Got IP Foscam setup..remoted..on Phone..and on Wear Watch! UPDATED GUIDE

Yeah I was inpatient and didn't wait for your review. I got mine and set it up this week. Was going to come here and post the same about it being tedious to set up, but now that I know what I'm doing, adding more should be pretty easy. I'm using TinyCam Monitor Pro on my phone, you?

First off, here's the link to the PDF for the full CGI and SDK. The cool thing with this is once you have the camera on the web, you can use the CGI commands here to do virtually anything just by typing these in as HTML URLs. Fun stuff.

Foscam CGI code for ALL IP CAMS


Foscam FI9821W V2 Cam on my LG G

The image above is a JPEG snapshot, but one that refreshes whenever I launch the webcam app on my watch.


Step 1 Purchase Foscam and setup on your local WiFi (not going into all the instructions, but basically its little more than giving your camera its on own IP address internally so you can see it on your local network.

Step 2 Launch the local URL, go to the your "settings" tab using IE, Firefox or Chrome and under "network" select the "port" option. Note the HTTP port, the only one you're interested in. Change it to something you like such as 8090 or 8095 or whatever and hit "save".

Step 3 Go to "basic settings", then "user accounts" and go ahead & create a "visitor" level user. You don't need or want your default admin account being the one you plug into the URL you'll ultimately put into your watch.

Step 4 Now that you have your visitor/user account, you just need to set up your virtual server/port forwarding for the IP address of your camera. Depending on the router, these settings are typically under "WAN" or "Virtual Servers" or "Port Forwarding". Its a very common feature that every router will have.

Step 5 After you've located your Virtual Server page, simply add a new "virtual server" and key in your IP cam's *LOCAL* web address. This is the same one you see at the top of your browser window in Step 3 above. Typically something like 192.168.2.210 or something. Add this IP address to the table along with the port you setup in Step 2 (8095 or whatever) and select "TCP" as the type.

Step 6 You're almost done. Now you're ready to test the access to your camera on the web outside of your local WiFi. Make sure you have the NAME and PASSWORD handy for the visitor account you created.

You can do this one of 2 ways:

>> If using IP address (I don't recommend) do a 'whatismyip.com' lookup and get your 'outside facing' IP address.

>> If using a dynamic DNS (strongly recommended..i won't go into how to do this, but you should do this anyway when you set up your router) use that.

Here's an example of each type you'd want to type into your browser window VERY CAREFULLY

blah.freedomain.com = your DDNS or IP address
8095 = whatever port you are forwarding
blah = your visitor username
blah2 = your visitor password

*** https://blah.freedomain.com:8095/cgi-bin/CGIProxy.fcgi?cmd=snapPicture2&usr=blah&pwd=blah2 ***

or

*** https://68.43.55.698:8095/cgi-bin/CGIProxy.fcgi?cmd=snapPicture2&usr=blah&pwd=blah2 ***

Step 7 If you can see your webcam image in your browser window you're done! All you need to do now is to open Wear IP Cam on your phone and paste that in.

Step 8 Hit refresh on your watch and you will be able to see the updated web image on your watch each time!


Caveats
This works for the 19821W V2 and the CGI scripting language is slightly different for different foscam models running older firmware.

Let me know if you have any questions!

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Do you have any concerns with sending your password in clear over the network your connected to?

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1. You create a 'visitor' account in the IP camera configuration tool that has limited access; not your ADMIN account. See my instructions above.

2. those CGI scripts are designed to be used by you..to control your camera..and possibly plugged into a tool on your phone, etc. not to be shared.

in the case of those 2 above, i'm demonstrating how you can plug them into your IP webcam app on your phone. Nobody actually sees the CGI itself because you've set it up inside the app itself.

Make sense?

Thanks for the write up. It was a fairly frustrating process for me and I still have not gotten any of the apps to work (IOS). We can only look at it through the computer I set up. Is there a stupid reason I could be over looking? I fixed the IP and the ports per the manual. I have not tried what you have above. I am in over my head already.

quote:

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I fixed the IP and the ports per the manual. I have not tried what you have above. I am in over my head already.

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Did you go into your router settings and enable the designated port in port forwarding options?

It's likely a port issue. Tell me what kind of router you have and which foscam and I can walk you through it.

Agreed. The documentation is a train wreck for this product. They took something that should be fairly easy to set up and made it beyond confusing.

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I mean, it's not likely, but it's not impossible.

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makes sense. i'm going to fool around with the HTTPS option. maybe thats the way i'll ultimately set it up.

no sense in being overly cautious now..while i'm still playing with it..and make sure it set up with some reasonable security.

i'll try that out.

yeah i'm underwhelmed with the foscam forums and support. seems like they have a potentially nice product here but the supporting documentation is atrocious.

just get the blue iris software dvr and buy the mobile app. the mobile app is very nice.