Popular A9 mini Wi-Fi camera & the HA challenge

Hardware
209

Hello, which SDK you used to build the firmware?

I could find last debug strings on your screen shot (pwr_btn long press ...) only inside some test module here:

I think you built some player test application from SDK for RT-Thread dev board, like this:

which couldn’t run on this camera, because camera doesn’t have necessary hardware parts at least speaker. I suggest to try with some web server app.

PS “pwr_btn” message repeats continuously in an infinite loop…
most probably means that dev board uses different power button GPIO pin.

210

Sorry but how can we set this DNS redirect? I have Livebox 6 router… if this cant be setted thera are any other way?

211

Most easy solution - get another router :slight_smile:

Other option - disable DNS on your router, add DHCP option 6 (DNS) with IP of your server and setup own dnsmasq on the server, where will be configured DNS redirection

212

Great tip (about buy other Router LoL).
I will try this option o maybe… configure DNS in router to point to my HA server with DNSmask, DNSServer or similar… about HA what will be the easer Addon?

213

can you check if you find file /etc/hosts in the camera?

214

The server is working great in termux on android phone. Is it possible to add audio stream to http output like http://[FAKE_SRV_IP]/dev/[CAM_ID]/audio ?

1 Like
215

You guys should make a YouTube video with this stupid A9 mini cam that doesn’t have motion detection

216

I got the same A9 with the same PCB,
any ideas how to make it completely independent from the [HD IOT Camera]?
Main goal is to record on the sd card when powered on, no interent connection/no app
It requires way too many permissions on your phone for sure

1 Like
217

The camera will not get out to the Internet while in AP mode.

218

I have HDWifiCam Pro and motion detection works! I hate Little Stars cam

219

i mean create fake server.
Set up DNS redirection on yours home router. Domains ‘v720,naxclow,com’ and ''p2p.v720,naxclow,com" done
apt install python3 python3-tqdm python3-opencv done

220

image
image1575×881 70.7 KB

i didnt undestan number 3
and setup dnsmaq

221

My A9 actually has leds around the lens, they aren’t visible to eye but can be seen on pic:
https://imgur.com/a/SocuQhk

222

please help. I have a Little Stars and HDWIFICAM PRO camera, this morning everything worked and now the circle is spinning all the time and I can’t see the image (I can hear the sound). I can’t see the image when the camera is connected to WIFI and when I have AP connectivity

IMG_5058
IMG_50581125×2436 91.3 KB

223

Hello,

I did not found that anyone mentioned this TuYa dev board for BK7252: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy Combo Core Board (BK7252)-Tuya IoT Development Platform-Tuya Developer - on which is BK7252 that is sitting probably in most A9 cams. Since this chip it is in TuYa dev board too, then there might be some possibility to load custom firmware on A9 cams (created using tuya sdk :thinking:)

1 Like
224

@saper_2 I thought about the same. I’ve tracked the circuit path and pins on my different boards. But I failed to push any code to them via UART. I also tried to make the chip enter download mode using SPI but also failed. There is LibreTiny which has a firmware for BK72xx. So it seems doable. Some links from them: Download mode - Beken 72xx, Generic - BK7252 - LibreTiny

225

I have A9 mini without IR.

It’s Little Stars version, firmware manufacturer: Naxclow and it supposedly should work with that V720 app (never installed it anyway…)…

PCB marking:

A9_B
V1.3_220516

1
11200×1026 211 KB

2
21200×1222 251 KB

3
31200×1205 257 KB

4
41200×1262 238 KB

@kumy I did not try for now flashing anything (will try tomorrow).

First I wanted to read dump… So, I tried this ltchiptool (linked from LibreTiny) but didn’t work at all - got connection timeout (win gui version throw some error :-/ ). Next, I tried bk7231tools, also I had to use RX/TX**_2** pads for UART, and here is chip info:

saper@N10D:~ $ bk7231tools read_flash -d /dev/ttyUSB1 --timeout 5 -l 0x200000 dump2M.bin
Connected! Chip info: BK7252 / Flash ID: 00 00 00 / Protocol: BASIC_BEKEN
Reading 2097152 bytes from 0x0
Reading 4k page at 0x200000 (0.00%)
Reading 4k page at 0x201000 (0.20%)
[...]
Reading 4k page at 0x3FF000 (99.80%)

File have 2MiB, if anyone interested in dump: 1-Drive:a9-flashdump-littlestars-720p.7z

At end of dump file/flash there is something with timestamp, at address 0x1FE000, timestamp point to 2018-01-01 01:05:04 GMT+0 :
image

And in matter of writing anything, I’ll try first writing back this dump to see if flashing work at all (tomorrow)…

226

I made a Home Assistant AddOn based on the a9 fake server repo which generates a stream with audio that go2rtc understands.
It uses ffmpeg internally to merge video with audio and adds url endpoints to send commands (like toggling IR mode)

It’s not yet that easy to install but it is working fairly well

4 Likes
227

I made a lot of stability improvements and just realized my cameras are “fake” and have no IR leds.
I hope the “good” ones also work

1 Like
228

I added a way to test custom ffmpeg commands to the ingress addon ui in case someone knows about about that.
I didn’t find a way to just copy the mjpeg over while combining with the audio stream and having an output that go2rtc understands without having to compress to h264.
Or to compress it to h264 directly within the addon and have it working in go2rtc

image
image1526×292 39.2 KB