• Security Installer Forum
• Comcast Installer Job Description

I have a series of webcams running, one of which is monitored by, a motion detection system. When Motion sees activity on the camera, it starts recording it to a flash video file with a snapshot, and I have hacked together a dirty webpage that allows navigating the recorded archives. A cron job handles cleanup by deleting everything older than 3 days.

Recently, we got an Xfinity Home Security system installed. I've done some research and determined that the sensors work on the protocol (which is pretty common for home security sensors) and a second (locked down) Wifi network. The Wifi network appears to be used to connect the touchscreen (Android based, pretty sure it's a rebranded device) to the wireless cameras , and to allow remote access to the touchscreen for settings, monitoring, and alerts sent by the touchscreen. So my wife wants to put one of the cameras pointing at our front door, and record people who come to the door. The Xfinity system would actually support this, but only in a limited sense and only by combining the camera with a motion sensor - the system can be configured to record a video clip when the motion sensor triggers. But I don't want to waste a motion sensor (nor am I sure that the IR sensor would function properly outdoors in the cold). Given that I already have a system capable of detecting motion and recording it, I wanted to integrate the new camera(s) into that system.

Forum discussion: Hi all, I'd like to be able to turn on the Comcast home security alarm but without subscribing to Comcast security service. Basically, the alarm will sound and all but it won't call out to Comcast/Police.

But Xfinity doesn't want me in that 'security router'. The don't give you the admin credentials to access the router, nor do they even give you the WPA2 key for the Wifi network. But it turns out that I can add a NIC to my firewall/router running Linux and just plug that into the back of the security router.

It happily obtains a DHCP address from the security router, and is able to communicate with the cameras! I needed to run tcpdump and access the cameras from the remote Xfinity app to sniff the HTTP (Basic Authentication) username and password, but was able to access the camera from Motion after that. Based on the web page that the camera serves up, it's capable of streaming H.264 and MJPEG, but Motion only supports MJPEG, I think. I might experiment with H.264 at some point to see if I can get it working, but for now I'm happy with what I've got. I'm hoping that I'll be able to eventually set up some sort of monitoring for sensor status and/or alarm status. One of the detractions of the Xfinity system is that the touchscreen is the only device with 'speakers' and if it's situated in a remote part of the house (ours is usually upstairs in the master bedroom) it can't be heard throughout the house.

Our is barely audible in the living room but impossible to hear from the basement (where I spend most of my time). I'd like to be able to have my PC 'chime' when the sensors get tripped so I'll know if one of the kids is opening doors. But so far, I haven't been able to see any network activity between the control box and the world at large.

John: from what I've been able to determine, the sensors, thermostat, and outlet controllers all use an alternate wireless protocol called 'Zigbee' which is a wireless mesh protocol commonly used in home security/automation. I suspect that to add additional sensors you'll need elevated access to the touchscreen, but IIRC you can add additional outlet controllers without it. In any case, I don't think you will need direct access to the WLAN. I've poked at the 'security router' a bit but not seriously and haven't gained access to it (yet). Tray: Yeah, Zigbee is definitely the protocol being used. I did some poking at the router as well but nothing serious.

I'll re-post once I make some progress. I was thinking I may need access to the WLAN to add certain types of devices, but if not, even better. Jason: Thank you VERY much for this! I kept avoiding the Comcast forums because I assumed they were monitored and stuff like access codes would be removed. Awesome that they're not.

I will give the code I found on there a try right away. Thanks again guys - all helpful information!:). If you put a packet capture solution in between an icontrol-1000 camera when it is provisioning you will get the userid of the camera UI user root & user1 along with associated passwords of the accounts as well as the SSID and WPA of the locked down wireless network because it sends this data in the clear to the camera for provisioning. I now have the ability to utilize the cameras with a third party DVR software for continuous video recording and monitoring! You can also increase the quality of the video that is being recorded if you desire along with a ton of other settings. Does anyone know an easy way to get the technician code of the icontrol touch panel for TWC?

