Wednesday 24 April 2013

Hacking the Xenta IP-11IR-H264-PT IP camera from Ebuyer part one - Foscam firmware

A while ago I bought an IP camera from Ebuyer.com here in the UK because it was on offer and seemed too cheap to be true.  The camera is branded Xenta and the part code is IP-11IR-H264-PT.  It's still for sale quite cheaply here:

http://goo.gl/e7u6q

Although a bit more than I paid now.

It turns out this camera is a re-badged Foscam FI8608W, the main circuit board inside the camera even has this part code on it:

http://foscam.us/products/foscam-fi8608w-wireless-ip-camera.html

You can upgrade the firmware on the Xenta branded camera to the latest Foscam firmware.  I've put the firmware I found here:

http://goo.gl/sDV0E

That was the newest version I could find and given that the FI8608W is a discontinued product, I doubt there'll ever be another update. 

The bad news is that the web interface in this firmware still requires an Active-X plugin to view the video.

So despite the EBuyer page specifically listing Linux as a "supported OS" it absolutely is not.  I would also assume it wont work on a Mac either.  I have even spoken to EBuyer tech support about this but they haven't edited the page.

In the next post, I will describe how I built my own very simple web interface to drive the camera from any web browser with no need for any stupid plug-ins or platform dependencies.

6 comments:

  1. Cheers for this Paul, although my Xenta was not an 8608 you gave me the tip of opening it up and checking the main board.
    Mine turned out to be an 8918 and I found an update on their website: http://www.foscam.com/down3.aspx :)

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  2. Paul. I hope this blog is still running. I recently purchased through ebuyer the Xenta 1 tb 8 channel CCTV kit with cameras. I was upgrading from a Swann 4 channel system. I left all my cameras and cables in situ, all good cameras, same voltage same wiring. On connection none of the cameras would work ? I proceeded to add a 5th camera (a new xenta) supplied with the kit.... Worked immediately. I have since used the remaining 3 Xenta cameras and immediately on replacement all have worked. I have bench tested my old cameras on the old 4 channel DVR and they all work fine. I won't go into the ongoing problems I am having with Xenta support ( I use the term support loosely ). Basically they have not given me a solution.. I am convinced it's a DVR problem. Any help would be appreciated.

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    Replies
    1. It sound like you have the 720p DVR version that I have also used in the same way.
      To make the old camera work from you need to change the resolution mode from 720p to 960h, it does this in pairs of channel.
      After a reboot the old cameras should work, I have 4 connected and working on my system

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  3. I just want to point out that Foscam is a Linux based firmware, proof of this can be obtained by pugging a usb TTL/TTY adapter to the respectiv Rx and Tx jtag header on the board, you will notice the linux boot sequence/kernel dmesg and even get a very basic command prompt in which you can see the file system. - this is what it means by it is a Linux device, it is an embedded Linux OS/Firmware/

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