Hello selfhosters!
I have what is hopefully a simple ask. I am looking for some outdoor cameras for my sister, who is not at all tech savvy. I am, to an extent, and I’d like to get her set up with a small, remotely-manageable system to view and record the outside of her home. I’d wager there’s a plethora of selfhost software that can be run on a number of systems (I’m thinking something cheap like a Raspberry Pi), to connect to an external HDD for camera storage.
I’m also looking for camera suggestions for this purpose. Wi-Fi cameras are ideal, since we don’t have the means to run ethernet for PoE.
Thank you for your time, and I hope you all have a wonderful week :)
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I will say, even WiFi cameras need power run to them, and I’m glad my days are over for running around on a ladder every week changing out the batteries for my mom. Running PoE makes life easier in the long run.
Even the camera that came with its own small solar panel sucked. Camera would drain battery faster then it would charge, shutdown when low, and slowly recharge back up, but you still need to climb up to turn it back on.
Wifi cameras don’t run exclusively on battery. Most run on 5V from a USB wall wart.
Commenting so I can remember to check back for any suggestions. I’ve basically run into this problem:
If another kind soul comes through with a good suggestion, I’ll try to remember to tag you! There’s got to be something out there.
Anything that can be flashed with Thingino firmware. Give that a shot.
I have no ties to this project - I just think it’s really cool.
If this does what it says it’ll do, this is ABSOLUTELY the answer
Wow that’s an awesome project! Thanks for sharing, now I can get a camera that’s inexpensive, has everything I want and doesn’t require malware to be installed on my phone/network!
That’s a real hero move, and I appreciate it.
Look into Wyze cameras and Thingino firmware. I just found out about the latter, went ahead and bought a Wyze Cam v3 and flashed it with Thingino. Works well in HA. Haven’t started on Frigate yet, but that’s in the works now, too.
Well, there was supposed to be the new PineCam from Pine64, but apparently it was never released?
I think I’m just gonna get some Pi Zeros + cameras and just roll my own. Probably use the NoIR versions and some cheap IR illuminators. Feed those into Zoneminder.
Bonus points if I can find some old CCTV cameras, gut them, and fit the pi camera to those optics.
Just a quick comment that you might want to check out scrypted and its ability to manage a collection of cameras.
Last I looked into this Frigate was the most robust path to take, they recommend cameras that are about $50-$100 each but in my playing around I connected a Yi camera ($10) with custom firmware.
That said it was all a bit over my head and I had trouble connecting it to home assistant and gave up
I would love a follow up post with whatever setup you go with!
I have a frigate setup. I run it through Docker and I even have the Coral AI processor chip hooked up. Which is pretty neat, runs local pattern recognition for people, annimals, etc. I use generic IP cams on their own network. I think pretty much anything that supports RTSP would work. Then hooked up to HA via MQTT, again all in docker. With the coral, I only get notifications if it actually detects a person. The false positives are extremely rare. And I use Tailscale for access from outside the LAN
That’s cool, so with the AI chip it can recognize individuals people and pets? Just wondering how you prevent it from alerting you for well, you.
Unfortunately not quite so good. Maybe there exists a model that can do facial recognition. But the model I have loaded on mine just spits out “dog”, or “person”, or “car”. The false-positives I was referring to it not having, is what you’d typically get with a pixel-based motion detection camera. Where if it sees a leaf on a tree move, it alerts you.
Mine, at least that leaf needs to look convincingly like a person.
You can read more about the Coral at https://coral.ai/models/
+1 for frigate in a docker container. You can run it on a pi. If you want object/person detection (which helps a lot in alerting/notfiying), then a coral usb accelerator is also a good add on to the pi. Lastly tailscale for remote management. Camera wise I prefer amcrest, but reolink are also good. Wifi can be finicky, but will work as long as you have signal. You will still likely need a power source since battery cameras don’t last long at all.
