Control away from home
At home you open a camera directly: it is on the same network you are. Away from home there is no reaching it that way – and here is what happens instead.
What the tunnel is
The cloud brokers a socket to one port of one device: you ask for a connection to the camera's ONVIF, you get a connection to the camera's ONVIF, and nothing else. The cloud does not look inside those bytes and holds no password to the camera: the one talking to it is your browser or your app, with the camera's own credentials.
Three things follow from that:
- The port has to be advertised. A node says what it listens on, and only what is on that list is ever opened – never "any port the client asks for".
- Permission is re-checked while the connection is alive. Revoke access and an already open connection is torn down, not merely the next one.
- The camera's key stays the camera's. The cloud brokers; it does not decrypt and does not stand in the middle.
Who may do what
The role by itself decides nothing – the verb does. Here is the whole table:
| What you do | Verb needed | Who has it |
|---|---|---|
| Watch the stream, take a snapshot | view | the owner and any grant |
| Pan-tilt, presets, talk-back | control | the owner, a Member grant and above |
| Camera settings, RTSP login, reboot | configure | the owner and an Owner grant |
| SSH | shell | the device owner only |
That last row is worth saying plainly: no grant gives shell, not even the strongest one. Root on a camera is the ability to change its keys and its owner – that is ownership, not access, and ownership does not travel with a view of the picture.
A Member gets control but not configuration: turning a camera is reversible and expected, changing
its configuration is not.
Where it is done from
- From the panel. The "Controls" button on a camera in the live view: the browser talks to the camera itself over the brokered connection, and the camera's credentials stay in that tab.
- From the app. The same thing by the same route – see The app.
No "Controls" button means either the camera advertises no ONVIF or you do not have the control
verb.