unifi-mimic

This project is no longer needed for local/ direct connections. You can now establish direct connections (as of UniFi Protect Android app version 1.20.0) by manually specifying your UNVR IP address.

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Connect directly to UNVR with UniFi Protect mobile app when on different layer 3 networks/ subnets.

Requirements

• libnet-1.1.x or later (https://github.com/libnet/libnet)

sudo apt install libnet1-dev

Compile

gcc unifi-mimic.c -lnet -o unifi-mimic

Usage

Step 1: Run unifi-mimic on the same subnet as your UNVR.

./unifi-mimic -D -i <interface>

This will send a UDP discovery packet on port 10001. A file will be created for each UniFi device that responds. The file(s) will be named by IP address of the discovered device and will contain UDP payload data.

Step 2: Run unifi-mimic as root or using sudo on the same subnet as the device running the UniFi Protect mobile app. Copy the file from Step 1 and specify it as a command line argument.

sudo ./unifi-mimic -L -p <file> -i <interface>

For example, if your UNVR has IP address 192.168.1.10, copy the file named "192.168.1.10" to the same directory as unifi-mimic and run:

sudo ./unifi-mimic -L -p 192.168.1.10 -i eth0

Now whenever UniFi Protect looks for your UNVR, unifi-mimic will respond with the proper payload and you'll be directly connected. You may need to close and re-open the UniFi Protect app. Also ensure both networks are able to talk to each other, i.e. no firewall is blocking communication.

In discovery mode (Step 1) - if more than one file was generated for your UNVR device, try the first file for Step 2, and if that doesn't work, try the next file.

You can also fork unifi-mimic to run as a background process with the -f flag.

sudo ./unifi-mimic -L -p 192.168.1.10 -i eth0 -f

Notes

This has only been tested on a Raspberry Pi 4 with a UNVR and the UniFi Protect mobile app on Android.

Inspired by https://github.com/bahamas10/unifi-proxy