ppstrong-a3-tuya2_merkury-4.0.0.20200903 request

[natenixon]

Nice repos here very helpful and simple to understand. So far everything worked like a charm, except finding a patch for my firmware. Ive attempted twice now to figure the patch out my self but I am still learning. I never found onvif in the file, and the file seems to be different then everything else ive seen here. I tried to change the custom.sh to get it up, but no luck. If you could please take a look and help me I will buy you a cold one.

This is the 1080P outdoor cam from walmart. I think the firmware got updated when setup, but I'm not sure.
Also I only heard the second chime on boot the 1st time only. I can still telnet so I know its still working tho. Not sure if that has anything to do with it but i thought it would be worth mentioning.

devinfo:
ppsapp.zip

"devname":"Smart Home Camera","model":"Bullet 4S","serialno":","softwareversion":"4.0.0","hardwareversion":"B4S_V10_A2_2063","firmwareversion":"ppstrong-a3-tuya2_merkury-4.0.0.20200903"

[guino]

The 4.x firmware is fairly different than the 2.x firmware -- the only information I put together for those is under: https://github.com/guino/Merkury1080P which is not much of a step by step to patching it.
I'll take a look and let you know what I find.

[guino]

@natenixon This firmware is different than all others I have seen -- it still has RTSP support (hidden) and has no ONVIF support.
I have made a patch to force-enable RTSP but I have no way of testing (good changes it will work):

ppsapp-rtsp.zip please use the HOW TO PATCH GUIDE

snap/mjpeg.cgi address: 0x027f5f8
play.cgi address: 0x027fa58 (not 100% sure it will work)

Please give it a try and let me know how it goes -- if it works I'll then post it on the main list of patches.

[natenixon]

I tried the patch. I was not able to get the stream to play in a viewer but nmap says 8554 is open. Would the rtsp url be different?

[guino]

If it works it should just be rtsp://IP:8554 (no user/password or anything else). Maybe you can redirect the output of ppsapp into a log file so I can go over it? Let me know if you need exact instructions for that). It is possible that the code is there but doesn’t work because something else is not initialized. Also make sure you try different players (VLC for mac is particularly problematic).

[natenixon]

Im not sure how to get the log, but I think your correct. Trying to connect to rtsp causes a reboot

[natenixon]

I just tried again because I had other things that had to be done. You can close this as working. Held the reset for 5 sec and booted. Stream opened right up on vlc :) kuddos

[guino]

@natenixon glad you got it sorted out! I will post the patch on the main list. The beers are much appreciated too, cheers!

EDIT: This is the patch link on the main list: #1 (comment)

[natenixon]

While the patch did work, I am still having a reboot issue. I havent had much time to test things being busy with other things. What I have noticed is that it only crashes when you run ppsapp from sdcard patched or not patched. It crashes even if nothing is connected, and dumps a core-sdcard-loop file in root of sd card, but is corrupted. I logged ppsapp and found a bunch of errors for umount, and mqtt short sleep.
EDIT:[Deleted log] fixed

Any ideas on how to fix?

[natenixon]

That is a unpatched log btw. I have tried 2 different sd cards if that counts for anything.

[natenixon]

I think I have solved this on my own. I formatted and rebuilt the sd in linux. Also ran umount -l /mnt/mmc01. It fixed the storage in the app and now I have stable rtsp :) 30+min