Rendezvous for Axis Network Cameras

Axis has a line of very interesting network cameras, starting with the Axis 2100 at around $250. Instead of the traditional analog video connection, they have an Ethernet socket. They run Linux and a Web server, so you can view the video from just about any standard web browser. Compared to the cost of running dedicated closed-circuit television wiring to every location, it is a huge cost saving to be able to just hook up a camera to the building Ethernet network wherever you need one.

Of course, this is the classic example of a product crying out for Rendezvous/Zeroconf. It has no screen or keyboard, so you configure it through a Web browser, but if it has no screen or keyboard, how do you configure it with an IP address in the first place so that you can connect to it with your Web browser to configure it?

Axis has not yet announced a timetable to ship products with Rendezvous, but since Linux is an open platform, you can install mDNSRepsonder yourself. This gives you two of the three Rendezvous features — Multicast DNS and DNS Service Discovery. The third Rendezvous feature — automatic link-local IP address allocation — is something that Axis would have to support directly. Axis has requested that customers contact them so that they can assess the market demand for Rendezvous in their products. In the meantime, you will have to assign a manual address, or use a DHCP server.

How to install mDNSRepsonder on Axis Network Cameras

Note: This has been tested and works successfully on the Axis 2100 and the Axis 2130. This does not work on the Axis 2120 because that camera's firmware was compiled with IP Multicast disabled. This is planned to be fixed in a future firmware update, but Axis has not announced any date for this update.

Axis recommends that you make sure that the camera is running firmware version 2.32 or later before you do this. You can download the firmware updater from Axis.

To do this (or to do anything else with a non-Rendezvous camera) requires that you know its IP address in advance. Everywhere you see "my-camera-ip-address" below, substitute the IP address of your Axis camera. How you find out and/or set the IP address for your camera is described in the user manual, and is left as an exercise for the reader (and is also an illustration of why you really want this product to ship with Rendezvous built-in, so you don't need to care about this junk). Once you have installed Rendezvous for Axis, you don't need to go through this grief any more because it will just show up in the Rendezvous list in Safari and other web browsers like Camino. (The Camino web site includes documentation about how to enable the Rendezvous feature.) The Axis camera also has an ftp server, which will show up in the Rendezvous list in Transmit, and in Captain FTP.

Download the RendezvousForAxis files.
Connect to the camera using ftp. Default username is "root", password "pass".
(Instructions below in parentheses assume a command-line ftp client.)
Change directory to /mnt/flash. ("cd /mnt/flash")
Make sure you are in binary mode. ("bin")
Upload Services.txt to /mnt/flash. ("put Services.txt")
Upload mDNSResponderAxis to /mnt/flash. ("put mDNSResponderAxis")
Make the file executable. ("chmod 555 mDNSResponderAxis")
Add a line to /etc/inittab to start mDNSResponderAxis at boot.
- You can either
  (a) get /etc/inittab via ftp, edit it locally, and then put it back, or
  (b) edit /etc/inittab directly in the camera. To do this, go to the URL <http://my-camera-ip-address/admin-bin/editcgi.cgi> and enter "/etc/inittab" for the filename.
- Whichever way you edit the file, you need to add the following line at the end of the file:
```
mdns:3:respawn:/mnt/flash/mDNSResponderAxis -f /mnt/flash/Services.txt
```
Go to the URL <http://my-camera-ip-address/admin/netw_tcp.shtml> and enter a short name in the "Host Name" field. (The field is labelled "Host Name", but it's really just the first label of the fully-qualified host name; the text up to the first dot.) If you enter the name "mycamera", then (after restart) the camera will answer Multicast DNS queries for "mycamera.local." from Rendezvous-compatible hosts on the same link. For example, on OS X 10.2, you can type "ping mycamera.local.", or "ftp mycamera.local.". If you uncomment the telnetd line in /etc/inittab, you can log on to the camera by typing "telnet mycamera.local." This is especially useful when using DHCP, because you can access the camera by name even if you don't know what IP address the DHCP server assigned to it.
Go to the URL <http://my-camera-ip-address/admin/sup_restart.shtml> and click on "Restart". After a few seconds, your new Axis camera should show up in your Web browser's Rendezvous list. The name that appears is the long name (or friendly name) as specified in the "Services.txt" file. Unlike the mDNS host name, which is limited to letters, digits and hyphens, the long name can contain spaces, punctuation, and even Unicode (UTF-8) characters like Kanji. The short name is typically typed in a command-line interface, and should be short and quick to type. The long name is typically selected from a list in a graphical user interface, and can therefore be longer and more descriptive.

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