Alternatively, if someone wants cameras (say, for monitoring of a property) but without a subscription or privacy concerns, does anyone have a recommendation?

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walrus01 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Reolink cameras, but don't give them access to the internet, you can run a local ntp server for time sync

Frigate for video recording, even if you use none of the GPU based object detection features it does a fine job of recording and live view from a browser.

The machine running frigate may need to be some kind of private VPN client for remote access depending on how your ISP is setup.

Frigate will really work with a huge selection of random h264 rtsp stream cameras. You can use a mix of high end high quality expensive cameras and cheap ones to monitor less important spots.

Reolink doorbell camera will work natively in frigate with bidirectional audio via html5/webrtc in a browser to listen and talk to people.

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taylor-tg 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I'll second the endorsement for the Reolink doorbells. Great quality and build.

I've never been able to get their general security cameras to work reliably. Between poor uptime, frequent need for power cycling, and inconsistent stream quality, I'd choose something else unless you already own them or their particular form factors suit your needs.

	▲	swhite237 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Reolink POE cameras and POE doorbells paired to the Reolink NVR are high quality and super reliable. Price wise it is a long break even if the goal is to just save money with no subscription, but you get a much more professional setup. NVR with basic camera bundle will be $450-$800, then another $200 or so for doorbells or some larger cameras with lights. Professional install is around $120 a camera. If anyone goes this route save yourself a ton of trouble and ignore 95% of the articles and forum posts telling you to use Scrypted and HomeBridge. It is trash and won’t work well. The best way to link the NVR to the Internet and other smart devices is with HomeAssistant. Everything else is trash. It actually works, and HomeAssistant exposed motion detection alerts as their own sensors. The vehicle alerts, people alerts, animal alerts, and more generic motion alerts all pipe in as if they are their own device. You can easily combine this with some super cheap smart light switches and a speaker or two to make your own alarm system. The NVR has EXCELLENT person, animal, and vehicle detection and differentiation. Very few false positives, and I have never seen them miss something even under the worst conditions. We had a thunderstorm last night and they picked up vehicles on the road through heavy rain and flashes of lightning. Do not bother connecting the Reolink mobile app to the the Internet. It is perfectly serviceable for when you are on the same network, it’s just anywhere else. Just pipe video out with HomeAssistant.

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taylor-tg 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've had really great success with the TP-Link Tapo cameras. I have a number of their models, and they're all rock solid. Both in build, and image quality.

What drew me to them is that they have RTSP (and ONVIF for their PTZ models) built in, so you're not beholden to their app. I use them paired with Frigate, but they also all include an SD card slot for local recording.

They have on-camera detection for people, pets, cars, etc. No obligation to use their cloud services (I have them on an IoT VLAN with internet access disabled, and have never had an issue). If you're not using your own NVR then you'll probably have to keep them internet accessible for remote viewing.

Cameras have been in the Texas elements for a few years now and the streams look like they did brand new. I'd say my only complaint about them is that the mounts are oddly designed, but perfectly usable as is. 3D printing largely makes that a non-issue, though.

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dopamean 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've been looking into UniFi (Ubiquiti) and it seems like a decent option.

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tamimio 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

- get a cheapo chinese camera supported by thingino firmware

- install FW.

- extra: install open source NVR like frigade and connect these cameras, preferably over ethernet not wifi.

- extra extra: have a separate VLAN for these cameras.

Now you have a secure isolated system. If you want a remote viewer, you can have a vpn tunnel to your nvr to access it from anywhere in the world.

It’s not a perfect system but way more secure than anything consumer out there

	▲	stragies 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Great Project! I just wish, their HDB would enable filtering on which cameras have Ethernet, and/or the data-lines connected on the USB-Power-Plug, so that I could equip them with USB NIC (for the ones that don't have ethernet), and then run them with a POE-Splitter. Having the data pins connected would also enable lots of other nifty use-cases. Also, have they managed to forward port the drivers to a recent mainline kernel in the meantime, or are they still on ancient vendor SDK kernel versions?