I have a D-Link DCS-8526LH Camera in my living room pointed to my front door. I originally purchased it a long, long time ago to keep an eye on kids during school while at home during COVID. It’s aged well, and it’s a nice thing. It lets me know if someone’s coming into my front door whether I want to know about it or not, and that’s all I need to know.
I learned to not like the app that’s provided by D-Link except for the configuration aspect of things. The camera did not come with a Web URL to work with it, but did come with RTSP. The problem was that there wasn’t much documentation about how to use it. I knew it was port 554 and what it’s primary purpose was, but that’s pretty much it.
First to learn was the credentials. Username, by default, was admin.
Second to learn was the password, and this was not generically password. It was also not “admin”, nor nothing, nor “nothing”, or blank. After searching high and low I learned that the password was a 6-digit pin that was printed on the bottom of the physical device. One picture later and a considerable amount of zooming in I had my credentials.
Finally I had to learn the actual RTSP URL. This had so many possibilities and it seems that every camera manufacturer has their own endpoints:
rtsp://x.x.x.x/axis-media/media.amp
rtsp://x.x.x.x/cam/realmonitor?channel=<channelNo>&subtype=<typeNo>
rtsp://x.x.x.x/LiveChannel/Channel/media.smp
rtsp://x.x.x.x/Streaming/Channels/<id>
I finally came across a forum that provided a series of D-Link urls and tried a couple of those:
rtsp://x.x.x.x/onvif_camera/profile.0
rtsp://x.x.x.x/onvif_camera/profile.1
rtsp://x.x.x.x/live/profile.0
rtsp://x.x.x.x/onvif/profile.0
After none of them worked I deferred to an App I used a long time called ODM: Device Manager for ONVIF-based Network video devices. Once I entered in the credentials it was able to find the RTSP stream with no issue. Come to find out, specifically for my DCS-8526LH the URL would be rtsp://admin:740856@192.168.1.248/live/profile.0.
This URL, for me, was easily plugged into VLC under Media -> Open Network Stream. Volume down, and now I can watch my living room on my computer while charging my phone with ease.
Once you come over you can tune in to my camera directly.