After searching to find a way to use the WNIP2 Wi-Fi IP Cameras from NightOwl without having to use the packaged WNIP2 NVR (which, is the weakest part of the packaged solution NightOwl sells at discount box stores like Sams Club and Costco) I was looking at trashing the cameras and buying reputable standalone IP cameras that would support ONVIF and BlueIris, etc.
The bundled NVR has some cool features like AI and 2-way audio, but ultimately its just not powerful enough to keep up. If you record 100%, the device doesn't has processing to keep up with recording and displaying realtime video. If you use the object-triggered recording and have an active area with frequent recordings, you will end up with so many videos that it becomes effectively impossble to look at previous captures. The NVR includes a 1TB spinning disk HDD which is fully encrypted. Asking the NVR to play a video while also recording live video is basicaly impossible, as is queriying trigger events more than a few hours old. The only real way to use the NVR to retrieve old data is to take the cameras offline, the NVR offline, and plugin a USB, login to the NVR via a TV and keyboard, and manually backup the recordings. It will take days to decrypt the entire drive and load onto a USB. The NVR hardware is just not powerful enough enoughto monitor and record 8 channels. It does work well for live-video though-- if thats all you need.
To prevent these really decent cameras from becoming e-waste. Do note that this method effectively removes the cameras from any control of NightOwl. You will ultimately loose access to the cameras on the mobile app and desktop software. This method however also makes it possible to access the cameras as though they were a traditional Wireless RSTP ONVIF security camera and can be added to your custom NVR solution like BlueIris or even just VLC.
Specific camera model this is about: WNIP-2LTA-BS. It should apply for any of the WNIP2 series bundled WIFI and NVR systems. The same-series stand-alone cameras support native ONVIF. Only the cameras that came bundled with the NVR are locked-down to the NVR. The below bypasses the lock on the walled-garden.
Here is what I learned:
- These cameras WILL work as standalone units, despite they were packaged with an Paired-NVR.
- NightOwl customer support will not help you not use the paired-NVR.
- You still initially need a NightOwl NVR to temporarily configure the devices
- Once the devices are configured, you never need the paired NVR again.
- There is a model of camera that is standalone that will natively work. They are add-on cameras never that were not pre-paired with the NVR. The pre-paired NVR cameras are locked to the NVR.
- The NVR itself is fully encrypted, don't bother taking it apart. The disk is not readable without a private key that I couldn't find anywhere.
If you want to use these cameras without the paired NVR, you'll have some work to do to capture network traffic and to design a network that can live without the paired NVR.
- Get all your cameras working as intended by Night Owl. They will operate on their own WIFI SSID. The Wi-Fi uses WPA2-PSK. Don't bother trying to capture the 4-way handshake, you won't crack the PSK.
- Do yourself a favor and disable the time-stamp overlay on the cameras. The hack below will allow the cameras to operate without the bundled NVR, however the cameras timestamps will revert to 1/1/2000 without the NVR being on the network. Those inclined can later use ONVIF Device Manager to force the cameras to use an external NTP.
- After installing the cameras, download and launch the NightOwl Protect client software on your computer and login.
- https://support.nightowlsp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360044127354
- Open one of the live cameras using the software. This adds your computer's IP into the Multi-cast channel that the NVR uses to communicate with local devices. The multicast members include any software clients, mobile apps on LAN, and the cameras themselves.
- Run Wireshark and begin capturing all traffic in promiscuous mode on the wired interface for your LAN
- Login to the NVR using a keyboard plugged into the NVR (have the NVR plugged into a TV)
- Open the settings panel on the NVR, goto cameras. Attempt to "add-all" cameras. No new cameras are found, this is ok.
- cycle throught the menus of the application. Save the conifguration before closing (even if nothing has changed).
- Stop the Wireshark capture.
- Investigate the packet capture. You will have captured a multicast packet from the WinNVR IP to the Multicast network. There will likely be quite a few.
- Filter using the source IP of the NVR.
- Find the multicast packet that contains the configuration information for all of the cameras and listening devices assigned (phones, computers, etc) to the multicast channel.
The capture will appear similar to below
Client-ID:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Content-Type:application/json
X-Session-Id:1
X-Content-Checksum:#######REDACTED#####
Content-Length:1019
{
"Ver" : "1.1",
"Nonce" : "",
"Device-ID" : "",
"Device-Model" : "WNVR-WNIP2",
"Device-Type" : "WNVR-WNIP2",
"Esee-ID" : "#######REDACTED#####",
"Software-Version" : "WNVR-WNIP2_#######REDACTED#####",
"Wired" : [
{
"DHCP" : true,
"Connected" : true,
"IP" : "#######REDACTED#####",
"Netmask" : "255.255.255.0",
"Gateway" : "#######REDACTED#####",
"MAC" : "#######REDACTED#####"
}
],
"Wireless" : [
{
"DHCP" : false,
"Connected" : true,
"IP" : "172.#######REDACTED#####.1",
"Netmask" : "255.255.255.0",
"Gateway" : "#######REDACTED#####",
"MAC" : "#######REDACTED#####",
"Mode" : "accessPoint",
"ApMode" : {
"Channel": 11,
"Essid" : "NOPWNVR-#######REDACTED#####",
"Psk" : "#######REDACTED#####"
}
}
],
"Channel-Info" : [
{"id": 0,"Stream-Cnt": 2},
{"id": 1,"Stream-Cnt": 2},
{"id": 2,"Stream-Cnt": 2},
{"id": 3,"Stream-Cnt": 2},
{"id": 4,"Stream-Cnt": 2},
{"id": 5,"Stream-Cnt": 2},
{"id": 6,"Stream-Cnt": 2},
{"id": 7,"Stream-Cnt": 2},
{"id": 8,"Stream-Cnt": 2},
{"id": 9,"Stream-Cnt": 2}
],
"Channel-Cnt": 10,
"Capabilities" : {
"Http-Port" : 80,
"MaxHardDiskDrivers" : 1,
"MaxTFCards" : 0
}}
The captured packet will show the NVR's configuration and the configuration that the cameras use to connect to the NVR via its dedicated SSID. The SSID and PSK are presented in plaintext in the packet.
