I’d like to set up three or four cameras on the exterior of my house, but I’m not sure where to start with this project. Ideally, these cameras would get power over Ethernet and record to a hard drive in my house that I could access remotely with a decent user interface. If the system could notify me when movement is detected that would be ideal as well. I don’t like the idea of using a Google, Amazon, or similar product because I don’t want to pay a subscription and I want to have control of the footage. What are you using that more or less accomplishes what I’ve described?
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Is it normal for people to set up surveillance cameras in their own home? Are break-ins that common? I just assume no-one will bother with my shitty flat.
Around here in New Jersey, yes. People typically replace their doorbell switches with camera devices from Google or Amazon. People even set them up at their apartment doors. Dedicated NVR systems are also commonly installed in houses. In my case, I am not especially concerned about break-ins. Break-ins are rare in my neighborhood and I don’t think a camera system would do much to prevent one anyway. There have just been some nuisances over the past year including my bird feeder camera getting swiped and someone repeatedly letting their dog poop right next to my house without cleaning it up. I’d like to be able to have recordings of problems like that so I can maybe do something about it. Also, I like the idea of being able to check on things when I’m away.
Not in my area, but there are plenty of areas where not having a security system is a liability. Most of my neighbors have Ring doorbells, yet the only breakin was ~20 years ago and it was a kid in the neighborhood that everyone knew. Oh, and we had one parked car get hit by a drunk driver, probably a neighbour as well.
Property crime just isn’t something that happens here. I’m in neither the poor area nor rich area, and my city has a higher average income than much of the state, but doesn’t have any absurdly rich people, those all live in the next town over with the actual rich people (not the richest in the state, but probably the richest in the county). I don’t even think there’s a good place to buy drugs here, we’re sandwiched between two larger cities, which is probably where people go for their fix.
If you’re going to burgle someone, you’d either go where more people park on the street (everyone has garages here), to a wealthier neighborhood (we’re pretty middle class), or somewhere with lots single people/dinks. Two blocks in any direction would be much better for burglary than my neighborhood, and any neighboring city would be better. We even had the sheriff in our neighborhood until recently (lots of extra police patrols), and the new one is a couple blocks away in the next city.
Nothing happens here. Well, except one murder suicide recently (father killed his wife and himself), we have our fair share of mental illness from keeping up with the Joneses. But property crime just doesn’t happen. Good luck to someone trying to find something to steal in my house, everything has been wrecked by my kids.
Motion sensor flood lights. Its all you need.
I tried a bunch, zoneminder, motioneye, frigate, etc., before finally settling in AgentDVR. It offers a fair bit of flexibility via MQTT and “just worked” with my PTZ camera.
Home assistant with door sensors. Doors open and closing after normal hours send alerts to telegram. Likewise for any doors that are left open or sensor batteries that are running low. It also lets me know if any of my camera video feeds go offline.
Eufy doorbell. I don’t love the company but it’s cheap and stores my video encrypted locally. No monthly fees. It’s AI is very good at letting me know that someone came up to my door without pressing the doorbell.
Reolink cameras. I don’t love the company, The cameras are vaguely compatible with what I’m doing, put oh my god are they cheap, video quality is good and the night vision is really good.
Blue Iris for camera server running on an old laptop with an Nvidia card. I’m going to be swapping this out for frigate sometime the next year.
I probably have 300 hours into setting up Blue Iris. I have tweaked it and tweaked it and tweaked it. When any significant changes happen in zones that I’ve hand drawn for more than 4 seconds, Blue Iris will send a telegram message with a copy of the image with a orange rectangle around the change. My main street camera records 24x7, only saving frames that change in between, I’m in a rather dense community and people come to me for footage not infrequently. The rest of my cameras only record significant events.
Right now, my biggest problem is false alarms. What I really want is to be notified if someone is in my driveway even briefly. Likewise on my back porch or my basement steps. But I don’t want to be notified if it’s my dog or a piece of trash or the beams of some headlights.
I’m planning on moving to Frigate with a coral tpu and probably having it notify me with NTFY, has telegram’s pretty bad at actually sending thumbnails to my watch.
