Edit: ideally wifi cameras that I can solar power.
Looking to replace my Arlo cameras with something self-hostable. Arlo lets you store on a USB stick, but there’s no way to get out from under their cloud, which gets more expensive all the time.
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Eufy? With the hub it’s all kept local I believe. Even without I think you can get a week with a 128 card.
You can use pretty much any camera with ZoneMinder as long as it supports ONVIF or RTSP and has the right connectivity and power inputs for you. I did something similar with some cheap TP-link cameras with pretty good results. With motion activated recording, I have just shy of 12 month of recordings stored on a 500G SSD.
How did you get 12 months onto just 500 Gb? I only have a couple weeks worth on a 1 Tb ☹️ I’m using wyze cams w/ agent i-spy. I assume I need to upgrade my compression skills here.
Motion activated recordings.
Continuouse, even h265 recordings, can only 2 weeks or so per terabyte.
Motion activated means he is probably recording 30 minutes per day vs 24 hours.
Ahhh that makes sense. Yea I’m on continuous.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters AP WiFi Access Point IP Internet Protocol IoT Internet of Things for device controllers NAS Network-Attached Storage NVR Network Video Recorder (generally for CCTV) PoE Power over Ethernet SSD Solid State Drive mass storage SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access Unifi Ubiquiti WiFi hardware brand VPN Virtual Private Network
10 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 9 acronyms.
[Thread #289 for this sub, first seen 18th Nov 2023, 23:15] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Missed at least two of the more important ones:
Fewer Letters More Letter RTSP Real Time Streaming Protocol ONVIF Open Network Video Interface Forum Still a pretty cool bit idea though. Keep at it!
Frigate is amazing, that’s what I’d recommend. I’m using a 5MP Amcrest camera, works very well. The dev doesn’t recommend Reolink.
Hikvision are also just rebranded amcrest sold cheaper for consumers. You have to isolate them from the internet, but that goes for pretty much every IP camera.
Most cameras are self hosted but they are not marketed to consumers because they require running cables to them either for power and/or data.
Reolink camera with onvif so support can be connected to Frigate or Shinobi.
Hikvison and Dahua are common Chinese brands that have lots of options across lots of prices points but are treated as insecure or hostile iot devices required closed networks.
Costco often has camera and NVR packages that are passable.
Whenever possible make sure any camera you get is onvif so you can use it with any NVR or software.
HIkvision is great. Good value for money. Just do not use the app to configure them, use web gui. And yes, they need to be isolated from rest of network and the internet ( as pretty much any cameras).
I’ve been running https://demo.scrypted.app for a few months. It’s pretty slick.
more info would be nice
Yeah it looks pretty slick but not so much slicker than Frigate that I will pay to be in the beta. :)
If you’re looking for something more or less in the same footprint, I understand those cheap Wyze cameras can be used. There are alternative firmwares available that can be flashed to them to open up the rtsp stream to whatever self-hosted recorder you’d like. Haven’t tried it, but have heard it mentioned on the Self Hosted podcast.
Does Ubiquiti qualify?
They do but are a poor value next to most other options.
They are an excellent value next to most other otpions if youve ever actually implemented more than one solution.
I have and I have done unifi. I don’t like being restricted to their NVR or software solutions because it means I to toss the cameras if I want to extend solution with things like ptz or verifocal cameras. Want to add ai/ml detection sorry can’t do…
Unifi is good for some people but it’s not the solution for everyone. Reolink can also offer similar ecosystem experiences but also while letting you expand your system if wanted.
One of the easier options is going to be Ubiquiti’s ecosystem. You’ll be tied into it, but the video data is local. You can self-host the Unifi software yourself or grab a Cloud Key G2 Plus, which is a tiny ARM box running Ubiquiti’s software. Then you buy Ubiquiti’s cameras. At least as of a couple years ago, you could not pair this with any standard camera though.
If you want a fair bit more effort but more flexibility, Zoneminder is an option. Most Amcrest cameras stream a feed over RTSP. You just need to configure Zoneminder to stream the feed.
