V380 Pro wireless CCTV camera with night vision and RTSP support
The V380 Pro wireless CCTV camera is available from many sellers on AliExpress for as low as 15USD. It has 10 IR LEDs which cannot be disabled and supports night vision pretty well. My unit looks like the following picture:
As there is no Ethernet port on this camera, the initial configuration, which is rather complicated, needs to be performed wirelessly via a mobile app:
The process is described in poor but understandable English in the user manual. Basically, the camera needs to be reset and put in search mode, which would create an unencrypted adhoc wireless network with a predefined name, e.g. V380_XXXX. On Android, the mobile app, when put into search mode, will attempt to connect to any such open wireless network and locate the camera on a pre-defined IP address. If such a device found, the user would be prompted to enter the credentials of the home wireless network, which will then be exchanged with the camera via the open adhoc network. From that point on, the camera will connect to the home network using the provided credentials and the open adhoc network connection is terminated. On iOS, user will have to manually connect to the camera’s wireless network as wireless management is not possible from third party apps.
Once successfully added, the camera can be viewed from the app main page:
Each camera has its own ID, printed at the back in the form of a QR code. Once configured, the camera can be added to any V380 app by entering its ID or scanning its QR code. I would however advise against using the cloud functionality of these cheap cameras for any serious purposes, as it is unknown where the footage is uploaded to. In my setup, the router is configured to only allow local network access for these cameras (Internet access is disabled) for security reasons. The mobile app can still access the camera and view the live stream without contacting the cloud server.
SD card usage and some simple settings such as video recording quality as well as whether to record audio can be configured from the app. Continuous recording, if enabled, will allow the camera to record videos 24/7 (which is the default). Event Recording will only record if motion is detected. As the motion detection algorithm is poor, I would suggest enabling continuous recording whenever possible.
Out of the box, this camera does not support RTSP via port 554. To enable RTSP, perform the following:
1. After successful configuration, turn off the camera, remove the SD card
2. Create a file name ceshi.ini on the SD card with the following content:
[CONST_PARAM] rtsp=1
3. Insert the card and restart the camera. After some English and Chinese speech is heard from the camera, wait a minute before turning the camera off.
4. Remove the card and delete the file ceshi.ini, insert it and restart the camera
5. RTSP would be accessible at this point via the following URL (where user and password are the credentials). Multiple streams with different resolutions might be available depending on your unit, replace 11 with 12/13/14/etc to experiment.
rtsp://user:password@192.168.1.2:554/live/ch00_1
6. To be sure RTSP still works, reboot the camera and try again.
Although the settings page contains options to set static IP, attempting to do so will result in loss of connection and require a factory reset. I suggest setting static IP for this camera on your router instead, while leaving DHCP enabled on the camera itself. Night vision picture quality is satisfactory, even if the IR LEDs sensor might not switch fast enough under certain circumstances. Unlike the Floureon camera, frame snapshot is not supported and can only be done via a third party tool such as FFmpeg. There is also no web, FTP or telnet access to the footage, so whatever stored on the SD card would be useless unless the camera SD card is removed for inspection. I ended up using a separate Raspberry Pi running FFmpeg which constantly captures videos from the camera and make them available for local access.
There is no configuration option for NTP server and no integrated battery to store the time on this camera, so the camera time will revert back to 1980 after a reboot following a power loss if access to the manufacturer NTP server is not available. I have yet to find a solution for this issue, which frequently occurs in my setup as the camera is not allowed to access the Internet for security reason. The unexpected change in time might cause FFmpeg to hang while recording the RTSP stream and introduces the need to restart FFmpeg if a hang is detected (e.g. recorded file not updated for more than a few minutes). A simple workaround would be to start the mobile app under such circumstances and access the camera from the app (which might require several attempts), which would then set the time correctly again. An approach would be to perform a careful study of the network traffic to find out the exact NTP server being used and whitelist it on the router, or perhaps reverse engineering the mobile app to find out the protocol needed to set the camera time remotely. Neither is worth the efforts in my opinion.
