Put your camera's newest picture on a website
A camera gives you a stream. A web page, a message to a client or a weather map wants one still picture at one address. Stillframe takes a frame from the stream on a schedule and serves the newest one at that address.
Who it is for
- A club or marina with a camera over the water
- A farm, a weather hobbyist, a maker space with a printer to watch
- A builder showing a client how the site is coming on
The problem
The camera's app wants a login. The stream will not go into an image tag. A video service is more than a picture on a web page needs. What you need is the newest frame, as an ordinary image.
Steps
- Find the stream address. Look in the camera's settings or manual for its RTSP address, or for an MJPEG address that starts with
http://orhttps://. Both work.rtsps://is not accepted, and HLS (.m3u8) is not tested, so do not rely on it.rtsp://user:[email protected]:554/live - Make sure the camera can be reached from the internet. Stillframe's servers fetch the frame, so the address must be public and use a camera port (554, and 1024 to 65535). An address on your own network, such as one starting
192.168., is refused. If the camera cannot be opened to the internet, send the frames from inside your network instead: see the developer guide. - Add the feed. In the dashboard, open Add a feed. Set Kind to A camera, paste the stream address under Address, give it a Name, and choose a Size (or the picture's own size) and a Refresh. Then Add the feed. The user and password you put in the address are used to open the camera and are shown back as
***. - Copy the image address. Each feed shows its image address with a Copy button. It says pending until the first picture is taken, usually within seconds. If it says failing, the reason is next to it, and When a feed fails explains each one.
What it costs
A camera feed counts as one feed. Starter is $9 a month for 5 feeds, refreshed no faster than every 15 minutes. Standard is $19 for 20 feeds, refreshed as often as every 5 minutes, and Pro is $39 for 50 feeds. Every plan has 1080p, landscape and portrait; 4K is on Standard and Pro. The full table is on Plans and limits.
What it will not do
- Record or make a time-lapse film. It serves one still picture, and keeps only your plan's most recent past pictures per feed (see Plans and limits), which are not backed up.
- Reach a camera on a private network. That is a safety rule, not a setting. Send frames from inside instead.
- Take a frame bigger than 12 MB, or wait longer than 15 seconds for the camera to open its stream.
Using the picture
On a web page
Use the image address in an image tag, with the size of your canvas as the width and height so the page does not jump when the picture arrives.
<img src="https://stillframe.us/f/TOKEN.png" alt="The mooring field" width="1920" height="1080">In a message to a client
Paste the address. Some mail and chat programs keep their own copy of a picture, so one that must be fresh when it is read is safest on a web page: see Using the picture.
On a weather map or a webcam list
Some of these ask for the address of the latest still picture from a webcam. Give them the same image address. We have not tested any particular site.