- There are lots of ways of doing this. The premise at this point is to remove the WinNVR device. Throw it in a closet and never look at it again. Add a wireless bridge in your network that drops to your network and acts in Access-Point mode. It should be configured with the identified SSID and PSK.
- Add a new network on your firewall/router on a new vlan. The IP should be the same as the old WinNVR device. This is the stand-in replacement gateway that the WinNVR device used to be. Tag the VLAN accordingly as untagged on the AP that is acting-as the WinNVR gateway and tagged on your firewall/router.
- Add routes in your firewall.
- Your LAN devices can now route to all of the cameras that were on the isolated network. The cameras will use your router as their gateway and the cameras are still technically isolated to give you control over their internet access. (They shouldn't be reaching out to the internet anyhow).
- Add a wireless card to where-ever you have your NVR installed. Use the identified configuration to connect to the camera's network. This can be done even if the NVR is still on the network. Once connected to the same WIFI network as the cameras, you can access them directly via IP.
- The cameras support onvif out of the box.
- The ONVIF username is admin and the password is admin
- If using BlueIris
- Make: Generic/ONvIF
- Model: *RTSP H.264/H.265/MJPG/MPEG4
- Cam#: 1
- Media/video rtsp port: 554
- Discovery/ONVIF port: 8089
- Main: Profile_000: /ch0_0.264
- Audio: 64 kbps G.711 u-law
- ONVIF source: vstoken0: V_SRC_000
- Enable "Get ONVIF trigger Events" to allow the cameras to self-trigger. Leave disabled if you want Blue-Iris to trigger.
- Enable "Send RTSP keep-alives"
- Enable "Use RTSP/stream timecode"
- The cameras support two-way audio, so enable "Send RTSP back-channel for talk support" if you want to use Blue-Iris for two way audio.
The cameras listen on a handful of ports. There is awkward HTTP front end. Clearly never meant to be seen by consumers.
 |
|---|
Other services
Discovered open port 554/tcp on 172.###REDACTED
Discovered open port 443/tcp on 172.###REDACTED
Discovered open port 843/tcp on 172.###REDACTED
Discovered open port 1300/tcp on 172.###REDACTED
Discovered open port 6060/tcp on 172.###REDACTED
Discovered open port 7000/tcp on 172.###REDACTED
Discovered open port 8089/tcp on 172.###REDACTED
Discovered open port 8699/tcp on 172.###REDACTED
You can use ONVIF Device Manager to further inspect the cameras.
 |
|---|
As far as I can tell, only the WinNVR device ever reached out to the internet for "zero-config" configuration and punching holes in your firewall. Once the cameras are configured, the configuration will survive reboots, even when the WinNVR device is not plugged in.
Ideally I'd rather have taken the original configuration broadcast packet and manipulated it to be a sane configuration that we would select to match our network preference. Having a hidden SSID is fine, but it still leaks the name and will self-identify that its a nightowl camera network. Eventually I might get around to building a configuration tool that will natively work with the cameras. But... I've got the cameras working now without the nonsense. Today is not that day.
- There should be an option to change the bundled cameras into stand alone mode. That would be FANTASTIC and IDEAL.
- The WinNVR includes a 1TB encrypted drive. Thats nice, but it doesn't have the hardware to keep up with the 8 channels the NVR supposedly is built for.
- The configuration multicast packet is plaintext. I mean, you could have used encryption to prevent anyone from capturing the data That would have truly made these devices e-waste. So thats for using poor-security practice, I guess. On the other hand, someone with network-level access could sniff traffic and eventually capture the SSID and PSK that you refuse to help your customers with. Its a security risk. Once someone has that SSID and PSK, they can remotely access the network in front of the NVR.
- Seriously, if a customer asks you if they can use the cameras without the pre-paired NVR, be honest. Develop the option and make it user friendly.
- The cameras are wonderful. Its a shame the NVR is under-spec'd. Its a shame the cameras would be worthless without the NVR (or without this research).
Anyway, now you all know. One of the BlueIris forums will likely pick up on this and take it from where I left off. Sad to see that these cameras are going to end up in dumpsters because the developer made them so difficult to use outside of their walled-garden.
Night owl has a rediculous TOS. They try to make you think you don't own the device you bought. Anyway, I'm not saying I did any of this. This is all heresy.