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Need to buy a surveillance camera with 24/7 recording. Need help / recommendations.
nqservices
Member
Hi all,
I know this is a hosting forum and not a surveillance forum. But I need to buy a (cheap) surveillance security cam for my office and I’m hoping someone here can help me. I have never bought one, so I’m a complete newbie on this.
Since it’s a small office I just need 1 cam, but it must have the following features:
a) Record day and night (night vision)
b) Automatic and continuous recording 24/7 to a external hard drive or NAS. Ideally it should save all video to my own external server hosted on a datacenter using something like nextcloud, ftp or any other software.
Until now I have just found (cheap) cameras that save the video to its own SD Card or just allow to see live video on a phone app. I don’t want that. As said before I need to save 24/7 video to an external location.
Any recommendation?
Note: Since I’m in Europe, the store where I will buy must also be in Europe. Something like Ebay.co.uk, Amazon.es or any other online shop located in Europe.
Thanks!
Comments
Netgear arlo's has a CVR add-on // for 30 days of 24/7 CVR $119 per year or $12/month per camera.
Arlo saves to cloud unfortunately, but you can grab it at anytime.
I highly recommend the arlo pro 2 / Only downside is no local saving unless you download it from the cloud.
https://github.com/samtap/fang-hacks
Those XiaoFang cameras are less than $20 on AliExpress and most NASes should have rtsp recorder (e.g. Synology). It supports night vision out of the box and it works pretty well, but not sure if it works with the fang hacks.
Thanks for the suggestion! It seems a great camera and but its too expensive. Also I'm looking to save to my own cloud / server.
Here's what I do. Get any ip camera you like the look/price of, then install zoneminder on a server for recording and motion detection. It's essentially compatible with all ip cameras.
I have a couple of analog cameras (with a/v) and I got two of the cheapest av to usb adaptors off eBay, plugged into a raspberry pi running motioneyeos - which converts them basically into ip cameras.
But zoneminder and motioneye are great tools if you like to self host.
Thanks. But I'm looking for something that can work "out-of-the-box" without having to make firmware changes or any other hacks.
FishEye Panoramic Mini Lamp IR CCTV
Instar IN-6001HD
Any cheap ONVIF IP cam coupled with Kerberos.io or Shinobi should do the trick. For this solution you will need a Raspberry Pi or a PC to run the software.
Do not buy the cheap chinese ones.
You could use raspberry pi + camera to stream it to a bigger machine.
If 24/7 is really needed there's Alpharacks for that.
Thanks for the advice!
Thanks for the advice!
Did not know that software. Also the Raspberry Pi seems perfect, because of the low electricity usage. Can you recommend a ONVIF IP cam? Also after connect the camera to the Raspberry Pi, can I then connect the Raspberry Pi directly to my router and save 24/7 video to to my own server in a datacenter? Or I need a NAS in place / local?
Funny joke
Anything decently rated on Amazon. I personally make sure my cams don't get access to Internet, just in case they are vulnerable and/or pre-installed with spyware. I put them on a different network entirely, with my RPI connected to both my cam and home networks.
That's actually what I do
I save the videos locally and rsync them every hour, but you could use sshfs or NFS+VPN to mount a remote directory on your RPI.
Agree, most of their products will pass back the data to the government/server for collection purposes, or have a backdoor.
I do just this with several Raspberry Pi Zero/Zero W's. I've used several different cameras, both normal and IR, mostly from eBay (similar to this and this, for example). I use this software. The setup can be a little fiddly and you will probably need to do some post-processing if you're saving 24/7 video (file sizes are huge otherwise). But it's a fun project if you like that sort of thing. It's definitely a roll-your-own solution and I'm not sure I'd use it for anything terribly mission-critical, but it's definitely cost-effective; you can be in business for the cost of a $5 Raspberry Pi Zero, a $10 camera, and a $7 SD card. Ping me if you're interested in some more details.
Buy Wyze camera for $20 and pay $4/pm for continuous 7 day recording on https://cloud.tinycammonitor.com/landing.html
I'm using it and highly recommend.
If you want to spend a bit more buy 2k amcrest camera should be <$70 and pay $6/pm for cloud recording.
It is bad just to say Chinese put backdoor , all govt do it when possible . There is nobody more than USA in surveillance of the whole world
When I asked the same question, a friend gave me the following advice
1) Make a few signs with the name of Allah on them ($5)
2) Buy an Arab thobe and head gear from Amazon and start wearing it outside ($40)
3) Start saying some stupid crap to neighbors (Free)
Total expense: $45.00
NSA will then provide you with 24/7 top of the line indoor/outdoor surveillance for your home and office for FREE!
4) buy some Islamic hardcore books on amazon
Just buy any ONVIF supporting camera (with night vision ofcourse) and add them to your synology nas?
Just an example: here
with 2 decades of cctv experience, i would recommend you:
its cheap and you wont regret it
Thank you all for the suggestions and advices. I will now check all the options and buy. I will then post here my setup.
Hikvision and Dahua are great; don't waste money on the cheap Wyze or RPi cams. Plan out your goals and what you're going to do with the footage, then look at property layout, choke points, landscaping, lighting, etc. Then you can plan camera positioning, DORI distances, focal lengths, IR illuminators.
Good to hear that you'll post your setup.
Or just nonexistent secuirty, like say a root shell listening on telnet with no password.
Sticking the cameras on their own VLAN and blocking them from internet access is a smart move.
raspberry pi with a camera and vpn into the vlan