(WIP) Cheap Chinese Video Recorder companion software.

This project aims to replace the CMS and VMS software provided with cheap chinese DVRs and NVRs. The original software is closed-source, requires admin privileges, runs only on Windows and is difficult to use. Our mission is to fix that.

There are already open-source multi-platform tools related to the DVRs and NVRs that have dissected most of the protocol used (Sofia / NETsurveillance), but those provide no easy-to-use GUI and are not meant as a replacement of the manufacturer's software.

• Research relevant technologies, other projects, potential libraries
• Make a simple simulator to test the protocol against
• Make a console app that can connect and login to a real NVR system
• Make a console app that will capture a part of video stream from a real NVR system into a file
• Make a GUI app that can connect and login to a real NVR system
• Add video display from the NVR (only current video, no history)
• Add history search, playback and export
• Allow editing NVR settings
• Add a daemon to store alerts from the NVR; browse history using these alerts

For testing purposes, I will be mainly using a NBD8016S-XC board (available for cheap from AliExpress).

• Python-dvr - Python library for talking the Sofia protocol.
• SofiaCtl - Perl library for talking the Sofia protocol.
• IPCTimeLapse - Set of shell scripts and simple programs talking the Sofia protocol.
• libVLC - C++ wrappers for the VLC library providing media playback.
• Custom video streaming using Qt and VLC - Blog describing integrating streaming video playback into a custom app built in Qt
• wxVLC - wxWidgets- and VLC-based media player. May provide pointers for integrating VLC playback with wxWidgets.