Pre-Release Versions

[alienatedsec]

[Updated] 2024/03/01

The below stopped working with baseline 0.3.8 and was fixed with a new baseline 0.4.1 - more details #326

Dear All

Unfortunately, my time is limited, and I want this project to carry on. Therefore, I am trying something new, and I hope it will be popular to an extent.

I am introducing pre-releases, and I need the community to test those and let me know if there are any issues as part of this discussion. Issues for a pre-release should not be raised, but discussed over here. Some guidance about the pre-release firmware versions based on the example - 0.4.1j

0 - major version release
4 - the main version that is going to be released
1j - the minor pre-release version

The above pre-release once tested and approved, will become the latest release e.g., 0.4.1

Pre-releases will be available via official releases and will require manual or WebUI-supported installation. The latter is preferred due to many conditions.

[Preferred] WebUI Support for Pre-Releases started with version 0.3.8 and now it needs 0.4.1 to work properly.

Some simplified manual steps are below:

• Copy the respective firmware file to /tmp/sd/ e.g., yi_home_1080p_0.4.1j.tgz
• Change its name to yi_home_1080p_x.x.x.tgz - yes, it has to be x and NOT any random number or letter.
• You can press UPGRADE to LATEST or UPGRADE to PRE-RELEASE buttons
• The process will pick the file in the /tmp/sd/ and upgrade your camera to that pre-release version.

You can revert from any pre-release to the latest official release by ignoring the above steps, going to the Service page and simply pressing UPGRADE to LATEST.

Looking forward to your support and helping to improve this project. Thank you

[Loafdude]

Firstly, thank you for supporting this project. It is very much appreciated!

I am testing with a Yi home 1080p. I have outdoor units avaialble to test with as well.
I have tested your 9.3.8 pre-release with a single high-res stream w/audio enabled.
Audio works for a few moments then becomes studders then completely fails.
Video is studdery too but I believe this is a side effect of the audio.

Video only stream works fine. Audio only stream works fine

Client is VLC 3.0.18
Here are the stats I get from VLC

Please let me know if I can assist further.

[alienatedsec]

Thanks @Loafdude - it feels like this 9.3.8 pre-release has several issues already:

• RTSP is not good when both video and audio streaming
• MQTT needs re-working - testing another branch
• I am not sure if you experienced Snapshot issues (?)

For those simple reasons, I recommend waiting for the 9.3.8a.

[Loafdude]

Snapshots seem to be working here.
Any specific issue I should test with it?

I did not test MQTT, sorry.

[roleoroleo]

@alienatedsec
We should go into detail about rtsp when both video and audio are enabled.
It could be a cpu/memory issue or it could be a sync problem between the streams (maybe with the timestamps of the frames).

[alienatedsec]

Thanks @Loafdude I am about to share the same shortly

[roleoroleo]

I noticed a problem with the sample rate.
Are you able to capture 1 minute of the raw streams (both audio and video)?
And share the files with me?
You can do it stopping rRTSPServer and reading the fifo files
/tmp/aac_audio_fifo
/tmp/h264_high_fifo

[alienatedsec]

/tmp/aac_audio_fifo
/tmp/h264_high_fifo

@roleoroleo shared already via email

[roleoroleo]

Do you want to try this patch?
p.patch.gz

[Loafdude]

I compiled sucessfully with this patch but it did not help my audio/video issues.
That said, my dev environment is very janky. I'd really like it if @alienatedsec could compile to confirm.

[alienatedsec]

9.3.8a is now ready to test - still, sync problems when both audio and video stream together, but it works fine without audio. The rest needs testing - It is important to flash it with FAT32 SD Card as some libraries cannot be loaded from the SD card and had to be copied to the /home/yi-hack-v5/lib folder. The home partition, once flashed, should already have all the necessary files, but system.sh will copy those libraries if they don't exist. Regardless, there are changes to system_init.sh which also loads from the /home/yi-hack-v5/scripts/ folder and will need to be correct to avoid double-loading of certain files. You will see fat32error.txt in your /tmp/sd/ if flashing wasn't fully performed.

[roleoroleo]

If the new ipc multiplexer is a problem I could study a new solution (different from MStar and Allwinner) trying to avoid the use of LD_PRELOAD.

[alienatedsec]

the LD_PRELOAD works in the latest design :) it helped me identify other issues with the config file :) - thanks @roleoroleo
Any ideas about how to fix sync issues? I added a comment with a screenshot from the VLC.

[jidehem92]

Hi. Thank you for your work. I've tested 9.3.8a with my yi_outdoor and I confirm it fixes the version problem in Home Assistant. I don't have any problem yet with this version (I don't stream audio)

[oat1]

@alienatedsec
I've installed the latest 9.3.8b version

I have a problem with mqtt, most of sensors are unavailable.

[alienatedsec]

@oat1 are you on the latest ha integration?

Also, do you have the error file on your sd card in /tmp/sd/ ?

[oat1]

I do not see any errors

I'm on 0.4.5 yihack integration

[roleoroleo]

Are you using the last version of the integration?

[oat1]

I'm using version 0.4.5, I believe this is the latest ?

[roleoroleo]

Yes, it's the last version.
@alienatedsec Is the tag 9.3.8c updated with the last changes?

