I'm using Reolink E1 Zoom cameras. My router's firewall keeps them offline, and I manage everything through HomeAssistant. Very happy with my experience on a budget
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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I looked up this camera and the reviews for the outdoor model with night vision seem pretty promising. Can I ask how you are using your camera(s)? Like do you have a local server to record the data? Can you access them with a cell phone without using any special apps?
I'm using them inside. I record to microsd on each camera, and use homeassistant to view them. I'm eventually going to build a NVR for them
Ah gotcha, so you're not trying to to live-view the feed on them. Thanks for the camera suggestion anyway, the brand still seems to be decent enough even if they don't support Linux.
I got a dahua put it on its own vlan. It is powered and connected via Poe. I stream an rtsp stream to frigate for detection and frigate restreams to home assistant.
If you want a WiFi solution and a constant life stream you may experience degraded performance on your other devices but you have to check youself.
I was considering POE as an option, and this camera does have an ethernet port (although I can't tell yet if that's only for configuration or if the video will also stream over it directly). I don't really need a constant stream and this camera also provides motion options so maybe it would only send video as needed (although during a heavy storm all of the cameras would probably fire at once).
Afaik the reolink homeassistant integration supports live feeds. The integration seems pretty solid with a lot of features, though I haven't tested them myself (I'll probably get one soon to replace mine).
Not parent, but Zoneminder locally with the zmninja app works pretty well. VPN allows remote access, so it is slightly complicated but not too bad.
I played with Zoneminder years ago but would like to get something set up for home security. I have a full internal network plus servers and about 60TB of free storage space so there's really no limitations to what I could set up. Ideally I'd like to just hit a local IP from a cell phone to check the cameras (and remote access isn't really needed), so that's where I was trying to go with my previous questions.
The software side seems easy enough, but finding compatible IP cameras has been stumping me. I see the Reolink 4K TrackMix wifi cameras on Amazon for $130, and other than a few hiccups it looks likely that this piece of hardware would work, unless anyone knows of any "gotchas" that I've missed? Otherwise I'll do a bit more research and then order one of the cameras to see how far I can get with it.
The only gotcha I can think of is the 4k bandwidth, better make sure you can handle more than one camera on your network.
Good point, POE might be the only choice then. Although these cameras do provide x264 and x265 compression so that would save quite a lot.
Esp32 cam and. Usb c or micro . Works well with motioneye.
I do love me some ESP32! I did not think about doing this.. I am sure there are stats on power consumption. I think making it outdoor/weatherproof would be the hardest part.
Do you have any that are solar? or outdoors?
Reolink and Zoneminder has been working fine. Put the cameras in a vlan, block their access except to the ZM server, you can use any IP camera.
Are the Reolink wireless? What models? Do you have outdoor ones? Im looking for outdoor.
Yes
No, POE. Just the round black ones, I forget the model.
I don't know anything about Blink, but for self hosted camera stuff, Frigate is wonderful.
What wireless cameras are you using. I too love frigate.
I have 2 Amcrest cameras. One PoE that's super solid, and an inexpensive WiFi camera. I ended up buying another wifi access point just for the camera, and ever since it has been very solid. More a symptom of my house having tons of IoT devices than a problem with the camera, really.
You said you already have Blink cams, what about this thing? https://www.amazon.com/Blink-Sync-Module-2/dp/B084RQ6MHJ/ Stick in a flash drive and it's kinda like a DVR.
Ideal setup would be a proper DVR with proper IP cameras. Ethernet would be better but wireless is doable. I don't have enough knowledge to make a proper recommendation but people seem to like Reolink as an affordable option: https://reolink.com/us/product/rlk12-500wb4/
If you don't want to set up a DVR or spend all that money, there are plenty of cheap cameras that write to a microSD card, you could just buy a few of those and buy some massive SD cards that would allow you to record weeks worth of motion events. But of course reviewing all that footage will be a pain without a central DVR. I like my Tapo cameras, and Wyze is another popular brand.
That is what I am currently doing but the usb port on the unit is 2.0 so its dog slow!
I'm not familiar with Amazon blink cameras. I use a reoLink and a Raspberry Pi for two cameras that go to a dedicated Zone Minder NVR server which is firewalled off from any internet access or access to other networks within my house.
reolink was pretty easy, blocking all wan traffic is very important - I'm sure like any store-bought solution. the raspberry pi is low quality and obviosuly a diy solution, but is ok. zoneminder is one of a handful of open source nvr softwares. It's not great in my opinion. I don't think it uses resources efficiently and it's a bit of a pain to set up initially. But from what i read all of these opensource nvr apps have their quirks.
i read good things about amcrest cameras
curious, why aren't you able to self-host your blink cameras; are they ip cameras and is there an rtp stream you can capture?
The blink cameras are battery powered. 100% wireless (no network or power cables) . Only trigger on motion or if activated for live stream.
I’m working on something that you could use to build one out of a raspberry pi. Or an old laptop. Or a mini pc and webcam. Basically anything that runs Linux and has a camera.
https://github.com/sciactive/soteria
It uploads video to a WebDAV server. I’m designing it to work well with my WebDAV server, Nephele. Nephele supports encryption at rest and Amazon S3 compatible servers.
It’s not going to be as feature rich as other solutions, but it’s killer feature is that you can watch your footage even if all of your cameras are offline, but Amazon/Google/whoever can’t ever watch your footage.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| IP | Internet Protocol |
| IoT | Internet of Things for device controllers |
| NVR | Network Video Recorder (generally for CCTV) |
| PoE | Power over Ethernet |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
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