I started to manually brute force and I am 1000 codes into it with 9000 to go. So tedious and time consuming. Hoping someone has a better way. The Xfinity 4321 code does not work on TWC unfortunately. You cant remove the xfinity router and use your own for the home security system. The Comcast router is encrypted by the home security server to keep people from hacking into your alarm system. When we do our installs the router is told to do a firmware update that encrypts it and locks it down.

Only 3 types of routers will work with XH. No one has a way into the router not even the techs. Also, you can install things but if you create a T/C you will be charged if that equipment was not on the contract at the time of install. I've been using these cam's on my own router without an issue. Here's what you do. Plug the Y splitter into the back of your router, Plug an ethernet cable into the camera, and the other end into the splitter The camera will take a few minutes to boot up (bcause it's bloated with backdoors) Once booted up, hold the reset button for 10 seconds, then wait another couple of minutes for the reboot. Congratulations, the camera is now in factory default settings.

Now that it's in factory settings, check your router to see what it's IP address is, and navigate to it. Once there, you can log into the camera with with the super secret credentials: User: administrator PASS: Yea.rolls eyes. Now you can set up the wifi settings, and ports, and users, and triggers, and motion, and pretty much everything else. You have now completely removed that derpy 'security router' from your hardware stack. By the way, that 'security router' is nothing more than a very bloated IPtables firewall running on busybox with DHCP, and automated scripts to login to the camer and change the settings using the camera's API, and it's not even that secure, it took me all of 14 minutes to hack into it using nmap, wireshark, and a few special sauce tools. Before you go calling BS, bear in mind that you're two years late to the party and there might just possibly be more than one camera, router, and ISP involved, especially with no much time passed.

So if this worked for you, great, we're ever so proud of you and your l33t skillz, but let me just tell you that.MY. camera would not go back to factory settings when you pressed the reset button.MY. camera was loaded with custom firmware from Comcast that didn't revert to having no credentials.

Maybe your two-bit ISP has insecure camera firmware 'bloated with back doors' and a stupid 'security router' that is nothing more than a 'very bloaded IPtables firewall', but not everyone is so (un)lucky. As inconvenient as it was for ME, I can at least acknowledge that Comcast did some very smart things to protect their average consumer. It is also worth noting that (at least in my Comcast area) the discrete 'security router' was quickly phased out and replaced by functionality in the cable modem/router itself.

So the question of whether you must use the Comcast-provided 'security router' is largely moot. Hold the button on the back of the camera for 30 seconds, this will hard rest them to factory defaults. Then you can plug their splitter in to your switch and the camera(s) will get an ip address via dhcp. Once you know that new address, go to that in a web browser on port 80. Username is administrator with no password. You can view the video through there or you can connect the cameras to any number of views (or dir/nvr) software. It just needs to be able to do rtsp/rtp and it'll likely work to view them.

The default url should be rtsp:///img/media.sav but you can customize that once in the admin panel for each camera. Has anyone figured out how to login to the netgear wnr1000 units? I've heard a couple posts one above here and a couple other places that not even the techs can log into them. I don't buy it personally, I was chatting with the install tech, he said it was just a straight up nether router, wouldn't give me the login though.

But if I connect ethernet to the router it gives me a login prompt, just like you would expect from any other cheap POS router. It has to just be a matter of figuring out the standard login or login formula they use. I sure as hell hope that all devices aren't set to the same admin login, but I wouldn't put it past comcast either. I could see if being your comcast account number, address, randomly generated maybe. But I feel like comcast would want/need a way to access/service the device. I would really like to either A: use my Asus wireless AC router's guest network to replace the crappy netgear. Or B: use my old router, a high end netgear router.

So that I at least have decent wireless signal to the installed security cameras and hopefully avoid some of the buffering that occurs because they use an underpowered router to run this system. Hopefully this is figured out eventually. I suppose I could always setup a machine to sit there and brute force the thing, but that seems like more effort than it is worth, and comcast may be monitoring for that type of activity. Overall I would just like to have better hardware in place, as well as I really don't like having equipment sitting there that I have no control over. If I only had basic security I'd unplug the nether and connect the controller tablet to my main router via ethernet for internet access and try that, but I need the cameras working correctly with compost's system.

