recording always seems to record 3MB at a time and no more, I couldn't get this to work at all either with triggers to SMB drives, or FTP, or using the Direct-to-Storage "DTS" feature. But I like JPEG frames anyway :-)
No fine-grained motion windows, the window is broken into a series of squares in a grid. On older IQeye models, or models without H.264, this can be set to an exact pixel range.
If you plan on integrating your IQeye camera into a custom solution, then the IQeye 3 series is likely not a great choice. It is better suited to live viewing where you require real-time video.
One thing I noted about this camera in the current firmware version is that Dynamic Print variables are not supported in the text overlays. This is useful for things like putting the time of the camera's last trigger event into the image, for example. The syntax is $O(x.x.x.x) where x are the integers for the OID in question.
Another thing I noticed is that I cannot customize webpages over the built-in FTP server running on the camera. It actively refuses FTP connections, so you cannot play with the filesystem at all like you could with the older models. I looked for an OID or telnet command to enable this and could not find one. I was hoping to get access to the filesystem to see what those /tmp/.image_server etc files are (see netstat above) and what you can get from them.
One positive to note is that on the older cameras, you could choose to have a timelapse image taken automatically and uploaded OR you could do motion detection and event upload, but not both. The IQeye 3 series let's you do both!
Pros
- Fast interface
- Compact design
- Included mounting hardware
- Live motion with audio!
- Actively maintained firmware
- Supports HTTPS
- Supports SNMP
- Simultaneous timelapse and motion triggers
- Multiple streams
- Supports RTSP over HTTP tunneling for firewalled environments
- Windows File Share (SMB) destination support
Cons
- No privacy masks (the feature is completely absent)
- No scaling/subwindows (ie '?ds=2' not supported) you must always get a full res frame
- No motion-only data scraping (ie '?snap=spush1&pragma=motion&noimage')
- Little telnet functionality
- No spot-based white balance calibration
- Post-processing is spotty, JPEG still image quality not as good as MJPEG models
- Basic settings "hidden" in web UI, requires setting OIDs manually
- Logging facilities absent
- Gain method settings missing (clipaverage, peakdetect, darkdetect, average)
- Exposure window exclusions missing
- Changes in exposure settings and window require reboots
- Bitrate for both primary and secondary H.264 streams must be the same
