Thanks @PhilipDAth for calling it out! I think there may be a blog post coming as well.
For others who might follow or stumble across this post, or have questions since RTSP on MV is new, a little additional background...
RTSP is often the only way to do many things in traditional camera systems. However, MV smart cameras have a variety of features and analytics built in to solve certain key problems.
Many traditional camera systems use RTSP for 3 main things:
1) Storage: RTSP can be leveraged to record on a server/NVR or other storage device. Longer storage can be achieved off camera but without Cloud Archive, basically customers can leverage RTSP to implement their own NVR, as much as we don't want to reintroduce an NVR into the architecture, a few customers do have this requirement.
For storage, Meraki added to the product line with the newer "X" models to double the on-camera retention time, and added enhancements around storage estimates based on what motion the camera has perceived lately. There is still Motion Based Retention (which now includes areas of interest) and scheduled recording, and then there are still the 90 and 180-day cloud archive licenses if needed. Collectively, these items tend to address the large majority of use cases where RTSP might otherwise be needed.
2) Integration: RTSP can be leveraged to integrate with other systems such as access control. Meraki added motion alert email capability which includes alerting on human motion only, as well as the snapshot API and the video link API. In addition, some Access Control partners have built MV integrations into their platforms, as well as the Dashboard REST APIs.
3) Analytics: RTSP is commonly leveraged to stream video to a VMS for viewing and/or using video analytics as a source of information to provide business insight. For analytics, Meraki offers motion heat maps, integrated edge machine learning, multiclass object detection (people and vehicles), people counting, the snapshot API, the MV Sense API and a number of great analytics partners for developing custom solutions. (See apps.meraki.io)
The point is, do not use RTSP to "Reverse The Smart Part". Most requirements can be met by positioning native MV camera features and API integrations, so make sure RTSP actually is a requirement. RTSP on MV should be used strategically for specific use cases, to complement and add to native MV functionality.
For example, if a customer already has an existing system with analytics not available with MV in Dashboard by default, they can potentially send MV video via RTSP into a 3rd party system to pick up additional specialized analytics. Another common use case is for large customers doing a long-term phased implementation, who can use RTSP as a bridge to legacy system requirements to migrate to MV smoothly. Yet another might be a requirement for public viewing monitors.