Wondering if I should've just stuck with ADT, probably would've been better security camera's anyway rather than just 'nanny' cams. I'm not very thrilled that the comcast system doesn't record video and that the cameras don't have the ability to detect motion on their own and save a recording. Not exactly useful for external cameras other than for checking who is at the front door. No you cannot do what you are looking to do. What you can do though is to swap your Comcast modem for the XB3 device which has 6 wifi networks built into it. There are both 2.4 and 5G for private use, both for Xfinitywifi public (can be shut down if you choose) and both for the Xfinity home devices.

Right now, only the 2.4G is in use with Zigbee but the modem does actually broadcast a 5G Xfinity Home network that is not used as of this moment. The 2.4 network used for the security system is actually a 3X3 MIMO system and you will be shocked as to how far it can go. There is a port on the back the modem that is also used for adding and using cameras.

The 4th port when enabled cane hooked up to a simple switch and you can add up to 6 camera hardwired that way. Troy, I wrote this on the other link you sent in your reply to me but at this point I am a bit annoyed with myself, I thought I had this figured out. I don't have linux so I figured I used a DD-WRT Netgear router and insert the # ifdown eth0.ETC.ETC command and Voila I would start to get the packets. But no, all I got was gibberish like binary code. I understand that this is not for the faint of heart nor for amateurs, I just hate the fact that TWC/Comcast get away with this crap.

I just want to be able to utilize all my cameras without the need of asking the techs I know know they are not aware of the system in this aspect nor will they provide any sort of actual technical help doing so. I ask you humbly, would you mind assisting me? (Current Items: OS Win8.1, 7 and OSX-Netgear WNR2000 flashed with DD-WRT, Icamera 1000, TCA203 Touchscreen, Smartvue S9M) Setup is where I think I went wrong, Camera, PC ran through Netgear in bridged mode with the code specified in your article, reset camera and commence setup from touchscreen, wifi sniffer running and all I get is gibberish binary code. I have 3 Icamera2's i am using with Blue Iris software but they were somehow auto updated and now the admin config interface no longer accepts my password and the default password no longer work either.

Do you know if they were updated to prevent people from using them outside ADT/Comcast. Looks like somehow an update was pushed to my NON COMCAST Icameras which has locked out the Admin UI gui. Not sure how that can even happen since i am not using them for Comcast security. Really pissed off since i bought these cameras myself and now i cant even reconfigure them. I have 5 of these at my house and a few at my moms house. The ones at my moms house did the same thing.

What happen was the update disables the UI (user interface). So i had to hard reset them again and connect them to the router via WPS.

Its hard not being able to change any settings:/ these two websites were VERY helpful on how to change some settings.admin if im not suppose to post links im sorry i didnt see any rules. I appreciate blogs like these but rarely see them around nowadays, I can see now why that is. I am by no means in anyway an expert on the setup process however I can clearly see that most of the responders on here are not taking anytime in to reading nor attempting in anyway to teach themselves on what they are looking to do. This is just friendly advice (I know you didn't ask, but you require it and it's non-optional) People that can benefit from this won't be able to because of the novice that exist here. You couldn't take an advance course in Nuclear Science and Engineering at M.I.T.

Without having to start at Kindergarten. Please have some basic knowledge at least upto the part where you know what the screenshot above depicts and how to navigate it.

I've been writing my own open source Java EE7 app to capture motion events from my cameras and using that to email me when it sees motion. That is when I noticed the httptrigger.cgi, while I can do a GET request with no parameters(other than the basic authorization using the admin account) which works(causes motion to be captured), when I add parameters it just complains the parameters are invalid and doesn't do anything. So I'm mostly curious if that particular cgi script has any parameters a security base station might send to it(I assume it does). If you want to see what've been working on, can just go to my github. Don't know if I should post any URLs here or not though. Hey guys, I just wanted to chime in and explain how I got my setup working couple of days ago. I did not have to do any sniffing of my network, which is a good news.

