this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
45 points (90.9% liked)

Selfhosted

40183 readers
529 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
45
Selfhosted Wireless Cameras (infosec.pub)
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
26 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I currently have a couple of (amazon) Blink cameras. I would like similar cameras but that are self hosted. Yes these basically are however the HW-Sync module sucks its slow. I've tried other chinese brands which are slower. I was about to buy the Eufy Homebase setup it seemed perfect easy low power cameras. However their "self hosted" solution has issues working with out internet.

It seems like there should be a selfhosted Blink camera replacement. I like the form factor of the blink cameras. The eufy were nice because they had solar options.

Anyone have any experience here? I'd love to use POE but Im too old and busy to run cable through my new house now.

Edit: When I say wireless I mean battery operated as well. Sorry, not just wifi.

top 26 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I’m working on something that you could use to build one out of a raspberry pi. Or an old laptop. Or a mini pc and webcam. Basically anything that runs Linux and has a camera.

https://github.com/sciactive/soteria

It uploads video to a WebDAV server. I’m designing it to work well with my WebDAV server, Nephele. Nephele supports encryption at rest and Amazon S3 compatible servers.

It’s not going to be as feature rich as other solutions, but it’s killer feature is that you can watch your footage even if all of your cameras are offline, but Amazon/Google/whoever can’t ever watch your footage.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
IP Internet Protocol
IoT Internet of Things for device controllers
NVR Network Video Recorder (generally for CCTV)
PoE Power over Ethernet
VPN Virtual Private Network

[Thread #649 for this sub, first seen 1st Apr 2024, 19:05] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Reolink and Zoneminder has been working fine. Put the cameras in a vlan, block their access except to the ZM server, you can use any IP camera.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Are the Reolink wireless? What models? Do you have outdoor ones? Im looking for outdoor.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

No, POE. Just the round black ones, I forget the model.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Yes

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Esp32 cam and. Usb c or micro . Works well with motioneye.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I do love me some ESP32! I did not think about doing this.. I am sure there are stats on power consumption. I think making it outdoor/weatherproof would be the hardest part.

Do you have any that are solar? or outdoors?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I don't know anything about Blink, but for self hosted camera stuff, Frigate is wonderful.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What wireless cameras are you using. I too love frigate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I have 2 Amcrest cameras. One PoE that's super solid, and an inexpensive WiFi camera. I ended up buying another wifi access point just for the camera, and ever since it has been very solid. More a symptom of my house having tons of IoT devices than a problem with the camera, really.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

You said you already have Blink cams, what about this thing? https://www.amazon.com/Blink-Sync-Module-2/dp/B084RQ6MHJ/ Stick in a flash drive and it's kinda like a DVR.

Ideal setup would be a proper DVR with proper IP cameras. Ethernet would be better but wireless is doable. I don't have enough knowledge to make a proper recommendation but people seem to like Reolink as an affordable option: https://reolink.com/us/product/rlk12-500wb4/

If you don't want to set up a DVR or spend all that money, there are plenty of cheap cameras that write to a microSD card, you could just buy a few of those and buy some massive SD cards that would allow you to record weeks worth of motion events. But of course reviewing all that footage will be a pain without a central DVR. I like my Tapo cameras, and Wyze is another popular brand.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

That is what I am currently doing but the usb port on the unit is 2.0 so its dog slow!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I'm not familiar with Amazon blink cameras. I use a reoLink and a Raspberry Pi for two cameras that go to a dedicated Zone Minder NVR server which is firewalled off from any internet access or access to other networks within my house.
reolink was pretty easy, blocking all wan traffic is very important - I'm sure like any store-bought solution. the raspberry pi is low quality and obviosuly a diy solution, but is ok. zoneminder is one of a handful of open source nvr softwares. It's not great in my opinion. I don't think it uses resources efficiently and it's a bit of a pain to set up initially. But from what i read all of these opensource nvr apps have their quirks.

i read good things about amcrest cameras

curious, why aren't you able to self-host your blink cameras; are they ip cameras and is there an rtp stream you can capture?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

The blink cameras are battery powered. 100% wireless (no network or power cables) . Only trigger on motion or if activated for live stream.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm using Reolink E1 Zoom cameras. My router's firewall keeps them offline, and I manage everything through HomeAssistant. Very happy with my experience on a budget

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I looked up this camera and the reviews for the outdoor model with night vision seem pretty promising. Can I ask how you are using your camera(s)? Like do you have a local server to record the data? Can you access them with a cell phone without using any special apps?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm using them inside. I record to microsd on each camera, and use homeassistant to view them. I'm eventually going to build a NVR for them

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Ah gotcha, so you're not trying to to live-view the feed on them. Thanks for the camera suggestion anyway, the brand still seems to be decent enough even if they don't support Linux.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Afaik the reolink homeassistant integration supports live feeds. The integration seems pretty solid with a lot of features, though I haven't tested them myself (I'll probably get one soon to replace mine).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I got a dahua put it on its own vlan. It is powered and connected via Poe. I stream an rtsp stream to frigate for detection and frigate restreams to home assistant.

If you want a WiFi solution and a constant life stream you may experience degraded performance on your other devices but you have to check youself.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I was considering POE as an option, and this camera does have an ethernet port (although I can't tell yet if that's only for configuration or if the video will also stream over it directly). I don't really need a constant stream and this camera also provides motion options so maybe it would only send video as needed (although during a heavy storm all of the cameras would probably fire at once).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Not parent, but Zoneminder locally with the zmninja app works pretty well. VPN allows remote access, so it is slightly complicated but not too bad.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I played with Zoneminder years ago but would like to get something set up for home security. I have a full internal network plus servers and about 60TB of free storage space so there's really no limitations to what I could set up. Ideally I'd like to just hit a local IP from a cell phone to check the cameras (and remote access isn't really needed), so that's where I was trying to go with my previous questions.

The software side seems easy enough, but finding compatible IP cameras has been stumping me. I see the Reolink 4K TrackMix wifi cameras on Amazon for $130, and other than a few hiccups it looks likely that this piece of hardware would work, unless anyone knows of any "gotchas" that I've missed? Otherwise I'll do a bit more research and then order one of the cameras to see how far I can get with it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The only gotcha I can think of is the 4k bandwidth, better make sure you can handle more than one camera on your network.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Good point, POE might be the only choice then. Although these cameras do provide x264 and x265 compression so that would save quite a lot.