Tenda CH9 Dual Lens WiFi Camera works well with Frigate's PT

[chriswachira]

I took a gamble with the Tenda CH9-WCA camera, and it worked flawlessly with Frigate's pan and tilt.

The camera is pretty cheap for a dual lens camera with PT, about USD 50. However, it does not have zoom or autotracking capabilities.

Since the camera is not PoE powered, I hooked it up to my PoE switch with a PoE splitter and added it to my fleet of PoE cameras on Frigate.

This is for anyone who's curious with Tenda cameras, at least for the non-PoE ones.

[inkeep-ai-assistant[bot]]

Thank you for sharing your experience with the Tenda CH9-WCA camera working well with Frigate's PTZ controls(1). This is valuable feedback for the community.

To set up PTZ controls in Frigate, you would add the ONVIF configuration to your camera setup(2):

cameras:
  back:
    ffmpeg: ...
    onvif:
      host: 10.0.10.10
      port: 8000
      user: admin
      password: password

(2)

For PTZ controls to work, the camera needs ONVIF support(2). Since your Tenda CH9 works with pan and tilt functions, it appears to have proper ONVIF implementation for basic PTZ operations(1).

Regarding autotracking, this feature requires cameras that support relative movement within the field of view as specified in the ONVIF specification(3). Since you mentioned the camera doesn't have autotracking capabilities, it likely doesn't support the required RelativePanTiltTranslationSpace with TranslationSpaceFov entry that Frigate needs for autotracking functionality(3).

Your solution using a PoE splitter to integrate a non-PoE camera into your PoE infrastructure is a practical approach for maintaining a unified power and network setup.

📚 Sources:

1. Camera Ptz Info
2. Camera Configuration
3. Camera Autotracking

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