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.
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Frigate is popular.
I used to use ZoneMinder, it worked well, but you must be very familiar with onvif, primary/secondary channels, and key frames for it to work well.
I only switched to frigate because of the person/animal detection. It's ok, but it does need some polish in a few areas like event retention, and it could stand some more approachable documentation.
Used Zoneminder for a 20 camera store CCTV setup and can confirm, it's complicated but powerful. I wouldn't use it for less than 4 cams.
The alternative I'd use personally is https://motion-project.github.io/ though. Doesn't make much difference.
I have a Reolink PoE camera. It works fine. As far as I can tell, it only uses the internet to check for updates and set the time, but I have it blocked off anyway. Home Assistant was actually causing it to check for updates, too, so that got disabled.
I don't record, so I can't help you there.
I will say that is a pain to get Home Assistant to display real-time video instead of a slide show.
that's weird i have some reolink cameras and they display fine through home assistant
It displays fine by default, but the image only updates every several seconds. I'm talking about a live video feed, which needs some kind of special frame which has to be bolted onto HA somehow.
you managed to get it in realtime though? may i ask how?
Eh? Shouldn't it be real time already?
this is my configuration:
- camera_view: live
type: picture-glance
entities: []
camera_image: camera.cam_profile000_mainstream
tap_action:
action: none
I am using ONVIF integration for the camera.
Mine even play audio
I haven't, that's the problem. It seems like it's possible, but I've given up trying for the moment.
Any cam with an rtsp stream is fine. Host frigate on your server point it to the cams you can get audio and video and object detection pretty easily. I also recommend taking an extra step and creating a firewall rule to block the cams' inbound/outbound internet traffic.
When I needed this I reached for whatever generic rtmp cameras were well rated. Blocked them from external access (including outgoing!) at the firewall level and used Zoneminder and some custom scripts to monitor.
For hardware, anything that can provide a local rtsp stream is a good place to start. I run cheap and cheerful mix of tapo, unbranded and homebrew esp32 cams. Offload the motion/object detection and alerts to something that can pull in the feeds, and isolate the cams to local network only.
WiFi usually ok, but at least hardwire the power to save future grief.
Using frigate to manage mine, which is running under Homeassistant - another project worth looking up.
A few images, featuring Freddie the visitor:
Tell me more about your homebrew esp32 cams, please!
Ok so the combination is:
And the finished item:
All assembled, they will give a decent enough feed to frigate for the basics. Just don't expect miracles in the resolution or framerate departments. 3fps does fine for my use case of tracking critters.
Gladly. I'll collate a few bits later - time for work.
Thanks, looks cool, frigate certainly seems the way to go.
Dahua and Hikvision have great cameras but of course you shouldn't trust them. Block them at the firewall. I bought mine a few years ago and preferred Hikvision for its better built in webserver for initial configuration.
On the hosting side you run Frigate, Zoneminder or BlueIris (Windows) to control the cameras and record their streams.
@Blue_Morpho @jabeez Huh I preferred Dahau. Thought the interface was nicer and the cameras low light looked way better.
Dahua must have improved their software. I was trying every brand of camera about 8 years ago when I setup my system. The first Dahua I bought required their ActiveX component for Internet Explorer to see the camera output from their web interface!
I agree that Dahua looked better but at the time their web interface was so bad I kept the Hikvisions.
Can we pin one of these posts? The same thing gets asked even few days and the answers don't change nearly that frequently
Sigh, unfortunately not.
You should see the Linux community asking about which distro to use - now that's where a pinned post is needed...
I'm fine with repeating "I use Arch btw"
Me too (btw).
Really? Sorry, didn't see any others going back weeks, you have a link to another I could check out?
I tried to use Shinobi as my PVR for a while but dealt with a lot of usability and stability issues. Switching to Frigate has been much better. Configuration can be a bit difficult but it's rock solid and really great. Plus the home assistant integration is top notch. I've had a lot of luck with Amcrest cameras and also managed to use a cheap Tapo camera within my setup.
I just checked out frigate, and I see it crutches on docker. Anything docker-free?
Zoneminder is an option.
It's been around since before containers were a thing, so fairly stable.
Not used it myself, but when I get around to needing cameras (I'm in a small house in a low crime area), then thats what I'm planning to use.
It has (had?) an integration in MythTv too, so I can see who's a the door whilst watching TV at the same time.
@jabeez@lemmy.today You could use Frigate for the 'feature' set, no? frigate+HA should work very well for the use case. Rest you should be okay with something that does RTSP and feeding that to frigate/HA, no? I remember researching something about this last year, and found that Reolink IIRC offers that.