How To Archives - Tim Leland

RTSP Camera Stream Dashboard

March 10, 2025March 10, 2025 Tim 1 Comment

After years of reliable camera streaming, I recently upgraded my RTSP Camera Dashboard from a Raspberry Pi to a Dell Mini OptiPlex with Ubuntu. I am still using the Wyze Cameras flashed with the RTSP firmware, which works great as long as your Wi-Fi connection is reliable. I also rewrote the camera streaming software using C++. This setup lets you live stream four cameras to a monitor, which works great for a DIY home security system.

Setup

Copy the C++ code and create a new file called rtsp_viewer.cpp
Update the 4 RTSP URLs in the rtsp_viewer.cpp file to be your camera URLS
sudo apt install libopencv-dev libsdl2-dev
g++ rtsp_viewer.cpp -o rtsp_viewer `pkg-config –cflags –libs opencv4 sdl2` -pthread
./rtsp_viewer
Setup this application to start on reboot

Laravel Creator Spotlight

February 10, 2025February 10, 2025 Tim Leave a comment

I recently joined Eric Barnes on the Laravel News Creator Series podcast, where I discussed my journey as a developer, the origins of T.LY URL Shortener, and the lessons I’ve learned along the way. It was great to chat about Laravel, building products, and handling the challenges of running a SaaS service.

Bitly Showing Ads on Page Redirects

January 28, 2025January 29, 2025 Tim Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, Bitly announced they would start showing ads and interstitial pages on free redirects in February. In my opinion, this will cause a lot of frustration for the billions of Bitly short links. This preview page will include ads and a brief summary of the target URL. Users who wish to bypass this ad experience have two options: upgrade to a paid Bitly plan or switch to a different URL shortener that does not force ads. Are you planning to switch or upgrade? Read More

The Rise and Fall of Goo.gl

January 2, 2025January 2, 2025 Tim Leave a comment

What will happen when billions of links vanish overnight? That’s exactly what is going to occur when Google’s URL shortener, Goo.gl, shut down after dominating the link-shortening market for nearly a decade. Google first launched their URL Shortener service Goo.gl on December 14th, 2009 right around the time Twitter and Bitly were taking off. There was a need for short links for services like Twitter where character limits were important. Eventually, they launched analytics and an API which was heavily adopted and over time was used to create billions of short links. Ahrefs has recorded over 26 Billion short URL backlinks to the Google URL Shortener over the past 16 years. That doesn’t account for short links shared privately.

“Goo.gl’s API became the default url shortener for developer’s, powering applications and marketing campaigns worldwide. From tracking clicks to enhancing user engagement, the service was used by thousands of applications.”