Security Installer Forum

Here's what you'll need: - A router that supports VLANs and Static Routing (or a router that can be or is flashed with DD-WRT firmware) - Know the network of the Xfinity Home Security Router (in my case it was 172.16.12.0) I will describe my setup how I got it with my DD-WRT Router. My router has an IP address of 192.168.1.1; When I connected my router's LAN port to the WAN port of Xfinity router, it assigned an IP 192.168.1.118. Unfortunately, that IP is neither ping-able nor accessible, so I could not configure a static route to go to 172.16.12.0 network via 192.168.1.118.

I then configured port 4 on my router to be in it's own unbridged VLAN (and called it vlan3). That port now has an IP address of 172.16.12.3 and is directly connected to the LAN port of the Xfinity router. At this point, I can easily ping both my Xfinity router and camera. I then created a static route in my router that looks like this: Network: 172.16.12.0 Netmask: 255.255.255.0 Gateway: 172.16.12.1 Interface: vlan3 Once that was done, everything started to magically work!

I could access my video stream by going directly to my camera's IP (172.16.12.X) I hope this makes sense and helps you guys! Which router are you using, I ask this because right now I have two setups (my house and my parents). When to many things are using wifi the cameras start to drop FPS. My house just uses the standard Comcast router/modem, with 5 cams I'm good until the Xboxs start to come on and such. At my parents I'm using a separate linksys e3000, that one can barley handle 3 cameras.

My questions is what's your setup and such. Mind you these are all icamera2's reset to default and using blueiris to record on each PC. I have a Netgear R7000 router. But my camera is not connected to it. My camera is still sitting on the router provided by Comcast. Also, I am not a big fan of wireless, and wherever possible, I would prefer to have a wired connection.

So, the only devices that are using wireless in my house are: laptops and other wi-fi only devices (e.g. Phones, tablets, etc) If there's any way for you to run a physical cable to your cameras, that would be ideal. You can also emulate a PoE by buying bunch of PoE injectors and then power your cameras in the hard to get areas using ethernet (or put a PoE splitter there). Yes you can, but you will need to be a little tech savvy because you need to reset them to delete the Xfinity info (wifi settings and username/pw).

Then you need to connect them to your router and set them up and then have a software running on your PC to monitor/record. I personally use Blue Iris and love it, I have 14 cameras running. A mix of the icamera1 and icamera2’s, 90% icamera2’s since they are better. But good luck, it’s not hard it will just take some time to sit down and do each camera separately.

I recently ordered Comcast Cable for my home and I really wanted to avoid paying the extra $35-$50 in installation costs. I found a way to do it! I suppose this may be YMMV. You can avoid the installation fees in one of two ways. This works only if the technician doesn't need to do anything in your home. There is also an additional advantage to this in that you DO NOT NEED TO BE HOME on the day of installation. Completely FREE if you have a Comcast Service Center in your location.

You simply walk in, pick up your choice of equipment and set up a time for installation. NO CHARGE FOR INSTALLATION! - $9.95 (YMMV) for UPS to overnight your equipment. I used this option. Simply call them and tell them what you want.

Comcast Installer Job Description

Again, NO CHARGE FOR INSTALLATION! I was ecstatic to be able to avoid their unnecessary (in my case at least) installation fees! I hope this helps! I've had comcast install cable tv and internet at 2 locations in the past and never paid a dime for installation.

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In my new house, the tech even took the extra time to wire the voip to my central patch panel. They do try to sneak some fees in if you up/downgrade service. All you have to do is call afterward and complain - they'll cancel the fee no problem. OP, in your case you got the wrong rep.

In that case, if you would have hung up and called back, or asked to speak to a supervisor, you could have received free installation. Ironically, the phone tech (when I upgraded to digital) told me I had to pay the install fee. Then she tacked on ANOTHER $25 for installing the internet. Hmm, installing a cablecard and plugging in a modem? So I bought my own modem and called to cancel that install.

They (of course) screwed up and cancelled BOTH installs.which I found out when I called up yesterday. Ironically, they happily told me to grab the equipment from the local office and do it myself. Of course, the 'local' office is actually in the other county since we're on the border, and they couldn't help me. So it took me two tries and some driving to get the equipment, but I'm calling to activate it today. I'll be looking for the extra fees, since they managed to not only cancel my install, but there was no record of the $29.99 cable and $19.99 internet plans I signed up for. Yes, totally clueless Comcast.