Will this "hack" be available for YI Home camera (aka Ant)?

tbolsh commented 7 years ago

Hello!

Is it possible to use this hack for YI Home camera? The "/fritz-smh/yi-hack" project works with the very old firmware and, in fact, I had problems to make it work at all. If you can describe how to compile new fw for YI Home camera - as you did in another issue - I will try to follow and share the experience.

Thank you for providing the "hack"!

shadow-1 commented 7 years ago

@tbolsh The Yi Home camera is very similar to the Yi Dome / Yi 1080p Dome / Yi 1080p Home cameras which I currently support. However it is different enough that I would need to develop a separate set of firmware images for it.

As far as I know, the Yi Home camera uses a slightly different chipset to the Yi Dome / Yi 1080p Dome / Yi 1080p Home cameras. I believe the Yi Home uses the Hi3518_V100 chipset whilst the cameras I currently support utilise the Hi3518E_V200 chipset.

That will mean that a different compiler will need to be used to compile programs for this camera. However I already have the SDK for the Hi3518_V100 chipset.

I don't have this particular camera, so I will need your help to develop custom firmware images.

Do you have Telnet access on your camera? Do you happen to have serial port access to your camera? It would be helpful to see the bootup messages that the camera displays through the serial port.

On a separate note, I am wondering why you want to use my firmware on the Yi Home? What features are you looking for? I thought there were several custom firmware images available for the Yi Home.

tbolsh commented 7 years ago

Hello, shadow-1! Thank you for the fast answer. I will start from the last questions: I currently have the US version of the camera, but I do not have neither telnet access nor serial port access to the camera to see bootup message. I will try to look into that today. My goal is to develop a certain prototype of (potentially multi-party) video communication system that will utilize several different cameras and custom (or rather not standard) HW. One peer (Android app) can potentially have several video/audio streams, other peers (WebRTC applications) have one std. camera and ability to choose between streams from the presenter. Recently I switched my attention to YI cameras - they are cheap and seem to be highly customizable. Currently, I am playing with YI Dome 1080P, YI Home, and YI Action 4k. So far I looked at them only for a couple of days but see a great potential. So, if you can share the SDK and some instructions or place where I can download the SDK and get the instructions - I can try to compile FW myself and share the results with you.

Why your FW? I would highly prefer to have one platform and several cameras to choose from. I may choose not include YI Home into the set if it would not support that "one platform".

Why your FW is the one platform? It seem to support the latest standard FW from YI, seem to be live and updated at least weekly. Discussions in issues also have sense.

Thank you once again, good luck with everything,

tbolsh

P.S. If it will seem to be too hard - I will stop playing with YI Home.

tbolsh commented 7 years ago

P.S. The features: -- ability to develop/compile for the platform, -- ssh or telnet support during development, -- RTSP or WebRTC support (I can bridge myself), -- web-server (mostly for debugging purposes). And yours FW simply works right out of the box.

shadow-1 commented 7 years ago

@tbolsh It sounds like you have a very ambitious project.

The SDK for both the HiSilicon Hi3518E_V200 and HiSilicon Hi3518_V100 is available on my box account. https://app.box.com/s/cibs7n1mgvhqaqjlidtveegu1uajt5yr

The latest version of the SDK I currently have for the Hi3518E_V200 is; Hi3518E_V200R001C01SPC040 The latest version of the SDK I currently have for the Hi3518_V100; Hi3518E_V100R001C02SPC0A0 This one is probably a little outdated as I don't have the Yi Home camera.

That should give you all the tools you need to start developing on both camera platforms.

I may be able to help you out with Telnet and web server access on the Yi Home. However it would be easiest for me if you can obtain Telnet access using Fritz firmware (even if it uses a very old firmware) and obtain a backup of all the partitions on your camera.

On the Yi Home, you can use the RTSP server included with the Fritz firmware (however I believe you will loose support for the Xiaomi smartphone app). It is a shame that the source code for the RTSP streaming program is not available in all of the custom firmwares I have seen for the Yi cameras. It would be much quicker for me to adapt RTSP from the Yi Home for use on the Yi Dome cameras rather than writing a RTSP streaming program from scratch.

cnberg commented 7 years ago

Up.

