Neolink is a small program that acts as a proxy between Reolink IP cameras and normal RTSP clients. Certain cameras, such as the Reolink B800, do not implement ONVIF or RTSP, but instead use a proprietary "Baichuan" protocol only compatible with their apps and NVRs (any camera that uses "port 9000" will likely be using this protocol).
Neolink allows you to use NVR software such as Shinobi or Blue Iris to receive video from these cameras instead. The Reolink NVR is not required, and the cameras are unmodified. Your NVR software connects to Neolink, which forwards the video stream from the camera.
The Neolink project is not affiliated with Reolink in any way; everything it does has been reverse engineered.
Neolink intends to support all Reolink cameras that do not provide native RTSP. Currently it has been tested on the following cameras:
- B800/D800
It should support the following cameras, but this has not yet been tested. Please test and report if you have them:
- B400/D400
- E1
- Lumus
Neolink does not support other cameras such as the RLC-420, since they already provide native RTSP.
In the future Neolink will be much easier to install. Currently you need to install Gstreamer. On Windows, add the following to your path:
%GSTREAMER_1_0_ROOT_X86_64%\bin
Note that Chocolatey does this automatically.
Now you can download and run an artifact from continuous integration.
Launch Neolink from a shell, passing a configuration file:
neolink --config my_config.toml
Copy and modify the sample_config.toml to specify the address, username, and password for each camera (if there is no password, you can omit that line).
Each [[cameras]] block creates a new camera; the name determines the RTSP path you should connect your client to.
Currently Neolink cannot auto-detect cameras like the official clients do; you must specify the IP address directly.
By default Neolink serves on all IP addresses on port 8554.
You can modify this by changing the bind parameter.
You can change the Neolink log level by setting the RUST_LOG environment variable (not in the configuration file) to one of error, warn, info, debug, or verbose.
Neolink has had minimal testing, but it seems to be very reliable in multiple users' testing.
The formats of all configuration files and APIs is subject to change as required while it is pre-1.0.
Neolink is written in Rust, and binds to Gstreamer to provide RTSP server functionality. To compile, ensure you have the Rust compiler, Gstreamer, and gst-rtsp-server installed. Then simply run:
cargo build
from this top directory.
The "port 9000" protocol used by Reolink and some Swann cameras is internally referred to as the Baichuan protocol; this is the company based in China that is known internationally as Reolink.
This protocol is a slightly convoluted header-data format, and appears to have been upgraded several times. The modern variant uses obfuscated XML commands and sends ordinary H.265 or H.264 video streams encapsulated in a custom header. More details about the on-the-wire protocol will come later.
A Wireshark dissector is available for the BC wire protocol in the dissector directory.
It dissects the BC header and also allows viewing the deobfuscated XML in command messages.
To use it, copy or symlink it into your Wireshark plugin directory; typically this is ~/.local/lib/wireshark/plugins/ under Linux.
Currently the dissector does not attempt to decode the Baichuan "extension" messages except binaryData.
This will change in the future as reverse engineering needs require.
Neolink is free software, released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3. This means that if you incorporate it into a piece of software available over the network, you must offer that software's source code to your users.