Another vote for Reolink, especially the models with ONVIF support.
Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
I've been looking for the same thing, everything usually points to frigate being the answer, but it seems like a bit of work to get everything set up.
Probably look to secondhand commercial stuff, anything with ONVIF support should be fine.
Picked up some domed outdoor Cisco IP6630s awhile back off eBay for cheap and while not the best image wise they're built like tanks AND they give you full root access lol
Anything that supports ONVIF. I like Hikvision for their quality, price, and web interface for setup. But don't trust any IP camera. Make sure the Mac and or IP address is blocked at your router.
There are different night visions to pick from. There's ir night vision and white led lit night vision. I prefer ir night vision because I don't want visible led lights on all night. You get a better picture at night although its black and white.
However many color night vision cameras do really well without any light source at all. I tried both and it's more of a preference so I can't say which one will work for you.
Reconsider hikvision: they were recently dropped as an option for many organizations due to some new data leak, and removed from gov buildings in a number of countries.
And that's why you don't let them contact the Internet.
Managing IoT risk is an easy no brainer if people bother to try.
All my cameras are reolink. I have their duo2 which is super wide so it captures everything, I use the doorbells and have the 360 camera in my garage. They all work with frigate and blue iris.
Dahua makes good stuff. Their products are commonly sold under different generic brand names too, but they're all good
I've used a ton of ubiquity unifi cameras and they have a solid range on pricing. I think you need the unifi software to commission them though. For what it's worth they don't use the cloud for storage and don't require any sort of subscription.
Ubiquity is the definition of vendor lock in.
Right. I only mentioned them because they don't require a sub and you can store everything locally.
If you consider alternatives beyond out-of-the-shelf, I'd recommend your own DIY IP camera. A Raspberry Pi (or something similar, such as Orange Pi), an IR camera module, an UPS and a protective shell case are the minimal hardware requirements for a cheap camera built by yourself. You'll have total control over the software, you'll be allowed to choose the OS, the software, every aspect of the camera, something that's not possible with out-of-the-shelf IP cameras.
I've had four cameras running for a few years, streaming over RTSP and powered over ethernet. Works well!
Is this something a complete novice could do, with reasonable effort and cost? If so would you be able to eli5, or point me in the direction of somewhere that does?
Ideally, for my current situation anyway, I'd like to set up a camera indoors by a window (with IR switched off and a proper mount) and be able to see what it sees from a device (phone pc or even dedicated pad if it helps with security) in the other room, and if it can also record and save the video locally for me to be able to access from the remote device, that'd be good too. Privacy and security of the data are top priority.
Every time I start looking in to it my brain gets completely overwhelmed by options and information and scrambles, and I have to back away 😑 I'd love for there to be a way to set this up that was near as straightforward as the privacy abusing options..
I self-host and dabble with this stuff. Im an engineer for more than a decade.
But I really struggled to find a solution that has a really high uptime with minimal maintenance. Ive set up some raspberry pi projects, including cams. Why would I want video to transfer to some company?
But the trade offs were significant. Every few weeks, there was a new problem. Maybe my router. Maybe my internet. Maybe the Pi. Maybe something else. Maybe it's my VPN when I'm trying to dial into the network. Maybe it's my phone app no longer seeing the device. Maybe a update broke it. Maybe God hated me that day.
After six months and spending 2-3 hours a month maintaining it, I burned out and just bought an off-the-shelf solution with a mobile app.
Of course, I only use it for security and it doesn't exist in the house. It grosses me out, but it's been two years of plug-and-play and just working without setup.
It's not too difficult, I figured it out and I eat crayons.
Here's the software I use but there are other options: https://github.com/BreeeZe/rpos - That runs on the camera Pi and provides the video stream.
I use a Pi, a camera module like this https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-high-quality-camera/ and a suitable lens. You can get cheaper camera modules, IR modules, etc.
Also, something like this to power it: https://www.tp-link.com/us/business-networking/omada-switch-unmanaged/ds105gp/ You could just use a regular switch and power the Pi with a power adapter if that works better. My cameras are all ceiling mounted so having one cable for data and power made sense for me.
I use this to split the ethernet into power and data when it reaches the Pi: https://www.amazon.com/UCTRONICS-PoE-Splitter-USB-C-Compliant/dp/B087F4QCTR/130-2310467-3870744
Then I have this running on a Linux VM to collect the camera feeds and display them in a web browser: https://github.com/motioneye-project/motioneye
You'll also need a case, my solution was to buy a metal Pi case and mount the module onto that, feeding the ribbon cable back into the case.
If you decide to go ahead and need help, just ask.
Oh wow, thanks so much for all the info, I really appreciate it! I'm bookmarking you reply and all the links, but it's a bit much for me to process right now lol (I saw your comment about pretty much what I want to set up and just had to ask, fully meaning to get in to it, but it's been a long morning and my brain is now mush)
Just to give you an idea, I've never set up or even used a Pi or used Linux, I've done very basic pc building and troubleshooting, but have no programming knowledge, so when I said novice I meant it 😂 I'm mostly good at following directions as long as they're clear. Are there any manuals that would tell me how to put all the different parts you mentioned together?
I only have the indoor one, but Reolink is fine. Used it as a baby cam. No cloud bs, supports an rtsp stream. App has gone downhill, but due to rtsp I sort of don't care.
The only outdoor camera I have is an Amcrest AD110 doorbell camera and it is ok. Has some network connectivity issues occasionally but a restart seems to fix them. I plan on eventually getting some Amcrest IP8M-T2599EW when my budget allows.
As far as indoor cameras I use 4332027115 and they work very well. Both the AD110 and my indoor cameras are in blue iris and home assistant.
I had one of these years ago. I used it as a baby monitor and got a full refund when I discovered that the camera had security issues that caused the whole internet to be able to watch, pan/tilt, talk back, etc to my (now ex wife) when she was breast feeding.
Axis makes good (the best) IP cams, I use them commercially, they're pretty much the gold standard. Super fucking expensive though so probably not worth it for home use but you might be able to pick up something 2nd hand.
I've had great experience with Axis in the past. However in the past they used to have planned obsolescence where the flash they used had a very limited number of write cycles. With the Linux based OS they run it writes to the flash all the time. This would cause the thing to start dropping writes and misbehave. When ran 24/7 they usually died after about 4 years. The place I worked at just threw them away and replaced them whenever that happened, to not have downtime for cameras. Once I asked if I could have a couple to diagnose the fault and I found out the flash was out of write cycles on all of them. Maybe they are better nowadays, but it was pretty fucked up to see such expensive cameras be destroyed because of a few cents of flash.
I haven't run into that particular issue (I wish I could replace some old ones) but we stream back to a Linux box and then out to cloud storage for archival purposes so maybe we aren't hitting the onboard stuff as hard.
edit: the primary reason we deal with axis is because they're extremely configurable/fixable remotely