talkback-bootstrap

Minimal, low-level ONVIF RTSP talk-back initiator
Battle-tested on Reolink firmwares where ONVIF/SDK-based flows fail.
Establishes two-way audio by hand-crafting the RTSP flow: DESCRIBE → SETUP → PLAY
Can Keep session alive with periodic OPTIONS.

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✨ Features

• ✅ Pure Python (≥3.10), no C dependencies
• 🛠️ Works with picky Reolink firmwares that reject standard ONVIF/SDK talk-back
• 📡 Full RTSP handshake built from scratch
• 🔍 Switch between clean INFO logs and full RTSP wire dump (DEBUG)
• 🧼 Clean, minimal API

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🚀 Quick start

from talkback import TalkBackInitiator

tb = TalkBackInitiator("rtsp://user:pass@cam/Preview_01_sub", verbose=True)
ip, port = tb.start()        # start RTSP session

# here you can start pushing ant RTP to ip:port with aoirtc or smth..
# ...

tb.keep_alive()              # send keepalive once (usually, session is alive for 60 secs)
tb.terminate()               # send TEARDOWN

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📦 Installation

With uv

uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install -e .

# (optional) run tests
uv run tests/test_initiator.py

With Poetry

poetry install
poetry run pytest -q

# (optional) run tests
poetry run python tests/test_initiator.py

Vanilla pip

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -e .

# (optional) run tests
python tests/test_initiator.py

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🔍 Sample logs

2025-05-17  INFO  Connected to 192.168.1.100:554
2025-05-17  INFO  Received digest challenge (realm=BC Streaming Media)
2025-05-17  INFO  Authenticated DESCRIBE succeeded
2025-05-17  INFO  Extracted Content-Base: rtsp://192.168.1.100/Preview_01_sub/
2025-05-17  INFO  Found talk-back control track: track3
2025-05-17  INFO  Session established: D7EE6915
2025-05-17  INFO  Camera back-channel port: 6974
2025-05-17  INFO  PLAY succeeded (CSeq=4)
2025-05-17  INFO  Talk-back session started: 192.168.1.100:6974
...
2025-05-17  INFO  OPTIONS keep-alive successful (CSeq=5)
...
2025-05-17  INFO  Sent TEARDOWN (CSeq=15)
2025-05-17  INFO  RTSP talk-back session terminated

Set env var TALKBACK_LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG to see full RTSP dump (requests and responses).

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⚙️ Why low-level?

“Tried onvif-zeep-2, other Python libs, even ONVIF CLI tools —
nothing could reliably trigger the BackChannel on some Reolink firmware versions.
Cameras responded with 401 or 403, and none of the standard methods worked.

After digging through ONVIF + RTSP docs, I ended up writing this module from scratch —
just enough to get the job done.”

If the usual wrappers and SDKs can’t bring the channel up — this module runs the handshake
directly: from DESCRIBE to PLAY, with all the necessary flags.

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🗂 Project layout

src/talkback/
  ├── initiator.py      # handshake logic
  ├── settings.py       # config via pydantic-settings
  └── utils.py          # URL parser + logger
tests/
  └── test_initiator.py # basic test

• uv.lock for reproducible installs
• .python-version is ignored unless you enforce pyenv

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📝 License

MIT — do what you want, just please share improvements