I have a camera cannot be hack by Fritz hack (https://github.com/fritz-smh/yi-hack/issues/173), so I think your hack will help. Since Fritz maybe stop maintenance his project( I submit this issue two month ago but no one reply).

Thanks.

shadow-1 commented 7 years ago

@cnberg If I had to guess, I think the camera that you can't flash the Fritz firmware is the Yi Home version 17CN. Yi Home 17CN has a very different firmware to the previous versions of Yi Home. However it is very similar to Yi Dome and Yi 1080p Home.

I think the only way to get alternative firmware running on the camera would be to connect to the camera through the serial port and to make some changes to the filesystem. This may require soldering. There may or may not be a connector inside the camera for serial port. If there is no connector, the serial port will need to be soldered.

I can probably develop yi-hack-v3 for this camera. However as I don't have this camera, I will need help from someone with serial port access to the camera. A backup of all partitions on the camera should be sufficient for me to develop an initial version of yi-hack-v3 for this camera.

If you are willing to experiment on your camera, then I may be able to help.

cnberg commented 7 years ago

Yes! I'm using 17CN version camera...

What I can do now? Like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e8jXuxiRzY

shadow-1 commented 7 years ago

@cnberg From the YouTube video, it appears that the author of the video is using an older version of the Yi Home (not 17CN). However the procedure is exactly the same.

I have read online that the connector did not work for some people and they had to solder onto the pads shown on the video. However I have never seen a picture of the setup from those people. Maybe they mixed up the pins or their connection to the pins on the connector was not very good. On the Yi Dome cameras, there is no connector and the only choice is to solder onto the pads.

Remember that you must use a USB-Serial converter. The serial port on these cameras operate at a voltage of 0 to 5V. If you have an old PC with native serial port, these normally operate at a voltage of -12 to 12V which may fry the camera. USB-Serial converters may operate at 0 to 3.3V or 0 to 5V (this is more common and is what is required in this case). If you have a spare Arduino, you may be able to use it as a USB-Serial converter if you don't have a dedicated device (it is what I use as I find it easier to connect to than my other USB-Serial converter). Arduino microcontrollers operate on 0 to 5V signals.

If you do manage to get access to the serial port of the camera. Start the camera with an microSD card inserted. Run the following commands:

dd if=/dev/mtd0 of=/tmp/sd/mtd0
dd if=/dev/mtd1 of=/tmp/sd/mtd1
dd if=/dev/mtd2 of=/tmp/sd/mtd2
dd if=/dev/mtd3 of=/tmp/sd/mtd3
dd if=/dev/mtd4 of=/tmp/sd/mtd4
dd if=/dev/mtd5 of=/tmp/sd/mtd5
dd if=/dev/mtd6 of=/tmp/sd/mtd6
dd if=/dev/mtd7 of=/tmp/sd/mtd7

You can then post the files mtd0, mtd1, mtd2, mtd3, mtd4, mtd5, mtd6, mtd7 from the microSD card to me and I should be able to create an initial test firmware release for the camera.

It would also be helpful if you could post the output of the following command:

cat /proc/cpuinfo

This will confirm which chipset the camera uses and thus which compiler I need to use.

cnberg commented 7 years ago

Sorry for my late reply.

I got these files, and the cpuinfo below. Since I have physical access to the camera, is there any way to hack the camera with full rtsp function?

Thanks for your help!

Archive.zip

Processor : ARM926EJ-S rev 5 (v5l) BogoMIPS : 298.59 Features : swp half fastmult edsp java CPU implementer : 0x41 CPU architecture: 5TEJ CPU variant : 0x0 CPU part : 0x926 CPU revision : 5

Hardware : hi3518ev200 Revision : 0000 Serial : 0000000000000000

shadow-1 commented 7 years ago

@cnberg Fantastic! I should be able to create a test version of yi-hack-v3 for Yi Home 17CN soon. It is very interesting that the Yi Home 17CN uses exactly the same processor as the Yi Dome cameras and the Yi 1080p Home camera. It does not use the same processor as the original Yi Home.