Reolink sells reasonably priced PoE camera and NVR kits. Check their official store on eBay for deals. Last I checked it was all local, no cloud BS. I’d still isolate it though.
This is not inexpensive ($500-1300+ easily depending on number of and quality of cameras) but it’s what I use and can recommend
Also no cloud with reolink is an asterisk situation. Out of the box with the reolink app for several of their cameras it will contact reolink servers for things like notifications. However you can config with app and then never use again. If you have some of the fancier cameras like the e2 pro or whatever the notification processing is thankfully not server sided but occurs on the camera so you can roll it into home assistant and do everything locally
To OP keep in mind this gets computationally expensive as well depending on your goals. If you just want 1-3 720p streams in the home assistant app then a pi is probably fine, especially if it’s like a pi 5. But if you want to encrypt those streams and forward them to homebridge so that less tech savvy users in your home can just view the streams on the home app in their iphone, you have like 10+ streams that are 4k, etc you’ll find the pi will choke and it may make sense to offload to a more powerful server or NVR (but if you want the homebridge thing even the nvr won’t save you)
Reolink includes a cloud service but it’s not required. They do save video locally on camera, but you connect the camera and mobile app to their cloud service for authentication , config, and viewing.
I would hesitate to buy another realink camera. I recently bought an eo2 pro so I could keep an eye on my dogs while I was working. The thought was to just have it open on my second screen but in a recent firmware update they disabled the http and https capabilities. Also no native Linux app so I could only use it on the app on my phone. I did find a github with all the firmware back ports but that behavior is pretty scummy imo
I’ll be fucked if I ever use a camera app only. I need to set my network to black hole outgoing traffic from the one reolink camera I have before I plug it back in.
Also no native Linux app so I could only use it on the app on my phone.
You can use their web interface to view/control certain models on your local network: https://support.reolink.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003981973-How-to-Remotely-Access-Reolink-Cameras-NVRs-via-a-Web-Browser/
I have the Reolink Home Hub (doesn’t support all my Reolink cameras, but enough), and I’m able to use the browser interface on Linux no problem. Of course, the app is more feature rich, but that depends on your needs, too.
I’m sure you can even access this interface through the net via remote proxy or something similar.
but in a recent firmware update they disabled the http and https capabilities
Yeah, they suck with their firmware. One of my cameras was locked out… literally unable to view, playback, or control it until I got in touch with Reolink tech support so they could force an update through. It took several days and a lot of effort to clear that up. Not cool!
There is some great resources here
https://ipcamtalk.com/wiki/ip-cam-talk-cliff-notes/
Unfortunately the average security enthusiast is a frothing conservative but they tend to keep their politics to a few dedicated threads, they are very helpful other than that.
If you want good performance in the dark keep your sensor size in the green on this chard
I currently run frigate on my server and just add cameras I find with the right sensor ratio for a good price. I have a couple of older 2mp wiz nets that would have been $500-700 new that I got for $70 each that see outside at night great.
Look for a Dahua or Hikvision DVR and cameras. Put the DVR (and cameras if they are IP) on its own isolated subnet that doesn’t have any internet access. Use a VPN to access it remotely.
Don’t buy them from amazon, buy from one of their authorized distributors. I learned that the hard way when I ended up with a grey market camera with no warranty or firmware updates.
WiFi cameras are much easier to jam if someone wants to break in without being recorded. Don’t use them if you can run a cable.
I set up, many years ago, a RPI1 with USB cameras attached. Running the software “Motion”. I put Zerotier on it and made a little web page that shows the cameras. I could have the page show any USB cameras on my network, but I think the RPI1 is too low powered for more than two.
Motion will record, or only record when motion is detected and there’s a whole lot of options.
Mine is still running almost ten years later, with only a small upgrade to the cameras.
Dahua where top of the class, unfortunately hard to find today. I run like 8 of them.
Reolink maybe, but own one and not really at par with Dahua.
If anybody knows who is the successor to dahua, let me know.
Chaper than that, sorry, it’s going to be shit.
