MV video clip downloading - or creating an AI plug-in?

[Simson]

In my review of the Meraki Video API, I cannot find a mechanism to create video clips and download them.

This is confusing to me, because I can do this from the dashboard, and the dashboard presumably uses the API to gets its stuff done. So is MV simply not making this capability available in a documented API, or am I missing it?

I've looked at these AP functions:

• Get Device Camera Video Link - Meraki Dashboard API v1 - Get a live video link
• Update Device Camera Video Settings - Meraki Dashboard API v1 - Enable or disable RTSP   

Meraki allows for scheduled exports, but it appears that they still require manual downloading.

• Meraki Blog - Taking Smart Spaces to the Next Level (March 15, 2022)

My application requires systematic downloading of data from the Meraki cloud for backup and additional AI analytics. 

Another option would be to create my own AI plug-in for the Meraki system. However, I've found no information on how to do that. Where is that information located?

[Alisdair85 · Accepted solution]

This is one I have asked for a few times over the years. There is a general assumption that the API that the Meraki Dashboard UI uses is one and the same as the one exposed to develop around, it's not, they are two separate APIs, public and private, it certainly would help my Dev Team if they were one and the same, i.e. what you can do via the Dashboard UI can be done via the API, its just not the case, the public API is separately exposed and is very much use case driven, which is great, until you hit blockers, such as the one you are up against.

[Simson]

Hm. Do you know if anyone has reverse-engineered the private API, or if the private API has anti-RE mechanisms?

How about writing something for the cloud AI thing? If I wanted to offer an app in the Meraki cloud, how would I do it? Presumably my app in the cloud would need to get access to the video stream...

[Alisdair85]

haha I couldn't possibly comment on a public forum about workarounds and ways to reverse engineer the private Meraki Dashboard API 😝 - though it would be gnarly for the MV UI and not something I would recommend outside of Develop/Test for a production environment but you could explore testing a web scraping capability to execute the task(s) you want. 

Regarding the video stream question, slightly different architecture to how you have assumed, I have done a few PoC only projects that take the externally enabled RTSP stream, which is direct and live from the MV Smart Camera not via the MCC (Meraki Cloud Controller), over the internet, but this is not recommended at all for security/encryption reasons (though traversing via a VPN would be ok I guess), it was purely for testing and troubleshooting an issue and looking at a computer vision test use case, more info on this below

https://documentation.meraki.com/MV/Advanced_Configuration/External_RTSP  

[Simson]

Of course not! I  never meant to suggest that we should engage in reverse engineering.

It looks like the RTSP interface is the only way to do it.

However, I'm really curious — how do I become a Meraki Developer and deploy an app to their cloud?

[David_Jirku]

Hi! Meraki does not host/run 3rd-party applications in our cloud. Partners leverage APIs and RTSP as discussed in this thread and host applications/solutions on-behalf of customers in their own environments (on-prem or public cloud). 

You can visit the https://merakiresources.cisco.com/EN-23-SASE-CD-Meraki-Marketplace-Application-REQ.html to apply to have your solution hosted in our Marketplace https://apps.meraki.io/en-US/home where customers go to discover a curated list of offerings that can be used in their Meraki environment.

[sungod]

There's some info here...

https://community.meraki.com/t5/Developers-APIs/MV-Video-Clip-Download/m-p/92795#M3741