this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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I have some amcrest cameras that are on PoE, save data to an SD card and aren't connected to any amcrest cloud services. They work great. They have a viewer app that I remote into my network to review, but has no cloud connectivity outside of that. I have the switch and modem (and router) on a battery backup for the rare times I lose power.
As far as I can tell this is a minimally viable passably secure system that "just works", requires no other hardware, and has local storage.
A few more steps such as a (edit: dedicated) hard drive backup, nvr and so on would be great, but my needs are currently met.
This or something like this might be of interest for someone trying to move away from highly cloud connected subscription services but who aren't ready for a more "hobbyist" setup.
It took me longer to research a quality sd card (so many fucking acronyms) than it did to install and test my 4 camera system.
Their cloud system sucks, so I'm glad you don't have yours connected to it.
as a tech enthusiast myself, and i would assume you are one too. Please for the love of god store that video on a hdd, or at least good quality flash first. Get an intel optane module if you don't want to think about it, those things have the write endurance of a fucking shipping vessel.
Flash is probably the single worst thing you can use for continual writes like that, it's just universally bad quality. If cost is an issue you can get a used 4tb hdd for like 40 bucks second hand. You probably have one laying around already.
I do, I access them on the local network and the software has a local export feature. So I regularly write the SD card to my pc hdd and wipe the SD
Edit the cameras have overlapping fields of view and I live in a very low crime area so I feel I've mitigated my risk to my comfort. I would need multiple cards to corrupt at once, and a crime to occur, and for it to happen perfectly between my backup job for maximum impact.
Edit edit I was unclear in my original so I understand why you commented this, my bad I'll edit
I backup to my PC but do not have a dedicated hdd for this task
yeah that's definitely more sensible than what i had thought was going on lol. At that point i'd still probably write to the hdd directly, and use flash as a backup though. It's also a lot more portable that way.
The flash cards are onboard the cameras, silly as it is. So it's super convenient, provided they don't all corrupt at once.
All cameras are well out of reach
oh well that's just stupid frankly. I understand why, to some degree. But that kind of nullifies the entire existence of security if yeeting the camera and yoinking the card removes any shenanigans that could've happened lol.
meh, whatever.
Well you'd have to climb a house or a tree in ways that would be quite acrobatic, again to multiple cameras at once. These are not casually available and even with a ladder are quite a dangle. The trees they are in are not "good climbing trees" at all.
All while I'm getting alerts that there's motion sent to email, (which I have greenlit to ping my notifications and buzz) and I could hit "backup" at any time by remoting to my PC and running the command.
If a 5 man team is arriving with tools and ladders and is aware of my situation the game is over anyway and I'm just calling the cops.
i suppose they could be recording over the network, but if a card in one of them fails that's going to be quite the chore huh.
It's true. 7 years and no failures yet, but my mere writing this will probably doom me.
Again I'm only suggesting a minimum viable option to get off the teat of a subscription / cloud provider. Im not promoting this beyond that.
ah right, the ole, jynx you're fucked trick. I forgot all about it.
Well shit, guess you'll just have to do it but better soon :)
I don't say this to rain on your parade at all (especially because you'reset already) but you could have probably used the SD card money to buy a cheap server for Frigate for even more functionality!
Yep. Just didn't want more hardware than I already had (plus the cameras).
It's great that there is a nice ramp of hardware and software you can scale with. Feel free to post that general setup architecture for others to consider too!