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cuckoo — a UniFi controller that isn't there

cuckoo presents a UniFi G5 PTZ as a standard ONVIF camera, by being its controller. The camera speaks a private protocol to a UniFi console and nothing else. cuckoo takes the console's place: it accepts the camera's connection, drives the adoption and settings the camera expects, receives the video it pushes, and moves the head the way the real controller does — then re-serves all of it as ordinary RTSP, ONVIF and WS-Discovery. Point Home Assistant, VLC or ffplay at it.

Everything camera-facing was measured off a real controller and a real camera, not invented. No SSH, no shelling into the camera, no patched firmware.

It has a mirror image: finch, a camera that isn't there. Run the two against each other and the whole protocol is exercised with no UniFi hardware at all.

Verified against real hardware

cuckoo has driven a physical UVC G5 PTZ end to end: adoption, the settings suite, PTZ, and all three encoder channels re-served as RTSP at once — ffprobe reads h264 / Main at 2688×1512, 1280×720 and 640×360, all decoding cleanly with AAC, from the one camera. (The camera runs the 4MP H.264 at ~8 Mbps of its own accord, and mixed codecs work too — pin a channel to h265 and it streams alongside the H.264 ones.) Its ONVIF face was checked by Home Assistant's own client (python-onvif-zeep), which walked the full onboarding — profiles, stream URI, snapshot, the complete PTZ move-and-preset set — against both the real camera and finch. See harness/.

What it does

   camera                          cuckoo                        clients
  ────────                        ────────                      ─────────
  dials :7442  ──── control ────▶  adoption, settings, PTZ
  pushes video ──── :7550   ────▶  deframe, republish  ────────▶ RTSP :8554
  (H.264+H.265)                    (two tracks)         ────────▶ (both ONVIF profiles)
  POSTs JPEG   ──── :7444   ────▶  snapshot store      ────────▶ HTTP snapshot
  Event*       ──── control ────▶  detections          ────────▶ ONVIF events
                                   device model        ────────▶ ONVIF :8000
                                                       ────────▶ WS-Discovery :3702
Concern Module State
Device model — the seam both faces meet at model.py done
Adoption + settings suite adoption.py done
PTZ encoding ptz.py done
Detection events events.py done
Control-channel event loop controller.py done
Media ingest :7550 media.py done
Snapshot upload server :7444 snapshots.py done
RTSP out :8554 rtsp.py done
ONVIF services :8000 onvif.py done
WS-Discovery :3702 discovery.py done
Taking custody of a camera (/api/1.2/manage, resident-controller API) manage.py, custody.py done
Assembly main.py done
Talkback, MJPEG :7551, Imaging writes, ONVIF auth — to do

The wire itself — the message envelope, WebSocket framing, the extendedFlv container, the HEVC/AAC bitstream — lives in pyunifiwire, shared with finch.

Requirements

  • Python 3.13. cuckoo itself is standard-library only.

  • pyunifiwire — the shared wire. Not yet on PyPI:

    pip install git+https://github.com/rjmotion/pyunifiwire
# or, working on both at once, put it on the path instead:
git clone https://github.com/rjmotion/pyunifiwire ../pyunifiwire   # run.sh/test.sh look there

  • ffmpeg/ffprobe for the media checks.

Run it

./test.sh                            # mypy --strict, then pytest. No camera, no network beyond loopback.
./run.sh --host 192.168.1.10         # --host must be routable from the camera and clients — not loopback

--host is written into the stream destinations, the snapshot upload URL, the PTZ callback and every ONVIF address, so it cannot be a loopback. A self-signed certificate is generated on first run (cuckoo.pem, mode 600, gitignored). Every port can be moved (--ingest-port, --snapshot-port, --rtsp-port, --onvif-port).

Configuration — file or flags

Everything can come from a JSON file, a flag, or both. cuckoo reads cuckoo.json (or --config PATH) as the baseline; a flag always overrides the file, and a missing file just means defaults + flags. So the same run is expressible either way:

// cuckoo.json
{
  "host": "192.168.1.10",
  "tracks": { "video1": "h264", "video2": "h265", "video3": "h264" },
  "ports": { "onvif": 8000, "rtsp": 8554 }
}
./run.sh --config cuckoo.json                       # all from the file
./run.sh --config cuckoo.json --tracks video1:h265  # …but this run's main is H.265

tracks is {channel: codec} across the camera's three encoder channels (2688×1512, 1280×720, 640×360). The default codec is H.264 — the one an ONVIF client (Home Assistant) needs — so a bare --tracks video1,video2 or an empty config still yields H.264; set any channel to h265 for an efficient stream. A file that names one channel re-codecs only it. The old cuckoo's SSH/credential fields are gone (this cuckoo never touches the camera over SSH); see config.py for the full field map.

Changing a codec at runtime

A codec can also be flipped live over ONVIF SetVideoEncoderConfiguration — set a profile's Encoding to H264 or H265 and cuckoo re-arms that channel on the camera through the same settings path, no restart. (Home Assistant never calls this — it consumes the profiles you advertise — but a VMS or ONVIF Device Manager can.)

Testing without a camera

./test.sh runs the lot — nothing needs hardware.

  • Per layer — axis arithmetic, the settings suite, PTZ encoding, RTP fragmentation, SOAP parsing, discovery probe filtering.
  • Adoption (test_adoption_flow.py) drives the real Controller against a fake camera exposing only sendall, so the sequencing rules are tested rather than described: the timeSync ping-pong that must be answered every time, the settings released one at a time, a PTZ channel requested only for a camera that announced motor bounds.
  • Whole stack (test_stack.py) builds every server on ephemeral ports, has a fake camera connect over real TLS and adopt, then checks the ONVIF face reflects it: profiles, stream URI, a PTZ move arriving as Preset config+go clamped to the camera's limits, a detection reaching a pull-point subscriber, a snapshot round-tripping through the upload endpoint.