[alienatedsec]

@roleoroleo yes it is. It's this branch https://github.com/alienatedsec/yi-hack-v5/tree/roleo_ipc

[roleoroleo]

I checked the code in the whole chain integration-hack and I didn't find problems.
But I can't test it with a cam.
@alienatedsec I commited a couple of updates but nothing important about the issue above.
Are you able to make a test with the integration?

[gmallants]

Hello,

I tested several versions (camera is 27US) :

• yi_home_9.3.8 -> Snapshot works, stream in VLC too but integration in HA is broken (no video preview, the rest seems OK).
• yi_home_9.3.8a -> Unable to install (tried upgrade path through the interface and unpacking directly on fresh SD), the LED start blinking few seconds then go to solid orange.
• yi_home_9.3.8b -> Same as yi_home_9.3.8a

Could you please check and provide me some help / fix ?
KR,

[Minims]

Hello,

yi_home_9.3.8a -> Unable to install (tried upgrade path through the interface and unpacking directly on fresh SD), the LED start >blinking few seconds then go to solid orange.

I have the exact same issue :

[alienatedsec]

I found the problem with the size of the home partition being too big. I already have the resolution. There will be a new pre-release soon.

[b0b33140]

Hello,

I tried version 9.3.8b on my Yi Outdoor 9CUS camera and almost all of them work, I only have the following problems:
I can't save the videos because my sd card is formatted in FAT32. I guess if I format my SD card with the Yi home app, I'll switch to extfat.
Compatibility is partial with on home assistant with yi-hack Home Assistant integration, but I was able to view the RSTP stream otherwise.

Thanks for your work

[alienatedsec]

True. That is only for the initial hack and it's firmware loading.

If you formatted as FAT32, and loaded the latest firmware you need to format it again with YI app and copy the yi-hack-v5 folder again, then restart. It's possible via FTP as it's enabled after restart by default when the SD is formatted by the app.

[alienatedsec]

@b0b33140

fdisk -l - ID 83 Linux allows recording on SD card (at least that is for my 8GB testing card), but that is only when formatted with the YI app.

[b0b33140]

Great, it works! On the other hand, my camera crashed, I had to take out the sd card from the camera and plug it into my pc to copy the "yi-hack-v5" folder.
Thank you very much

[alienatedsec]

9.3.8d seems to have a problem if there is no SD card or when it is formatted. I need to check what has been broken this time.

[alienatedsec]

@b0b33140 found it -

yi-hack-v5/src/static/static/home/yi-hack-v5/script/system_init.sh

Line 47 in 2df5c4d

sed -i '/^\.\/dispatch/s/^/#/' /home/app/init.sh

It doesn't execute WiFi if no SD card 👎 I need to fix it with 9.3.8e

[Jakdaw]

Hi!
Firstly, thanks for this project!

I've been using 0.3.7 on a Yi Outdoor cam for a little while now - in 'private' mode, sending RTSP to a Frigate instance (which has improved considerably with more recent versions of Frigate).

I tried to upgrade to 9.3.8c today (I'd love audio too!), but without much success:-

Following the upgrade process, the camera never came back onto the network. Just sat there with a Yellow LED.

Initially I thought this might be a physical SD card problem, so I switched to another card and went back to 0.3.7.

However, once I'd configured 0.3.7 again (& rebooted, all good). I tried again with the upgrade and got exactly the same outcome.

So I thought I'd wipe the SD card and try installing 9.3.8c in the same way I'd done 0.3.7 (ie root/home images and copy the yi-hack-v5 directory onto otherwise empty SD card). This worked! I did enable RTSP etc (no audio yet) but found that even low-res snapshots were triggering OOM killer, so I enabled swap. Rebooted and that was fine. Finally I thought I'd disable cloud again, since I don't use that - saved settings and reboot - and again, it never returns to the wifi network. Is there some problem with disabling Cloud for 9.3.8c? Please let me know what I can do to help diagnose this.

For now, I'm back on 0.3.7 exactly as things were from the start.

[kirilldem]

Could you share your camera config for frigate? I am getting a lot of errors on Frigate 12.1 Mine is like this:

   garden: # <------ Name the camera
     ffmpeg:
        hwaccel_args: preset-vaapi      
            # Optional: camera specific input args (default: inherit)
        input_args: -rtsp_transport tcp
        inputs:
         - path: rtsp://user:password@192.168.1.32/ch0_1.h264 # <----- low res
           roles:
             - detect
         - path: rtsp://user:password@192.168.1.32/ch0_0.h264
           roles:
             - record 
             - rtmp

[alienatedsec]

@Jakdaw in case you missed it
I think that @kirilldem is asking you to provide some support

[alienatedsec]

@kirilldem I recently have done some Frigate integration and described it more in detail here

[kirilldem]

Thanks for these settings, the errors seems to be gone in my log.

I noticed one thing in your config - you set detect fps to 30, which is a lot of frames for detect, you should change it to around 5 fps to get better performance. See https://docs.frigate.video/frigate/camera_setup

[alienatedsec]

@kirilldem the stream has 30 fps, so the same needs to be on detect settings. The recommended value should be amended on the camera and in Frigate. As we cannot amend the FPS on the camera, you need to match the Frigate with the camera config.