What do you mean “self-hosted security camera” exactly? Open source camera? DIY camera?
Or are you looking for self-hosted NVR software? If so, many people already gave you suggestions. My recommendation - don’t focus on ZoneMinder. It’s ugly software. Instead, use Shinobi for more classic software or Frigate with Google TPU accelerator. Both lightweight enough.
Myself I have a mix of HikVision and Dahua, recorded/analyzed by Frugate. Everything works like a charm.
And also, I’ve disabled internet access for all the cameras, so they couldn’t call home. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I had no real idea how to phrase it, but all these posts have helped. What I was actually focused on when I posted was mainly hardware that can do what the Arlo cameras do:
- Wifi + battery/solar my house is old and hardwires are a pain in the ass.
- High def, preferably 4k, but 1080 is ok.
- Night vision, color or not doesn’t matter
- Motion-activated, and preferably some way to filter out and not trigger on things like passing traffic cars.
- As small a form-factor as possible.
The Reolink hardware mentioned below seems to fit the bill hardware-wise.
I hadn’t even really considered the software, as I don’t need a lot of features. All I need is to use motion-activated capture to stream to some local storage, and an ability to view a live-stream when I want one. But it looks like there’s a lot of options I need to consider.
For NVR - it looks like you are after Frigate with object detection.
For cameras - as long as it has RTSP support, then you should be fine. Doesn’t really matter of what kind of brand it is. You can always block internet access for a camera in your router.
You’re looking for a self-hosted NVR (Network Video Recorder). The best I’ve found and use in a number of customer’s is Blue Iris, and it’ll work with any ONVIF-enabled cameras, but it costs 100/yr and only runs on a windows machine. I have desperately tried open-source NVRs that will work on Linux but none of them are even in the same universe as Blue Iris for functionality and ease of use.
Wireless cameras are generally terrible so if you can hardwire them in any way, I would go with that. People have had fairly good luck with Wyse cameras for wireless, I can’t speak to it. See the Selfhosted Podcast for various discussions on cameras to use with NVRs, with a focus on Blue Iris.
I have desperately tried open-source NVRs that will work on Linux but none of them are even in the same universe as Blue Iris for functionality and ease of use.
Have you tried Shinobi? I’ve used it for quite some time until I switched to Frigate. It isn’t broken tho.
Also, anything special with Blue Iris? Note that it can be ran on Linux because there is Docker image that uses wine.
I did have it working under Wine myself, not with docker. The docker image is news to me, I might have to give it a try. What I did notice about running under Wine was that the web interface wouldn’t load the good quality version, just the basic HTML version with the sad camera controls and interface. It worked, but wasn’t great.
I did try Shinobi, it had a really odd interface. While it worked, I did not find it enjoyable to use and it was pretty rudimentary compared to BI.
I would review https://docs.frigate.video/frigate/hardware
I’m running a trio of Reolink RLC-820A cameras, over PoE. I’m recording with Frigate on a Raspberry Pi with a Google TPU USB.
Inferencing of detected objects is lightning fast, and reasonably accurate. I’m storing ~45 days of footage (motion detected - not 24x7 recording) on less than 2TB.
I have the reolink doorbell which I really like. You can pay for cloud storage, use an SD card or store it on a local server. I believe they also have WiFi Solar cameras for outside as well
Not sure about wifi cameras, I have a mix of Trendnet and Hikivision POE, sitting on a Vlan with no internet access. For the software I use Blue Iris. Where I have a need for cameras I have only a Windows server and I have found this software to be the best for me.
Look for something that can do rtsp streaming. Reolink, amcrest, ect. Its all cheap Chinese cameras that almost definitely dial out to some Chinese server.
What I do is have all cameras connected on a wireless router with no internet, use zoneminder on a Linux that is connected to my home network via Ethernet and the camera network via WiFi, and allow https into my home network from my VPN
I do the same but with Blue Iris and Windows but yeah I keep those cheap China cams off the Internet.