Can you please post the output of the following command for me as well.

ls /tmp

In terms of unlocking RTSP function. All the current implementations do not allow for the official Xiaomi app to work at the same time as RTSP. So on your camera you will have to kill most of the official Xiaomi programs.

killall watch_process
killall p2p_tnp
killall cloud
killall mp4record
killall rmm
killall oss

Note: It is very important that you kill watch_process first. This program automatically restarts the Xiaomi programs whenever they close. Presumably the Xiaomi programs crash from time to time and this ensures that they get restarted automatically.

In terms of RTSP functionality, you can try running the Fritz firmware RTSP implementation. Unfortunately I do not think it will work as the processor between the original Yi Home and Yi Home 17CN is different. https://github.com/fritz-smh/yi-hack/raw/master/sd/test/rtspsvrM

I am helping out with RTSP implementation with the people working on this project: https://github.com/xmflsct/yi-hack-1080p . This project has got an initial test version of RTSP working. It is very limited at the moment and not completely stable. However it may work well enough for you for the time being. Link to the RTSP program: https://github.com/xmflsct/yi-hack-1080p/raw/master/sd/test/app/rtsp2301

It will probably take quite a while to get RTSP working reliably and properly on these cameras because we are starting from scratch. We do not have the source code for RTSP used on Fritz firmware for example. If we did, we could modify it to work on these other cameras and also extend the functionality (extra features).

I am also working to make RTSP work at the same time as the official Xiaomi programs.

shadow-1 commented 7 years ago

@cnberg I have released a new beta version of yi-hack-v3 (0.1.4-beta2). I have now added support for the Yi Home 17CN. Feel free to try it out. Let me know if you have any issues. As I don't have this camera, I am relying on community feedback.

cnberg commented 7 years ago

Thanks for your great work!!

I'm really looking forward to have a hack can work on xiaoyi v2 & v3 camera which supports RTSP.

ls /tmp, I got:

audio log.txt mmap.info view init logsock sd wpa_supplicant.conf

I will try your new version right now.

shadow-1 commented 7 years ago

@cnberg I guessed that would be the contents of /tmp. Yi Home 17CN appears to be identical to the Yi Dome (except PTZ functionality).

At least with this release you will get web server, telnet server, ftp server working. RTSP is a work in progress.

EDIT: The camera should also be functional using the official Xiaomi app when the proxy server gets configured.

cnberg commented 7 years ago

GREAT JOB!

This ROM works very well! I got a webpage titled "Yi Home 17CN". telnet & ftp working perfectly.

But there is no voice prompt when the camera started or connecting wifi.

shadow-1 commented 7 years ago

@cnberg I was under the impression that the voice prompts only occur when the camera is not configured, is reset or when the camera is being used outside of Mainland China ("This camera can only be used within China" voice prompt). Did you reset the camera to test the voice prompts?

cnberg commented 7 years ago

Yes. First time I booted this camera without any prompt, I reset it, and boot again, also no voice prompts (Such as waiting for connect/connecting wifi/wifi is connected).

Actually, I'm in mainland China, so I never heard "This camera can only be used within China" :P

shadow-1 commented 7 years ago

Hmm...that is strange. The audio files that the camera uses are linked in the following location /tmp/audio. What is output when you enter the following commands:

cd /tmp
ls
cd audio
ls

shadow-1 commented 7 years ago

@cnberg I have created a new test firmware that is compatible with both Yi Home 17CN and Yi Home 27US (I had no idea the 27US camera even existed until recently).

Can you try the following pair of images to make sure it still works properly for the 17CN. In addition, it may fix the audio issue you were having before. Firmware files below:

home: https://www.dropbox.com/s/lxwxvm1haydkqmb/home_y18?dl=0 rootfs: https://www.dropbox.com/s/w37nkc7bz0isv2o/rootfs_y18?dl=0

TheWayAway commented 7 years ago

Has anyone had experience hacking the Yi Home 27US camera? How do I confirm which version of the Yi Camera I have (so I can make sure)

I'm assuming it's this one on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/YI-Camera-Wireless-Security-Surveillance/dp/B019MMRV1M

I'll be getting one today and hopefully I'll try to see if it works if I have time tonight.

Nevermind I see another post related to the 27US and the sticker should have a serial # on it.