During my research I found an experimental firmware for this camera which you can download here. I have not tested it so try at your own risk. A related discussion can be found here.
Despite the limitations, the V380 is still a good camera for casual use. If you want to get one, read the seller’s item description carefully and make sure you are getting the exact same model. A lot of Chinese sellers are selling similar cameras under the same brand name; many of them bearing little or no resemblance in terms of features to the unit I tested here.
See also
Floureon Wifi/Ethernet CCTV camera with ONVIF & PTZ support
Reverse engineer the 360Eyes Pro (IPC365) wireless CCTV camera
Using Raspberry Pi Zero Wireless as cheap CCTV camera replacement
Fluereon, V380 Pro and Raspberry Pi Zero as wireless CCTV cameras
Cheers DEV
Finally got someone who talks basic English.Instead ove teck drible. 10/10
Now I understand.
Any chance ove a download for all settings to help me.Im 60 and not very tecky.
I have a similar one, is there a way to turn off Night vision mode? Basically I have this inside my window and the IR reflection from the window glass is making the camera useless at night.
Thanks
Hi Shan,
Depending on your firmware, there might be an option to disable night vision from mobile app. If not, try to use some white tape to cover the light sensor on the camera. On my unit, covering the light sensor with white tape will prevent the camera from detecting low light condition, and as a result, night vision (with IR LED) will not be enabled regardless of lighting conditions.
Hope this helps.
V380 camera stops writing video in SD card when it’s disconnected to wifi..can we fix this
Glad I found this post. Maybe you might be able to help. From new I have had issue with v380 auto tracking. It is backwards. When I move left the camera moves right. The opposite of what it should do. This is not due to camera setting or orientation of the camera. Such as flipped etc. it seems there is some reversal of software setting or an internal wire connection that is reversed to what it should be. Camera says has latest firmware version. I’ve tried many resets of the camera. Same issue. Thanks. Scott M (Australia)
Hi Scott,
A few things you can try:
1. Place something like a book or a newspaper in front of the camera and see if you can read the text. This is to make sure that the image is not mirrored (like a cellphone’s front camera). I’ve seen it happened before due to firmware bug. If the image is mirrored, horizontal tracking will be reversed
2. If the software/web portal has an option for moving the camera manually, try that, and see if the direction is reversed. Sometimes the connector is connected backwards and horizontal direction movement will be reversed. If this is the case, you can open it up and see if you can check the connector.
3. You can also “calibrate” the direction by adjusting the Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) to where the software think is the center position, turn off the camera, manually adjust the camera to the actual center position and turn it on again. Sometimes a recalibration is all that is needed to fix this issue.
If all fails, I think the issue is likely related to firmware/software bug and you might need a replacement.
Hi. Great breakdown. I had a bulb type V380 camera lying around and recently started using it. Then I noticed something very interesting, it has feature called AI Humanoid detection. What was interesting is that this was a feature of the camera and not an online feature like many V380 cameras that want you to subscribe to their AI service. The Humanoid feature isn’t actually half bad too!
But alas I bought some more v380 cameras including what looked like an upgraded bulb model and none of these have that feature. It only has basic motion detection which is very hit or miss (which is why I resorted to using continuous recording and limited the alarm periods)
Please if possible can you see if there is a way to enable the AI humanoid feature on other V380 cameras? I suspect that either it’s a hardware thing or the software/firmware has removed the feature on newer models so as to increase the need to subscribe. Maybe even that ceshi.ini file with the right command/statement could potentially turn on the service?
Hi,
One of my units indeed had the option for AI humanoid. It didn’t work that well on my unit and performance would vary heavily depending on lighting conditions and whether the infrared LEDs were on. From experience I do not believe that the feature relies on any cloud-based services for data processing, which would result in the camera constantly streaming data to its server, increasing network traffic and server load. I suspect the feature is implemented locally, maybe using some lightweight python script, or perhaps a dedicated chip. Likely the subscribe toggle was added in later versions to prevent users from using it unless they subscribe. Not that it requires the cloud API to work.
