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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I would review https://docs.frigate.video/frigate/hardware
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.
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 use Reolink cams with BlueIris software. None of it has access to the internet. Works fine.
I also use this exact setup, works great!
Reolink looks like a solid answer, thanks.
Do additional research on the models you’re interested in. Unfortunately they don’t all play nice with 3rd party software but the ones that use open standards are good bang for the buck.
Can vouch for this. Been using a bunch of Reolink cameras with BI for years. Be careful with Reolink, though. Some cameras work fine and some don’t at all, unless you use some middleman software, which is still hit or miss. Ran into this recently with a camera I got for my garage.
Edit: The Reolink Lumus line is NOT compatible. They don’t broadcast rtsp.
The wireless wifi Reolink cameras won’t work the way OP wants, only the poe ones have rtsp
I have a mix of wifi and POE cameras and they all work for me.
2 of my Reolinks are on Wi-Fi and work fine. It depends on the model.
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.
I already hate Ubiquiti’s Unifi networking that I got myself stuck with. I won’t do any of their other products.
Whys that? Stability has improved the last few years, and the value cant be beat with UDM pro and even their lowest cost camera options.
(if this comment reads like I feel slighted it’s because I do)
Their networking ecosystem is very focused on a specific class of prosumer and once in it can be very difficult to upgrade out of that bubble to toys that have more growth capacity, from both a tech and learning perspective.
I have an advanced network with dynamic routing (iBGP and OSPF), as well as several VPN protocols for both site to site and access VPN. I also have redundant layer 3 gateways everywhere in the main site. Ubiquiti has had the tech to make redundant layer 3 for YEARS, but they refuse to and instead stop updating useful product lines that have more features and instead focus on gimmick products that have flashy marketing campaigns. Even on one of their more feature-ful routers (ER-4), I have to use OpenVPN gateway servers because Ubiquiti doesn’t support plugins that I can get on *sense for full mesh VPNs.
I can really only use them at layer 2 because once I hit my network core I need redundancy protocols at L2 (stacking or vPC/MLAG) to maintain a system that can keep vSAN and Ceph happy.
I’m really glad I went the *sense route instead of taking a chance on a USG-3 and depending on the custom json file to load OSPF, because that’s a feature they removed from newer gateways iirc.
Then there’s the second option I provided with Zoneminder and Amcrest cameras.
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.
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.
This might not be 100% what you’re looking for but I am running Reolink cameras and a Qnap NAS with QVR PRO. The reolink cameras are accessible through IP and some protocol I can’t remember right now. So you might be able to get them to work with your setup
Using zone minder with reolink cameras. I’ve been happy with it so far.
You can use Zoneminder with pretty much any cameras that work with Linux.
I’ve been running https://demo.scrypted.app for a few months. It’s pretty slick.
Yeah it looks pretty slick but not so much slicker than Frigate that I will pay to be in the beta. :)
more info would be nice
UniFi
Nah, their software is so infuriating to work with. Even when an SSD it falls to load video clips. Often I have to restart unifi protect on the console or even ssh into it to do and apt update/upgrade to get it working again.
Self hosted might be a little better, but I’m not holding my breath.
I personally recommend against UniFi for security now. Their software just isn’t great anymore, and you can’t really “selfhost” the protect. You have to have one of their proprietary boxes hosting the protect software. I’m not 100% against that - but I was not aware of that when I bought the first camera and had to buy the box.
As for the software, it’s honestly just buggy and laggy. I’m in their system now, but if I could do it all again I’d look at others.
I’m somewhat stuck on Unifi for wifi APs and Routers, because all the other consumer-grade devices can’t handle the number of small IoT devices I’ve got. Netgear and Asus just lose connections with ESP devices and refuse to let them connect after about a dozen. The commercial grade stuff, in addition to being too expensive, is all rack mounted, high power draw and noisy af.
Aside from the fact that my stuff seems stable on the Ubiquiti hardware, I hate the products. The interface is terrible, Unifi insists on hiding the advanced networking behind a halfass gui, the SSH console lacks half the features of even that terrible gui, and every time i try to create a new routed network, the wifi devices stop connecting.
I use unifi for wifi because honestly I like the dashboard.
But… for anything layer 3, I’m using MikroTik. It’s extremely powerful without actually running your own router, and many are Poe as well. I’m running a RB5009 which is overkill for me.
I chose RB5009 because it runs DoH, ZeroTier, sub interfaces, it’s rack mountable, passively cooled, poe capable, and can handle up to 2.5gb symmetrical. I just wish they had 2 x SFPs so I can use a full 10gb WAN
Was about to mention Mikrotik. They even have a 100GBit switch for under $800 (CRS504-4XQ-IN).
You have to have one of their proprietary boxes hosting the protect software
This was the biggest bummer for me that convinced me not to get into the Unify ecosystem. I already have a robust storage solution at home, I just want to point the cameras to a docker container running on my host with all the storage.
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.
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!
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
Eufy? With the hub it’s all kept local I believe. Even without I think you can get a week with a 128 card.
