51–60 of 180 posts
Having had cameras and a couple of breakin attempts for a while now my biggest must-have for these sort of things is: - reliable human detection (not just motion) - integration via some sort of API or MQTT etc. This project appears to have no "smarts" in terms of human detection nor APIs which is a shame. Just pure motion detection on its own is ok, but you're going to pick up all sorts of things that you don't care…
Seeing all this focus on security I thought you might be interested in the fact that there are cameras out there with Secure Boot, Axis is one manufacturer I know of that focuses on this feature.
Having had cameras and a couple of breakin attempts for a while now my biggest must-have for these sort of things is: - reliable human detection (not just motion) - integration via some sort of API or MQTT etc. This project appears to have no "smarts" in terms of human detection nor APIs which is a shame. Just pure motion detection on its own is ok, but you're going to pick up all sorts of things that you don't care…
But in your case I could recommend Frigate, it's got decent detection that can be accelerated with a Google coral TPU. It also integrates really well with home assistant, you could use it for the light triggering you mention.
I personally use Shinobi but it's not really great and constantly asking for money. Especially if you want to use the app.
"Privastead uses the Google Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM)" I'm am totally unfamiliar with this, but what level of concern that theGoogs pulls the plug on this service about the time you gain traction?
Years ago, I used Motion[0] on a pi, laptop and desktop, configured to sftp the motion-activated images to a remote server. I could check the files upon alert and view them in rapid succession as 'video'. It was a clunky setup but worked, aside from the vulnerability of the computers being physically accessible to unwanted visitors - but for this I'd use nohup & physlock to at least prevent quick access.
This relatively free setup had limitations, mostly due to my lack of skills and resources, but it provided significant consolation and I'd bring it with me while traveling, eg using the laptop setup for hotel rooms, etc. The fact that the great Bezosauron et al wasn't involved, did please me.
I've been wishing for a self hosted alternative to cloud cameras. My house was recently robbed and it was incredibly frustrating to know that criminals were literally in my house but not be able to see them due to the general crappiness of modern big tech software. Seems silly to pay to upload all my video of my own house to who knows where and struggle to download it back with absurdly sluggish proprietary software…
They can do that to your networking gear though but by then hopefully their image has already made it to the cloud.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you did have a cloud camera system in place but it didn’t record them, or you don’t have one because all available options are shitty?
I do (Nest), and it did record them, but the shitty app made it really hard to see what was happening. Takes forever for the app to load, and it can't show all the cameras at once, and tapping into each camera shows another loading spinner, and then seeking through time is frustratingly slow and imprecise. Then there's the split between old cameras in one app and new cameras in another because Google can't be bothere…
Unfortunately that prompted to police to be less than helpful (they considered it vandalism instead of a burglary and didn't even take prints). And because they didn't enter the house my cameras didn't see their faces so I couldn't try to track them down on my own either. But at least my stuff was ok.
I've been wishing for a self hosted alternative to cloud cameras. My house was recently robbed and it was incredibly frustrating to know that criminals were literally in my house but not be able to see them due to the general crappiness of modern big tech software. Seems silly to pay to upload all my video of my own house to who knows where and struggle to download it back with absurdly sluggish proprietary software…
I recommend either Ubiquiti or Reolink cameras, both are power-over-Ethernet. Both offer an app that allows connecting back to your equipment. UI will require their Protect software running on one of their local platforms in your house with storage on 1 or more disk drives, while Reolink offers direct storage on microSD on the camera itself, capped at 256GB.