My IP camera is not found by Xeoma, what should I do?

Q: My IP camera is not found by Xeoma, what should I do?

This note is about IP cameras. For other types of cameras, please see this page | See list of supported cameras here | See also: Other camera issues

First of all, please establish if your camera opens up and is working fine in a browser when you paste its IP address in the browser address bar (for example, http://CAMERA’s_IP_ADDRESS)

Secondly, please look up if the camera is able to work in 3rd party software. See a list of not supported cameras here but please be aware that there can be other cameras too.

Useful: support for P2P cameras in Xeoma

Thirdly, please check the ONVIF settings of your camera (if this protocol is supported in it)
There can be situations where the camera description does not contain information about ONVIF support, and only a mobile app is used to work with it. Typically, the connection here is made by scanning a QR code or entering “Device ID”. It is quite possible that the camera is not intended to work in third-party software – you can clarify this question on the Internet or from the manufacturer.

Activating ONVIF in the camera settings: if your camera supports ONVIF, then make sure that it is enabled in the camera’s admin page, as it may be disabled by default in many camera models. Try enabling this feature and restart the automatic search.

It may also help: For new ONVIF HikVision/Dahua models: some cameras do not give access to streams to a normal user, even if it is an administrator. To gain access, you need to create an ONVIF user (possibly with the same login / password) in Configuration -> Advanced Settings -> Integration protocol -> Add, and this stream will become available, including for Xeoma. See also here

If this does not help, then there is a chance that the security settings of the cameras blocked the program from accessing the cameras. Try changing these settings on the admin pages of the cameras so that Xeoma can access them.

Fourthly, is the camera located in the same home network as the computer with Xeoma, or is it a remote camera? The mechanics for remote and local cameras are different.

For a remote camera: The first thing to check for a remote camera is that it has a real static external IP address. Make sure to ping its address from the machine with Xeoma. The second thing is you should check if ports are forwarded properly. For example, the 554 port for rtsp streams.
See also:
Remote camera article | Remote camera video

For a ‘local’ camera:
Normally Xeoma auto-detects and plugs in all IP cams in a network that can work in third-party software, are not protected with password or using standard default password and login information.
Search starts automatically when you launch the program for the first time. Found cameras are automatically added to the screen or placed in the “+” menu in the panel below. Please see if you have some cameras there and add the camera by clicking on it.

What exactly happens when you launch Xeoma – does it find the camera but there’s black screen with an error message instead of camera image, or isn’t the camera recognized at all?

See the list of possible errors and solutions to them here

If the camera is not found, it usually signals that something non-standard is used in the camera’s settings (for example, unusual ports). Please check its web admin page in a browser to see if you can find anything unusual there and repeat the IP/password search (“+” – Search by ip/password) with this new data.

If it wasn’t of use, choose the “Add new camera manually” option in the “+” menu. Specify the URL for this camera in the corresponding field manually (Xeoma works with jpeg, mjpeg, mpeg-4, h.264, http and rtsp streams and PTZ.) To do that, copy cam’s URL (in browser admin page of the cam, camera’s documentation or the Internet) and paste it in the respective box, along with password and login, if any.

You can contact camera manufacturer or seller and ask them what the camera stream URLs are that can be played back in third-party software like a VLC player.

You can also use the free VLC player to check if the URL you found/received is working. See guide

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More resources:

We have a bunch of videos about how to add a camera to Xeoma:
Part 1. Overview
Part 2. How to add an IP camera by its address
Part 3. How to add cameras manually when nothing else helps