Room Connector overview

The hardware already in your meeting rooms—video conferencing endpoints from Huawei, Kedacom, and other brands, surveillance cameras on the wall, a video stream from an NVR— can be in the same meeting as people on phones and computers, without replacing devices or installing apps. We call this capability Room Connector, and the service behind it is the device gateway.

What it can connect

Device	Protocol	Typical scenarios	What it can do in the meeting
Video conferencing endpoints	SIP, H.323	Meeting-room hardware endpoints, command-center displays, phones	Two-way: the endpoint’s video and audio go into the meeting, and the meeting’s video and audio come back to the endpoint
Phone lines	SIP	Carrier SIP trunks, IP-PBX, AI phone customer service, AI outbound calls, dialing in to meetings	Two-way voice: incoming calls join a channel and talk with AI or a person; see Connect phone lines
GB28181 surveillance cameras / NVRs	GB28181	Bringing public security, emergency response, and campus surveillance into consultations	One-way: camera video goes into the meeting, with remote PTZ control
IP cameras / video streams	RTSP	Any camera, encoder, or media server that can provide an RTSP URL	One-way: the video stream goes into the meeting

Once in the meeting, a device is a regular member: its name is the “Display name” you entered when registering it, and it appears in the member list, the video layout, and recordings just like everyone else.

How it works

Devices only talk to the device gateway, which handles protocol conversion (SIP / H.323 / GB28181 / RTSP ↔ WebRTC) and then enters the meeting as a regular member
Conferencing endpoints see the whole meeting composited by the MCU (a multi-tile grid arranged by the meeting layout) and hear the mixed audio of the whole meeting. So for endpoints to see video, the platform must have the MCU (cloud recording gateway) deployed—when an endpoint enters, the platform automatically starts compositing for that meeting, with no manual step
Cameras and video streams only send video into the meeting; they don’t receive the meeting’s audio and video

Protocol capabilities

	SIP endpoint	H.323 endpoint	GB28181	RTSP
Device dials in to the meeting	✅	✅	—	—
Platform invites the device	✅	✅	✅	✅
Device registers to the platform	✅ Optional	✅ Optional (gateway has a built-in gatekeeper)	✅ Required	—
Video into the meeting	✅	✅	✅	✅
Audio into the meeting	✅	✅	✅ (if the device has audio)	✅ (if the stream has audio)
Receives the meeting’s video and audio	✅	✅	—	—
Video codec	H.264	H.264	H.264 (PS container)	H.264; H.265 is converted to H.264 automatically
Audio codec	G.711A	G.711A	G.711A	Common codecs; the gateway transcodes
PTZ / preset positions	—	—	✅ (via server API)	—

Dual-stream (secondary content stream) sharing from endpoints isn’t supported yet: a computer screen an endpoint shares over the secondary stream doesn’t enter the meeting. To share content, share the screen from a meeting client.

Three ways to enter a meeting

1. The device dials in—dial the meeting ID on the endpoint like a phone call:

Endpoint registered to the platform: dial the meeting ID directly
Endpoint not registered: dial meetingID@deviceGatewayIP, for example 30332718@192.168.10.5

2. The platform invites the device—the platform calls the device, and the endpoint rings like an incoming call (auto-answer can be set):

In the admin console, open the meeting details and click “Invite → Invite device”
In a meeting client, the host clicks “Invite → Invite device”
Your business system calls the server API to invite it; see Device integration guide

3. Registration or direct IP? This decides how the platform finds the device:

	Endpoint registration	Direct IP
How	Create an account in the console; the endpoint registers to the device gateway with it	Register the endpoint’s IP and port in the console
Platform sees online status	✅	❌
Device dials in	Meeting ID only	Must dial `meetingID@gatewayIP`
Network requirement	The device can reach the gateway—works when the device is behind NAT	The gateway must be able to reach the device’s IP
Recommendation	✅ Preferred	Devices that don’t support registration, or have a fixed IP

GB28181 cameras support registration only, and RTSP streams support platform pull only.

Prerequisites

Item	Description
Device gateway	Installed as needed in self-hosted deployments; you can install several. When registering a device, choose which gateway it belongs to
MCU	Required for SIP / H.323 endpoints to see the meeting’s video. Not needed if you only connect cameras and video streams
License	The device gateway needs its own license file; each device in a meeting uses one user concurrency and one device concurrency slot
Network	Open the SIP / H.323 / GB28181 signaling ports and the RTP port range between devices and the device gateway; see Network and port requirements
Which app incoming device calls go to	Configure a default app at deployment; from gateway 1.3.5, calls can be routed to different apps by called-number prefix; see Connect phone lines

“Meeting ID” means the meeting ID of an SMeeting meeting. If you use only the SRTC audio and video layer without the meeting layer, devices dial the channel name, so it’s best to use channel names made of digits only, which endpoints can enter.

Next steps

I want to connect	Read
Meeting-room video endpoints	SIP / H.323 endpoints
Phone lines (SIP trunk / IP-PBX)	Connect phone lines
GB28181 surveillance cameras	GB28181 cameras
IP cameras, video streams	RTSP streams
Can’t connect, no video	FAQ
Connecting devices from your business system via API	Device integration guide

Overview

Room Connector

Endpoint apps

Self-hosted deployment

Room Connector overview

What it can connect

How it works

Protocol capabilities

Three ways to enter a meeting

Prerequisites

Next steps

​What it can connect

​How it works

​Protocol capabilities

​Three ways to enter a meeting

​Prerequisites

​Next steps

What it can connect

How it works

Protocol capabilities

Three ways to enter a meeting

Prerequisites

Next steps