Dahua is still a top manufacturer, but does not focus on selling to individual consumers.
In the US, you will find Dahua cameras being sold most often by Amcrest and Lorex.
a simple ask
Remember, when you’re off the car lot, the word is ‘request’ or ‘question’.
Does she have regular 12 volt doorbell?
Get her wired doorbell camera this way no batteri s needed. And a large sd card.
I use tapo and it’s fine.I hadn’t heard of Tapo, and while TP-Link scares me a little, it looks like it could also be integrated into Home Assistant for viewing. Does the camera record over the first-recorded data when the SD Card gets full? Do you use the TP-Link/Tapo app for local management? Thanks for your response.
Home Assistant for viewing
Heads up: by default, HA does not show real-time, full-framerate video - just a snapshot that updates every 10 seconds or whatever. As with all things open source, there is a way to fix it, but you have to faff around. I haven’t bothered yet, but it’s on my list.
Thanks for this info.
I wouldn’t bother with a home assistant if your sister is non technical.
I use both xeoma with raw rtsp stream and tapo app. any app that uses rtsp should workJust get her SD card and use a tapo app.
I have a couple Tapo cameras set up with HA, I had to use the tapo app initially to set up but once they’re set up you can ditch it and run the system entirely locally. I saw someone had a way to configure them locally too, but it wasn’t simple enough for me to bother and I was fine with the one time step.
You need a firewall and optimally a separate wifi network for this kind of thing, because they pretty much all call home. I’m happy enough with Reolink, but mine are PoE. I haven’t set up a NVR for them, just scrypted -> HomeKit Secure Video. I don’t know if you can set up the Reolink NVR in a secure fashion, and get notifications etc.
Because you want outside of home availability, self hosting now means punching a hole in the firewall for VPN or implementing Cloudflare tunnels or Tailscale or something. That’s where the handy cloudy apps come in.
I specified locally hosted/managed because we’d like to avoid clouds and subscriptions. I don’t really want to divulge details but this is mostly for home security against a specific individual, and this person might be inclined to attempt logins into a cloud service. From my end I’d just set up a wireguard tunnel and us it to remote into some kind of server/NVR at my sister’s house.
I built this system for my mother with an old business pc running frigate. I used an old wifi router with ap mode available in the firmware that is only for the cameras. It’s a simple way to make sure the cameras won’t have internet access without relying on whatever router they may have. I added a second Ethernet port to the business PC because I had the parts, but for one or two cams you could theoretically do all over wifi. Install wireguard so you can manage it remotely. Then decide if you want to bother forwarding the ports and getting a domain setup, or if local only viewing is good enough.
For cameras, I used these amcrest ASH22-W which are good enough for the price. 1080p for $33
https://www.ebay.com/itm/314660333877
One thing to remember with these cameras- mounting them high gives you a bigger field of view, wipes out any possibilities of identification. The frigate models also don’t do as well. Doorbell cameras are better for that.
Not the cheapest solution but the best to remotely manage would be some basic ubiquiti stuff. You don’t need the highest end cameras and could get away with only adding the NVR and cheapest POE switch option.
Wyze Cam v3 or Wyze Floodlight Cam v1 (both rated IP65) running open-source Thingino firmware. These can be used by pretty much any NVR software running on a cheap off-lease office PC (Dell Optiplex or similar).
I’m in the process of figuring out my own NVR solution with Frigate. I just bought a Wyze Cam v3 this weekend and immediately flashed it with Thingino as a proof of concept, mostly for myself. There’s lots of functionality, including the fact that it can still record locally to SD; all I need to do now is figure out how to replicate most of Ring’s functionality within Frigate and HA to meet the “wife approval factor”. It helps that she’s already 100% onboard with HA, so that’s pretty nice.
Home Assistant already offers remote access through Nabu Casa (everyone using HA really should consider subscribing, it all goes towards financing HA development), and with the Frigate integration, the cameras can be remotely managed as well (I think… I should check that).
