topic Re: Updating firewall to view doorbell cam away from home in My Router

Updating firewall to view doorbell cam away from home

James500 — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 21:39:10 GMT

Hi. I'm unable to view live or stored videos from my newly fitted eufy doorbell cam when away from the house and someone has suggested I need to make sure the router's firewall settings are not blocking remote access to eufySecurity devices, and to make sure the router's TCP port 80, 443 and UDP port 0-65535 are open. I can't see where to go on the Plusnet site that would allow me to do this though. Can anyone help please?

Re: Updating firewall to view doorbell cam away from home

Anunnaki — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 00:24:07 GMT

Doing what you've suggested would mean that anybody on the internet could keep track of when you leave your house empty, use your video feed for facial recognition to find who you are from social media photos, and deduce where you live.

You'd be much safer to setup a VPN server on your home network to create a secure portal through your firewall, and then use a VPN client on your mobile phone or remote laptop etc for secure encrypted access your doorbell.

Some home router's are capable of running a VPN server (usually OpenVPN) - unfortunately for you Plusnet Hubs don't.

You might want to consider running an OpenVPN server/gateway on a Raspberry Pi - try Googling that for help

I run an OpenVPN server on my home router so my kids (at uni or when travelling) can access our home network, for file sharing, printing, etc, or safely accessing the internet (as if they were at home).

Re: Updating firewall to view doorbell cam away from home

MisterW — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 05:50:46 GMT

@James500 as @Anunnaki says , opening up your firewall like that is not a good idea, however, you don't need to do it anyway!. If you use the Eufy app, no firewall changes are required. Both the app and the doorbell connect to the Eufy servers and thus there are 'active' connections in the router firewall to allow traffic to/from both the app and the camera.

If you can access the camera from the app when connected to your home broadband then it will work remotely.

Whilst I don't have a Eufy system, I have a similar TPLink doorbell with camera and can access it both locally and remotely without any changes to the firewall.

Re: Updating firewall to view doorbell cam away from home

James500 — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 07:44:32 GMT

Thanks both for your comments. That's not the case for me Mister unfortunately, I can access the cam/vids on the Eufy app when I'm on home broadband but cannot when I'm away.
Mister - your suggestion while appreciated sounds a bit too technical for me!
Think I'll try and call Eufy and see if they can assist.

Re: Updating firewall to view doorbell cam away from home

MisterW — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 07:56:34 GMT

I can access the cam/vids on the Eufy app when I'm on home broadband but cannot when I'm away.

@James500 strange, because AFAIK the mechanism for accessing locally is no different to when remote. The app still accesses the cam via the Eufy servers, so it should be no different when remote. As I said, I dont use Eufy but I'd be surprised if their system is different to others.

What error, if any, are you seeing from the app ?

Think I'll try and call Eufy and see if they can assist.

That might be worth trying.

Re: Updating firewall to view doorbell cam away from home

greygit1 — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 22:13:18 GMT

Perhaps the smartphone app can use something other than IPv4 to locally access the webcam and has 'forgotten' about IPv4?

My perspective. If port 80 is required to be 'open' on the router then a web browser connection from a non-smartphone (i.e. a PC) would function locally. No 'app' required. But I doubt that.

Re: Updating firewall to view doorbell cam away from home

tmcwhisky — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 21:17:13 GMT

@James500

Just come across your post and I was wondering if you had managed to solve your problem. We installed a eufy doorbell over the weekend and everything works as it should -access via Broadband and Mobile Data with no alteration to the router settings. I don’t know if you are trying to access the video through a phone but have you allowed the eufy access to mobile broadband.

Re: Updating firewall to view doorbell cam away from home

dvorak — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 07:46:28 GMT

Moderators Note

This topic has been moved from Broadband to My Router