Using Yawcam on https

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michaelhilton
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Dec 30, 2023 7:22 pm

Using Yawcam on https

Post by michaelhilton »

Chrome and Edge and others are forcing everything to https rather than http
I have been using Yawcan for years to share birdbox and bird feeder cams but they no longer work with the https change

My link is https://www.dhilton.co.uk/birdcamtwo.htm

If you follow that, the image of the feeder is not there - the browser has added an "s" to make it https

But if you take out the "s" to make the link to http://www.dhilton.co.uk/birdcamtwo.htm it works perfectly bird feeder image is there

So the https is stopping Yawcan - wonder if any of you clever people have found a way around this - clearly https is the way forward!?

Many thanks for reading Michael
malun
Site Admin
Posts: 1593
Joined: Sun Jan 04, 2004 1:29 pm

Re: Using Yawcam on https

Post by malun »

Nice birdcam!

As you have noticed the problem is the mix of HTTPS and HTTP.
Modern browsers will not allow this. If you check the browser's console, you see a warning typically looking like this:
"Blocked loading mixed active content [URL]"

There is no easy fix for this right now.

A possible (and untried) workaround could be:
1) Get a domain to use instead of the IP for the computer where Yawcam runs.
This can typically be from dyndns or no-ip.

2) Get a valid certificate for this domain.
Setup Let's encrypt or similar service.
I think Let's encrypt only issues certificates for domain names and not IPs. This is why the first step is necessary.

3) Setup the nginx webserver as a reverse proxy on the Yawcam computer.
Configure nginx to proxy Yawcam's page and serve it with HTTPS using the certificate from step 2.

/malun
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