EDIT: Awesome, just tried installing it tonight and it worked on the Yi Home 720p 27US camera I got off Amazon. Can't wait for RTSP.

shadow-1 commented 7 years ago

@TheWayAway Great to hear that everything worked as expected! Thanks for sharing your experiences.

nosmex commented 7 years ago

@shadow-1 the 27US version seem to work fine. I was able to load it and I can hit the cam by IP. (I have a black US edition cam) Would you please post an update if the FW with RTSP is available? Thanks!

shadow-1 commented 7 years ago

@nosmex RTSP has not been developed yet. I will release it when it gets developed.

amggupta commented 7 years ago

I tried this hack on 27US version camera, and it worked beautifully.

I plan to use this camera as a car reversing camera, and see the feed on a mobile phone that would be running a wifi hotspot too. How do i ensure that everything works and remain on local network. How can i ensure that it does not require internet access for it to work ? (I'm hoping that rtsp work would make it possible to directly see the feed on browser or any other app)

[BTW, it also seems that camera requires active internet connection for establishing the link between camera and app. Once the link is on, even if i turn the data off on the phone streaming works fine.]

shadow-1 commented 7 years ago

@amggupta At the moment, this firmware only supports the official Xiaomi app. For the app to work, the camera needs to authenticate with the Xiaomi server prior to use (this is where the region banning becomes an issue for those using the Chinese version of the camera outside of Mainland China).

RTSP should resolve this issue as it will not be relying on the Xiaomi app to work

From your experimentation, it appears once the camera has authenticated with the Xiaomi server (only occurs at boot) and has connected to the camera, you no longer require an Internet connection.

amggupta commented 7 years ago

@nosmex

Yeah, if RSTP can work on this setup that would be awesome.

along with the boot, I think it requires the working internet link from phone to camera at the time of launch of feed. Not very optimal as reverse cam.

Also i dont want it to 3g/4g data on the mobile to keep sending some part of feed data to servers. Dont care about security, but worry about data usage.

nosmex commented 7 years ago

Looks like there is a new FW update: 1.8.7.0D_201708091510

shadow-1 commented 7 years ago

On firmware versions 0.1.4-beta2 onwards, it is safe to perform Xiaomi updates. It will not affect yi-hack-v3.

Pinnhate commented 7 years ago

After flashing 27US with home: https://www.dropbox.com/s/lxwxvm1haydkqmb/home_y18?dl=0 rootfs: https://www.dropbox.com/s/w37nkc7bz0isv2o/rootfs_y18?dl=0 what version of YI Home i need? I try both int and cn but without success/

galadril commented 7 years ago

@Pinnhate i used the playstore yi home app like stated for internation versions on the readme

shadow-1 commented 7 years ago

@pinnhate As the read me states. You will need to disable ProxyChains-ng as it is not required for the International versions of the camera.

Yi Home from the Google App Store is required for the International versions of the camera.

ericboehs commented 7 years ago

Got it working on my 27US as well. Just dropped the two files on the SD card and rebooted. I look forward to RTSP support. :)

S178 commented 6 years ago

@shadow-1 Do you manage to hack the firmware for yihome 1080 version 2? I can provide my yihome for your experience...

shadow-1 commented 6 years ago

@S178 Unfortunately the Yi Home 2 is not supported with this firmware. The Yi Home 2 firmware uses a completely different chipset to the original Yi Home.

The Yi Home 2 makes use of the Ambarella S2LM chip. This firmware only supports cameras based on the HiSilicon Hi3518eV200 chipset.

The firmware linked below supports the Yi Home 2. I am not sure if it supports the 1080p version of the camera though. https://github.com/niclet/yi-hack-v2

S178 commented 6 years ago

@shadow-1 Thank you for your prompt reply. I've tried but still fail. I guess it's because I know nuts about IT. Do you happen to provide service to hack the firmware?

shadow-1 commented 6 years ago

@S178 Unfortunately I do not know anything about the yi-hack-v2 firmware. Perhaps you should post on this project to get more help with that particular firmware: https://github.com/niclet/yi-hack-v2

deanet commented 6 years ago

can't wait for rtsp support release..

untotren commented 6 years ago

RTSP tho

Ordep commented 6 years ago

Hi I own a Yi home camera 22US and I wonder if it would be possible to make it work like the 27US.?

itreers commented 6 years ago

Hi. Successfully updated my 27US with latest version of hack (dropbox links). Thank you. Will wait for RTSP. Can I somehow help?

shadow-1 commented 6 years ago

@Ordep I think the 22US version of the camera is the original Yi Home camera. Support is still a work in progress. It is not very far off from a pre-release.

