Continuing with the COVID theme in fall 2020. Today we are going to take a look at a feature Microsoft released late last year that can result in much greater use in our current work from home environments. With Windows 10 build 18995 or higher Microsoft added the ability to auto-discover and auto-connect to any IP Camera (commonly known as network security cameras) on your local network as the webcam for Windows 10.
If you have one of those IP security cameras around and are connected to your local network, then there is a chance you can set it up as your PC’s webcam.
To fully make use of this feature you need a camera that is ONVIF Profile S compatible IP cameras. Onvif is the common standard within the IP camera industry, this allows different manufacturers to produce cameras to have the same interface so the software maker can have a standard to communicate to those cameras. Microsoft has implemented one of the Onvif Profile S (short for streaming) standard so any Windows 10 running build 18995 or higher knows how to connect to those cameras. There are few ways you can find out if your camera is Onvif Profile S compatible but the quickest way is to use Windows 10 and see if you can discover them on your network.
Given we have all of the above setups, we can go to the Settings menu to start the configuration.
To connect to an existing IP camera on your network, go to Settings > Devices > Add Bluetooth or other devices.
Go select Everything else at the bottom from this list.
Clicking Add a device will list out all the cameras Windows has discovered. Since my day job is working for a security camera maker, you can see I have plenty of cameras show up in the discovery. Once you have to find the one you wish to connect just select the camera and press connect. If the camera has password protection, you will be prompt to ask to login to the camera. Once you’ve done that you’ve just turned an IP camera into a webcam on Windows 10.
Is there a list of tested and supported cameras that are known to work well with this feature?
unfortunately, there isn’t an easy way to tell. The best would be checking the manufacturer’s website, but even that’s not 100% guaranteed to work with full compatibility of the onvif standard. Many manufacturers does not implement 100% of the standard, so when they claim it’s profile s compatible it doesn’t mean it’s going to work 100% with profile s VMS or in this case Windows 10.
nice article! Is there any list of settings that can be done manually instead of automatic device installation?
My issue si that I have a lot of Profile S compliant cameras, but Microsoft will only support a camera without any credentials or security on it. If your camera has a username/password, then in my findings, settings will not detect it as a compliant camera.
I was looking into this last summer and I found a workaround to the username/password issue.
I was able to utilize the Windows Universal Samples github repo. Just clone the repo and build the “Device Enumeration and Paring C# Sample” found here:
https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-universal-samples/tree/master/Samples/DeviceEnumerationAndPairing
And run the “9. Custom Device Pairing” sample. That lets you enter a username and password.
But it would be nice if MS would just add that to the pairing process.
could jason help me please?
I have an Onvif camera from a brand in Brazil called IntelBras. It requires username and password. I tried to use the program “device enumeration and pairing” I selected option 9 and entered the user and password without success. Can you help me? I’m using the translation, my email is [email protected]
After using onvif device manager I manage to see that the connection is refused if you try as anonymous. I suppose DeviceEnumeratingand pairing starts by connecting as anonymous and hence the connection drops. Or is there a way to give credidential before starting the “watcher”? I could’nt find that.
I tried it as well with a d-link -dsc 8526lh but it doesn’t even show up so I cannot even enter my password or username. But the camera can be used on NAS as long as you fill in all the credidential , ip adress, the port,…
As on windows an automatic lookup fails to find the device.
is there something I am missing on windows?
After using onvif device manager I manage to see that the connection is refused if you try as anonymous. I suppose DeviceEnumeratingand pairing starts by connecting as anonymous and hence the connection drops. Or is there a way to give credidential before starting the “watcher”? I could’nt find that.
Got the camera connected with this build but it is not working properly, when camera app open it says “device already used”
Did you find a solution to this? Having the same issue.
If you need to check the ONVIF compatibility of a CCTV camera, go to onvif.org and select “Conformant products”. You can then conduct a search using the model number of the camera.
When the camera has username and password – there is no way to input username pw to get connected?