CCTV Viewer - Open Source Camera Viewer for your Linux Desktop.

[@pipoviola]

You are a fucking HERO! Open source is the way. Keep making these awesome videos!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Thanks, and I sure will!

[@samuelhulme8347]

Here when the title said “Open Sourcp”.

[@mmcccoy]

2nd that

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

OMG! hahahaha. I have no idea how I miss these silly misspellings. Thank you, and thanks for the laughs.

[@samuelhulme8347]

@@AwesomeOpenSourcegreat video like usual!

[@CluelessGeek]

​@@AwesomeOpenSourcechange your username to awesome open sourcp

[@carlostavaresjr958]

CCTV-Viewer is great for budget camera installs where the user has IP Cam that have internal SSD cards and you need a basic viewer. No NVR in between. More work to stetup each camera individually but its an option. I am using Zoneminder as my opensource NVR as a full solution.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Indeed, this is just a viewer, and not an NVR setup. Some NVRs have an ok viewer as well, but some it's easier to use something like CCTV-Viewer.

[@pipodeclown3782]

@@AwesomeOpenSourceCorrect: CCTV-viewer watches my NVR which works much better then the Webpage from the NVR itselfs.

[@pidkarpe]

big THX :)(:

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

my pleasrue

[@iamavataraang]

Glory to the hypno toad ...

[@toddselby443]

I am installing this just for the hypno toad livestream.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

It's an awesome way to show what it can do.

[@cjlowe1650]

Depending on the # of cameras what model of a raspberry pi would you use? Great video as always.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Pi4 minimum. Pi 5 if you can get one.

[@uniquejkoen]

Hi Brain, You only refer to a "camera" to bring it up onto CCTV Viewer , can you bring a dvr up onto CCTV viewer, sorry I am not "strong" at this but would very much like to view my dvr's on CCTV Viewer. Can you pls break down the rtsp line, where and how do you find that detail? Thx

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I think you can set an rtmp stream as well as the rtsp streams. I believe most DVRs will setup an RTMP stream that you may can access.

[@uksuperrascal]

Great Video - But 1. Will it work on ubuntu 18.04 ? - 2. Will it work with ffmpeg version 3.4.11 - ??

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I'm not sure on whether it will work. It's no charge to try it. But you should really update from 18.04, that's out of suppor as of April 2023.

[@uksuperrascal]

@@AwesomeOpenSource I agree But I have so many apps that run from the terminal and have not upgraded the OS because of hearing so many - I lost all my apps doing the OS upgrade also Ubuntu messed with the terminal bash code as well, That's why - when I do upgrade I will not be using Ubuntu

[@petergiles3015]

Hi, I have 8 Reolink cameras connected to the 8 channel Reolink Nvr. Can I just point this to the nvr and get the 8 feeds that way? I also love the Reolink cameras, bang for buck they cant be beaten.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I don't know actually. I don't have an NVR from reolink. Definitely check the docs for this one.

[@snehasishsamanta8503]

Yo brother I'm thinking of a product which has softwares( cloud accessible NVR/DVR) of popular cctv companies, connecting to internet & login with your credentials boom you can access cctvs remotely, please reply

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

iSpyAgent DVR, ,Shinobi DVR, Zoneminder. There are a few for sure.

[@skip1074]

Great video and this is almost exactly what I’m looking for to give me ease of setup, but I’m curious on a couple aspects of this. 1. Can this run on say a RaspberryOS Lite deployment on a Raspberry 4B or 5? 2. Can it be set up to automatically start after system power up and open as full screen? 3. Once all cameras are configured, is there a way to disable the GUI and just have the assigned preset(s) visible? I’m looking at this or something similar to display 3x3 or 4x4 at a business where the NVR is upstairs in an open air space above an office like area, and the monitor for the NVR is in a closet in the back, but we would like to view the cameras from by the registers, and that would be the only purpose of the device/monitor is a viewer. Thanks in advance.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I dont' know if this will run on a Raspbery Pi. The only thing you can do is try to install it. If it's got an Arm 64 build, it should run.