Playing real video through it

stubcam.py pushes a real HEVC or H.264 file at the ingest port the way a camera would:

ffmpeg -f lavfi -i testsrc2=size=1280x720:rate=15 -t 4 -c:v libx265 \
       -x265-params keyint=15 -f hevc /tmp/t.h265
./run.sh --host 127.0.0.1 &
python3 stubcam.py /tmp/t.h265 --port 7550 --name video1 --loop
ffprobe -rtsp_transport tcp -i rtsp://127.0.0.1:8554/video1     # -> hevc 1280x720

# The H.264 profile HA needs, exercised the same way with no camera:
ffmpeg -f lavfi -i testsrc2=size=1280x720:rate=15 -t 4 -c:v libx264 \
       -x264-params keyint=15 -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb -f h264 /tmp/t.h264
python3 stubcam.py /tmp/t.h264 --codec h264 --port 7550 --name video2 --loop
ffprobe -rtsp_transport tcp -i rtsp://127.0.0.1:8554/video2     # -> h264  1280x720

A real ONVIF client — the acceptance test

harness/ drives a running cuckoo with python-onvif-zeep, the same ONVIFCamera stack Home Assistant uses, validated against the ONVIF WSDL. That catches things hand-formed SOAP cannot. Run it against a live pair or a real camera:

python3 harness/ha_walk.py  <host> <onvif-port> [--camera]   # HA's onboarding walk
python3 harness/ptz_walk.py <host> <onvif-port>              # every move kind + presets

Testing with the real camera

An adopted camera reconnects to whoever holds :7442, but a stolen socket alone is refused — the camera has to be told to adopt a new controller, and only its current controller can do that. handoff.sh orchestrates the whole dance:

./handoff.sh status        # who holds each port right now
./handoff.sh take          # release from the resident controller, bind :7442, point the camera at us
./handoff.sh give-back     # stop cuckoo, hand the camera back

take asks the resident controller to release the camera, frees :7442, and then POSTs /api/1.2/manage to the camera pointing it here — at which point it dials in, says hello, and adoption proceeds. Credentials come from a directory named by CUCKOO_SECRETS (defaults to ~/.cuckoo/secrets), which is never committed. See the header of handoff.sh for the full set of CUCKOO_* overrides.

Things worth knowing (all measured)

  • The video is HEVC under FLV codec id 8, which no stock demuxer maps, in a container with 20 bytes between tags where FLV has 4. The real camera's sequence header is not a standard hvcC either — it length-prefixes the parameter sets and signals config by the FLV frame type, not the packet-type byte.
  • Home Assistant's ONVIF integration requires an H.264 profile and rejects an H.265-only device with "no H.264 streams available" — and it does not reconfigure the encoder to get one (it consumes the profiles you advertise). The camera has three hardware encoder channels (2688×1512, 1280×720, 640×360) and encodes h264/h265/mjpg natively. --tracks sets the codec per channel; the default video1:h264,video2:h265,video3:h264 offers both codecs — full-res H.264 and a low H.264 so an ONVIF client always finds one, plus an H.265 substream for players that prefer it. Nothing is fixed to one codec; set any channel to either (--tracks video1:h265,video2:h264,…). The codec is armed once at adoption, not per client request. No transcode: the H.264 is re-packetised straight through as RFC 6184 RTP the way the HEVC is as RFC 7798. The codec of each stream is read from the wire, not assumed — including the trap that the two codecs signal their config differently: HEVC by FLV frame type 6 (packet-type byte 1 even on config), H.264 the standard way (frame type 1, AVCPacketType 0, a normal avcC). Both are handled; assuming they match loses one codec's parameter sets silently. Verified against the real camera streaming all three channels as H.264 at once (2688×1512, 1280×720, 640×360), and mixed codecs (an H.265 channel alongside H.264 ones) too.
  • The audio is AAC-LC at 16 kHz mono, so the SDP states a 16000 clock rate; a receiver assuming 44.1 kHz plays it at the wrong speed.
  • timeSync is a ping-pong. The camera pings it repeatedly, each message referencing the controller's last, until its clock converges — only then does it send hello. Answer every timeSync, reply flag or not, and never speak first.
  • There is no absolute-move verb. A move is configure a preset, then go to it, and presets carry focus, so the model is four axes.
  • ONVIF ContinuousMove becomes one relative step, because the camera has no continuous mode; a client holding an arrow key sends these repeatedly.
  • RemovePreset forgets the slot locally. No wire delete has been observed, so a preset cuckoo wrote persists on the camera even though the client sees it gone.
  • ONVIF Capabilities order is load-bearing. It is a strict schema sequence and a real client drops anything out of order — get it wrong and Home Assistant silently adds the camera with no event sensors.
  • WS-Discovery must use WS-Addressing 2004/08, not 2005/08 — a must-have for autodiscovery. ONVIF pairs the 2005/04 discovery draft with the 2004/08 addressing namespace; a device that uses 2005/08 finds no MessageID in the probe, replies to nothing, and never appears in Home Assistant's discovery. The failure is silent and total, and invisible to a self-written probe (which round-trips against its own wrong namespace) — only a real client catches it. See the discovery.py docstring and tests/test_discovery.py.
  • No ONVIF authentication yet. Requests are served unauthenticated. Don't expose the ONVIF port to an untrusted network.

The full protocol write-up, with captures, is in the flock guides.

Licence

MIT — see LICENSE.

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Ubiquiti Inc. UniFi and UniFi Protect are their trademarks. No Ubiquiti firmware or binaries are included here.