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Basic self hosted security camera system?
I keep seeing recommendations for systems with object detection and whatnot that requires hardware that's essentially unobtainable at this time. This is beyond what I need right now.
What I have now is a really cheap system from Amazon. It was like $180 at least 5 years ago for the DVR and 4 wireless cameras. It just records to a dedicated DVR that sits in my rack from wireless cameras. The recording quality is "good enough" to identify people and vehicles, but getting video footage is awful. I can't access the footage outside of the crappy poorly-translated-from-Chinese web interface. I also have problems recovering recordings. I can't tell if it's not recording things or if I just can't find them because of the crappy search function.
What I would like is something that can take a feed from some sort of generic, relatively affordable network camera and record it on my server where I can access it with or without a web interface. Preferably something that can run in a VM.
Does such a thing exist?
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Mouser still has Corals in stock if you hurry. Their stock went from hundreds last week to 50 now, so move fast.
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Coral/G650-04686-01
A bare metal (or VM) install of zoneminder on Linux works really well and is zero cost. It can seem a little complicated to configure, but the documentation is actually pretty good and worth reading for basic config.
Unfortunately the Docker versions are shit-shows, stay away from them.
As someone who used zoneminder extensively in the past. I'd recommend setting up Frigate on docker. Its a breeze, works out of the box with a simple yaml configuration file, and has support for really stellar object recommendation if you want it.
This is just partially true.
I started with dlandon and then updated zoneminder inside the container keeping a local image. Using v1.36.33 without problems.
If you want just continuous recording, you can configure Frigate or Zoneminder to do the job. I'd recommend the former for getting started.
It'll create a crapload of data that you'll have to store somewhere, but it works.
MotionEye
Frigate all the way. With v0.12 it got quite stable and really good
I have developed a python app in docker which records RTSP camera streams. You can run it in VM as well but docker seems more efficient. It has only one function; to record camera streams. Its intentionally barebones, so no web interface but you can access recordings using another docker app, filebrowser. You can have a look at the EZ-NVR project here.
I've been using zoneminder for years, tried other solutions, the only competitor Is imho motioneye.
It's not the best, not the simplest, not the prettiest but It does the job well.
It runs in two docker containers: zm + mysql on an rpi 4 4gb
Two webcams ezviz, about 60€ each
Resource usage depends mostly on type of use.
Mine Is motion record, so when there Is motion It records a video, about 50% CPU usage by its processes.
About 1k events per week, 10gb on disk, push notifications based on time with pushover.
It Just works, and it's fully customizable.
I’ve also heard of Shinobi but haven’t yet gotten into this. Blue Iris seems to be what everyone says is best but it’s Windows only which I don’t like. I needed to expand my server to fit more drives as I didn’t want to record video to my array and want a dedicated drive to store and record the security feeds.
Shinobi is nice, but mobile app is premium subscription.
I had it in past, now i am running ubiquiti, bought them on secondhand market, you can selfhost their nvr protect on arm processor for free.
It’s not self hosted, but I’d consider a Synology NAS. It comes with the excellent Surveillance Station software at no charge and it will work with just about any ONVIF compatible camera. You can save recordings limited only by disk space, and you can even use the NAS to self host other things.
This is self hosted, just not open source, right?