ONVIF Camera Setup for Vision AI on the IP Cameras You Have

ONVIF lets IP cameras from different makers work with the same software. Set up the stream once, and Roboflow runs your vision model on it, and can even steer PTZ cameras.

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ONVIF Camera Setup AI Vision Solution

ONVIF is an open standard that lets IP cameras and software from different makers work together. It is organized into profiles (opens in a new tab), and three matter most for video:

  • Profile S: video streaming and PTZ control. ONVIF is deprecating it, with the last date for conformance submissions in March 2027
  • Profile T: H.264 and H.265 streaming, imaging controls, motion and tampering alarms, and HTTPS streaming
  • Profile M: analytics metadata and events, which can be delivered over MQTT

How to Set Up an ONVIF Camera for Roboflow

  • Enable ONVIF and RTSP: turn both on in the camera's network settings and note the ports; on a Reolink camera, for example, that is 8000 for ONVIF and 554 for RTSP
  • Find the stream: use an ONVIF client to discover the camera on your network and get its RTSP stream URL
  • Connect to Roboflow: point Roboflow Inference at the RTSP URL on a server or edge device on the same network, and run a model or Workflow on the live stream
  • Control PTZ: the PTZ Tracking block in Workflows uses ONVIF to follow a tracked object, zoom in, and return the camera to a preset when it goes idle

Then train a model on footage from your own cameras, so it learns your scenes, angles, and lighting. Label frames in Roboflow, train, and deploy the model back to the same streams.

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Need a camera for a new station? Roboflow AI1 (opens in a new tab) packages an 8 MP industrial camera, integrated lighting, and an NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX into one plug-and-play system that runs your model on the camera.

AI for ONVIF Camera Setup Workflows

Setting up ONVIF cameras? Explore Workflows you can get started with to create computer vision apps in minutes. Try the top open and closed source models on frames from your IP cameras for free, then deploy a Workflow with Roboflow Inference on your RTSP streams.

Try Models on Your Frames (opens in a new tab)

How to Setup ONVIF Cameras with AI

ONVIF cameras stream over RTSP to Roboflow Inference on a server or edge device on the same network. Run a model or Workflow on the stream, and use the PTZ Tracking block to steer PTZ cameras over ONVIF.

“Achieving positive results using AI in a lab environment is easy, but the real challenge comes when scaling the solution across a network like ours without disrupting day-to-day operations. Our partnership with Roboflow is allowing us to do just that.”

Asim Ghanchi

AVP of Technology, BNSF

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