@itreers Unfortunately I have not had the time to develop RTSP support yet. You can definitely help if you are a keen developer.

itreers commented 6 years ago

I have an issue with firmware for 27US. After install and set Proxy to disable all was fine. After I change password for root and restart a camera it goes to constant reboot (it must be tested) I restored a camera with restorational firmware provided by (you?) for 27US cameras and install your latest firmware again. Some hours, couple of reboots and power off (without changing root pass) - working ok.

deanet commented 6 years ago

@shadow-1 i'm trying to run rtsp server from https://github.com/xmflsct/yi-hack-1080p/tree/master/sd/test/app and run successfully but only black screen on streaming.

any advice ?

shadow-1 commented 6 years ago

@deanet What camera are you using that RTSP implementation with?

It has been tested on the Yi Home 1080p and is working. However it will not work with the 720p versions of the camera (Yi Home, Yi Home 17CN / 27US, Yi Dome) without modifying the code and recompiling. I am unsure whether it will work with the Yi Dome 1080p without modification.

Also be aware that there are some limitations with this implementation at this stage.

deanet commented 6 years ago

@shadow-1

my camera version is Yi Home 17CN. How to recompile the code ? it's small linux box with different processor (amd or intel).

shadow-1 commented 6 years ago

@deanet More is required than just recompiling. The code has to be developed/modified and compiled against the image sensor library that is used by the 720p camera.

That particular implementation that you linked to is compiled against the image sensor library applicable to the 1080p version of the camera.

I have hosted the SDK for the chipset used on the Yi Home 17CN (HiSilicon Hi3518eV200) on my Box account: https://app.box.com/s/cibs7n1mgvhqaqjlidtveegu1uajt5yr The latest version of the SDK I currently have is; Hi3518E V200R001C01SPC040.

The source code for this particular RTSP implementation is available here: https://github.com/xmflsct/yi-hack-1080p/files/908602/rtsp2301_20170409.zip

itreers commented 6 years ago

How can I support project and RTSP development? Paypal? Maybe some other people want to support.

markusd1984 commented 6 years ago

@shadow-1

Many thanks! Another happy user on Yi Home 17CN! In fact, my camera was locked down after the missus accidentally updated the FW and I already bought a TTL USB adapter as a last resort to downgrade, so happy to have found your firmware hack that made it work again!

Now patiently waiting to try RTSP. A hack to adjust the time zone would be a big + :)

Ordep commented 6 years ago

@Ordep I think the 22US version of the camera is the original Yi Home camera. Support is still a work in progress. It is not very far off from a pre-release.

@shadow-1 Let me know if you need someone to test it, when the time comes.

shadow-1 commented 6 years ago

@Ordep @tbolsh I have created a version of the firmware compatible with Yi Home. It is completely untested as I do not have this camera.

Feel free to test it. If there are any issues, can you let me know so they can be fixed. I believe the Yi Home will only require the rootfs partition to be flashed, unlike the other Xiaomi cameras which I support.

rootfs: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ukqd6uptf8nvlfw/rootfs?dl=0

In case there are issues and you would like to go back to stock firmware. I have created a recovery image compatible with the Yi Home camera: https://app.box.com/s/cibs7n1mgvhqaqjlidtveegu1uajt5yr

Ordep commented 6 years ago

@shadow-1 That's great.

Here's the steps I took.

1) Formatted micro sd card to FAT32 2) threw the file there 3) inserted into the camera 4) started the camera 5) it turned blue 6) but cant access the webpage

What's the best way to send you the log files?

Thank you

shadow-1 / yi-hack-v3

Will this "hack" be available for YI Home camera (aka Ant)? #25

@Ordep I think the 22US version of the camera is the original Yi Home camera. Support is still a work in progress. It is not very far off from a pre-release.