Several months ago one of our broadcast streams became unstable: We got several thousand disconnected/connected notifications in fairly rapid succession over several weeks. That camera was connected via port-forwarding over a DSL connection and it ultimately turned out that the instability was likely with the DSL connection and/or ISP-supplied gateway and is now stable again.
In the meantime we were encouraged to switch to using an AngelBox so we could upload the stream via our higher bandwidth Starlink connection. We had an available Raspberry Pi 4 so deployed the DIY AngelBox but have been unable to establish a reliable camera connection. Initially support suggested our Lorex LNB8921B camera was incompatible. So we replaced it with a new Amcrest IP8M-2496EB-V2 which didn’t help. Then, we had to enable SSH after using the supplied RasPi OS image to be able to login and view the system journal to see what was happening. (The SSH option was not selectable using the latest Raspberry Pi Imager with the provided AngelBox OS image.) Then we couldn’t update the AngelBox software via “apt” because only 32-bit AngelBox packages are available even though we used the supplied OS image but the RasPi 4 is a 64-bit device.
It turned out there was a bug pairing an AngelBox using its MAC address. Once we got the AngelBox properly paired using the UUID we found in the system journal, the video stream stopped working almost immediately, although it worked for half an hour or more after the AngelBox was restarted before the proper pairing worked. After pairing, the stream worked only for a few seconds. We finally wer told that Angelcam could not decode the main stream but could decode the substream (even though it worked for a while before AngelBox pairing succeeded). However, both the main and substreams were using H264 encoding at a frame rate of 15, so it’s not clear why there is a decoding problem for both Lorex and Amcrest cameras via the AngelBox when the same camera stream is properly decoded via port-forwarding.
Another anomaly is that our dashboard shows none of our cameras is offline but the preview for the AngleBox camera shows it is offline. So there’s obviously a bug somewhere.
The “solution” offered via support was to use the substream. Although that does function better than the main stream, the resolution is only 704x480 instead of the recommended 1080P, so that is not a satisfactory answer. Consequently, we continue to live with a video stream via port-forwarding that pauses frequently instead of a smooth stream via our Starlink connection, for which the AngelBox is the only potential solution (without paying for a much more expensive Starlink subscription) because we don’t have a routable IPv4 address with that connection and therefore can’t use port-forwarding. Starlink IPv6 addresses can apparently change frequently too so aren’t reliable enough for port forwarding.
If you’re contemplating an AngelBox, know that it may not be a simple drop-in solution with your existing cameras and have a backup plan. We’ll leave the AngelBox stream connected for a while, but continue broadcasting the port-forwarded connection for the same camera in the hope things eventually get better and we get a “connected” notification that’s not soon followed by a “disconnected” notification.