A few things I can think of:
(1) On your old unit which came with the AI humanoid feature but did not require subscription, try to disable Internet access to the camera on your router (but allow local access). Put it in a DMZ or something. If the feature continues to work, we know that it does not actually require any cloud services.
(2) See if you can perform a firmware dump of the new unit which requires cloud subscription. If so, search the dump file for anything that resembles configuration entries (maybe enable_ai, just an example), and put those in ceshi.ini. See if it will work.
(3) Disassemble both the old camera and the new camera. See if you can identify any difference in PCB layout, which could imply that the AI humanoid might be implemented differently on the new camera.
(4) Install the Android version of the app, inspect the app container using ADB. See if there is any flag in UserPreferences which identifies this AI toggle. If so, try to change it, open the app, save the settings. If you are lucky, the app might sync the settings to the camera without having to subscribe.
If none of the above helps, then a full decompile of the APK and API traffic inspection may be needed to find out exactly what the toggle switch is doing.
Hey thanks for replying! I will definitely try out those steps although dissembling might not be in the cards as I’m actively using them.
Also While I do consider myself tech savvy I’m not nearly knowldgeable to do a firmware dump and understand how to debug code.
That being said there is some interesting URLS that I found.
For example this one that mentionens an older camera that had telnet open and the users talk about a authority.ini file inside the camera’s Linux filesystem.
https://community.netcamstudio.com/t/fentac-v380-connection/1334
Now unfortunately mine doesn’t have and this github code to enable it doesn’t work either:
https://github.com/Arkady23/V380-Web
Regading ADB I haven’t use that tool much but I will take a look.
Hi,
I tried modifying authority.ini at one point. All it did was freezing the camera or causing reboot loop, suggesting that the file was in fact read by the firmware. But I was never able to enable telnet or to do anything useful.
The IPC365 is another Chinese CCTV camera which resembles the V380 but has serial RX/TX pins on the PCB, allowing you to dump the firmware or to flash new firmware. I was able to patch the firmware to enable telnet for the IPC365 on my unit. See my previous article here: https://www.toughdev.com/content/2019/09/reverse-engineering-the-360eyes-pro-ipc365-wireless-cctv-camera/
I also checked out the V380-Web repository (https://github.com/Arkady23/V380-Web). Nice work. However I believe the setup expects a V380 unit with a telnet connection, since you have to copy the files to the SD card, telnet to the camera and run setup.sh from the terminal. A web portal will then be exposed on port 80, allowing you to configure various recording options or to download the recordings. Merely copying the files to the SD card will not enable telnet (if it hasn’t already been enabled) or activate the web portal.
This website has some useful information on using ADB to examine SharedPreferences in an Android app, which I believe is where the V380 stores the state of the toggle switch: https://www.repeato.app/how-to-examine-and-modify-sharedpreferences-from-adb-shell/
Hi. Unfortunately you’re right regarding telnet. My model doesn’t already have telnet open and trying the Web interface trick didn’t work. I suspect they have disabled it for good on newer models.
Regarding adb shell I’m getting permission issues and unfortunately I’m not interested in rooting my phone. I managed to get to the data folder of the app but I get a access denied error. I think i will look into spinning up some kind of android emulator and try it there. On one hand it’s a shame that the Web and telnet interface is disabled. But on the other it’s better from a security standpoint because I have a cheap chinese wifi extender and it’s telnet port was enabled and after researching about it I realized just how massive of a security risk it was. I was able to move around pretty easily in it’s custom Linux OS and while it was fun I can’t imagine what a bad guy could do.
Still I want to see how to make this AI feature work. The Humanoid AI isn’t that great as you mentioned but the motion detection is worse!