Use the Alta Video Camera Proxy to access third-party cameras

Last modified: Thursday October 17, 2024.

Setting up the Alta Video Camera Proxy to enable you to easily access the user interfaces for your third-party cameras involves the following top-level steps:

  1. Configure your Alta Video software to enable the Alta Video Camera Proxy.
  2. Download the Alta Video Camera Proxy software.
  3. Use the Alta Video Camera Proxy to connect to the relevant third-party camera user interface.

The Alta Video Camera Proxy relies on the camera being suitably configured to allow access using basic authentication/digest authentication.

If the camera is not suitably configured, you will not be automatically logged into the camera when using the Alta Video Camera Proxy, and will need to manually log into the camera user interface.

Task — Enable Camera Proxy in Alta Video

  1. Log in to Alta Video as an Administrator.
  2. Click New tool, then select Servers tool buttonSystem.
  3. Click Settings adjacent to the Cloud Connector group where you want to enable the Camera Proxy.
  4. Scroll to Advanced and enable the Camera Proxy

Task — Download the Alta Video Camera Proxy software

  1. Download the Alta Video Camera Proxy executable file by clicking the relevant link:
  2. Save the executable file to a suitable location on your computer.

Task — Connect to the third-party camera interface

  1. From within Alta Video, open the Devices tool, and select the third-party camera you wish to access.
  2. From the browser address bar, copy the universally unique identifier (UUID) for the device.

    The UUID is the string of numbers and letters that follows https://<Aware address>/devices/ and that precedes any ?site= information.

  3. Open a command line interface, browse to the directory containing the downloaded aware-cam-proxy.exe file, and enter:
    aware-cam-proxy-<os>.exe -a <url> -u <username> -d <uuid>.
    Where:
    • <os> — the operating system you are using, either win, linux or mac.
    • <url> — the URL or IP address for your Alta Video Cloud deployment, without https://.
    • <username> — the Alta Video account being used to access the camera.

      If the user name contains spaces, the whole username must be placed within quotes.

    • <uuid> — the device-specific identifier for the relevant camera.

    Example:
    To contact the camera proxy from a Windows computer, for a deployment called testdeployment in the eu1 region, with a user named adminuser and a device with the uuid abcdef123456 enter:
    aware-cam-proxy-win.exe -a testdeployment.eu2.alta.avigilon.com -u adminuser -d abcdef123456

  4. Enter the password for the specified username.
  5. If the Alta Video Cloud user account is configured to require two-factor authentication (2FA), when prompted, enter the 2FA value.

    If the Alta Video Cloud user is configured to use 2FA and you are not prompted for the 2FA value, make sure you are running the latest version of the camera proxy. This can be checked by running the command aware-cam-proxy-<os> -v.

    Aware Camera Proxy builds with a build time equal to or later than 2021-07-22 includes support for 2FA.

  6. On successful validation of the provided information, a browser window opens, and the user interface for the selected camera is displayed.
  7. Log into the selected camera.