[@cjlowe1650]

I use an open source called Display Cameras. It will do exactly what you want. I have it setup on a Raspberry pi 3B and moving up to a pi4b , not sure of memory size yet. It is really low on resources but I have 4 pi zero2w streaming to it using RTSP. It's strictly code changes. No front end gui to do the setup but easy enough to make changes. Im adding a lot more cameras so I'm stitching to the pi4 and repurposing the 3B. But it does what you want. Starts up on power up, no need for keyboard and mouse . Low on resources. As many cameras as you want. I have 4 to the display but you can have more or have it go to a 2nd display page after so many seconds, minutes etc. Been using it for 4 years and just runs great. But as I said it code changes but instructions are very good to setup.

[@cjlowe1650]

Also I have it running on Dietpi now. Was originally on pi lite but slowly moving my projects to Dietpi since its not a resources hog and things just run on it.

[@RomvnlyPlays]

Hi! Does this application use any VLC or mpv code to ensure everything playbacks smoothly? On chrome on Linux playing 4k60 uses 60% of my cpu and it’s embarrassing. I want to make sure this doesn’t happen on this application

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I don't know if VLC is used, but ffmpeg is used for the stream, and you can modify the ffmpeg string to help with it.

[@CalvinHenderson]

This ‘CCTV-Viewer’ is not the same one that is in the Apple app store. Snapd is not bad, wonder if it is available via flatpack or a rpm or deb package as well.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Good to know on the App Store. Didn’t try it. Only found the snap installer, no other methods, but I did look.

[@CalvinHenderson]

@@AwesomeOpenSource that happens with small projects. It is okay, it works 😎

[@pipodeclown3782]

It's very nice and I use it but: it's eating Ram memory and after 2/3 days the app crashes. I run it on Zorin(Ubuntu based) as snap. So how can we prevent running out of memory?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Close the app once a day to free up the RAM it's using, then re-launch it. Report the memory leak to the devs on Github as well.

[@jessiesanders4215]

Can this be installed on ubuntu server and set to autorun at boot?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

It's not a web view application. But if you have a desktop environment on Ubuntu, then I'm sure it could be installed yes, and then yes setting any application to start on boot can be done.

[@tomhamilton9140]

Any suggestions on a good outdoor wireless camera?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I really like the Reolink stuff. You can use it local only if you want. As long as it's a powered camer (not batter operated) you get RTSP streaming, so really like that for the local part.

[@jonesPossibly]

can someone point me in the direction of a cheap IP cam that would link into this software? I'm in the UK and all I get is dumb ones with apps and subscriptions

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Reolink IP Cams work great over local IP with RTSP streams. They have an app, but it's not required to use the cameras. You do want powered cameras through, battery powered cameras won't have an RTSP stream option.

[@jonesPossibly]

@@AwesomeOpenSource so battery powered don't support RTSP because it uses too much power, I presume?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Correct. There are some work around, but your battery power will suffer, and the work around are just hacks.

[@jasonharper6765]

Great video and thanks. Is there a trick to installing this? I tried installing via SNAP on two different computers and two different distros (Ubuntu 22.04 and Mint) and have the same outcome. SNAP shows it installed, but the application is not in my app library and when I launch cctv-viewer from cli it tells me it crashed. Love the solution wish I could get it to work.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I haven't had it crash on me. Installed on Fedora and Ubuntu (Fedora I had to install snapd first). But is working for me with no issue. You might check the github page to see if anything is reported by someone else.

[@GregTheHun]

I think you might have to look for one that doesn't require snap, I can smell the controversy comments already

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

snap is way better than it used to be.

[@jeroboam4486]

​@@AwesomeOpenSource Snap is Ubuntu attempt at creating a walled garden. I migrated to Linux for freedom, so I'll pass on Ubuntu completely even if they had the best distro out there and the best app store. But to each his own.