User Guide

189
Viewing the Live Stream over the Internet
To access the live stream from devices outside your local
network, configure your router to allow incoming requests on the
port stream_port (in motion.conf). To do this, you will use the Pi’s
IP address and so it is helpful if the Pi is using a static IP, see
Using a Static IP Address on page41.
You need to create a rule that allows incoming traffic on a TCP
port of your choosing (for example, 8081), and states that this
traffic should be forwarded to the Pi on port 8081 (or the value
of stream_port in motion.conf).
To access the stream over the Internet, you need to know the
external IP address of your router. Open a web browser on a
device connected to your network and visit
http://www.whatsmyip.org
Then you can open the live stream using an address that begins
http://, followed by the external IP address of your router, a
colon, and then the incoming port number that you set in your
router’s port forwarding.
Internet Explorer on Windows is not able to open the stream this
way, but other browsers can. You can also use VLC
(http://www.videolan.org) to open the stream using its address.
When your router restarts or reconnects to the Internet, your IP
address may change. Using a dynamic domain name system
(DDNS) service provider, you can map your IP address to an
Internet domain name and use this domain name to access your
live stream.