docs

Neolink documentation

Technical reference for how Neolink communicates with Reolink "Baichuan" (BC) P2P cameras and serves them over RTSP. These documents describe how the system actually works (grounded in the source), organised one topic per file.

End-to-end picture

config ─▶ NeoReactor ─▶ NeoCam ──(on demand)──▶ discovery/lookup ─▶ P2P/relay connect
                                                      │
                                                      ▼
                                          BC control channel (login, encryption,
                                          stream requests, PTZ, talk, …)
                                                      │
                                       ┌──────────────┴───────────────┐
                                       ▼                              ▼
                              media substream (BcMedia)        two-way audio (talk)
                                       │
                                       ▼
                              RTSP factory (timestamping) ─▶ RTSP clients

1. Ownership & lifecycle — the reactor lazily creates a per-camera actor; a permit system connects on demand and disconnects when idle.
2. Discovery — a UID is resolved via Reolink lookup servers (region-selectable) and a connection is negotiated over LAN, P2P hole-punch, or relay.
3. BC control protocol — an encrypted, framed request/reply channel.
4. Media — video/audio arrive as the BcMedia substream and are re-timestamped for RTSP; audio can also be sent back to the camera (talk).
5. Transport & bandwidth — a reliable-UDP layer with CUBIC flow control governs stream bitrate.

Documents

Topic	File
Camera-ownership model (reactor / actors / permits)	architecture.md
Connection modes & lifecycle (connect_mode, reconnect, backoff)	connection-modes.md
Connection, discovery methods, regions, bandwidth, UDP flow control, diagnostics	connection-and-bandwidth.md
UDP discovery / P2P negotiation handshake (message catalog & sequences)	discovery-handshake.md
BC control protocol (framing, modern/legacy, binary mode, encryption, message IDs)	bc-protocol.md
Media substream format (BcMedia), codecs, stream kinds	media-streams.md
A/V timestamping on the RTSP output	av-timestamping.md
Two-way audio (talk)	two-way-audio.md
Reolink SongP2P / RDT — empirical notes	reolink.md
Home Assistant integration (go2rtc, WebRTC/MSE/HLS, H264/H265, viewing cards)	home-assistant.md

Per-camera configuration options and their defaults are documented in the project README.md ("Camera Configuration Reference").