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Advice on security camera with 24/7 recording to private server.
nqservices
Member
Hi,
I want to buy an indoor camera (no more than $60) to have more security at my office, that allows 24/7 non-stop recording to my own private storage (example: SFTP, Wasabi, Hetzner Storage Box).
But most of what I have found does not record 24/7 non-stop and when they do, the cloud storage is the from the brand and no external private storage is available.
So, I’m looking for a camera that can rotate, detect movement and send alerts, and record 24/7 non-stop to my own private storage hosted in a datacenter.
I know that there must be cameras that allow that and I also saw that there are open-source options like ZoneMinder and Shinobi that can connect to almost any camera.
Any advices or links with guides? Thanks!
Thanked by 1MrLime
Comments
Would be nice to know of a good security camera that can do this too, directly uploading to a private server with those features.
Once you've found your camera, you can use this to do the math you'll need:
https://www.seagate.com/video-storage-calculator/
Didn't take as much space as I thought. 31 days of 24 hours at 30fps 1080p using H.265 is only 1.13TB.
Any IP camera should allow for any device to access it.
ZoneMinder is extremely flaky, just choose an NVR. Shinobi might be a good choice
Doesn't completely fill your specs but Wyze cams are $25-30. They record 24/7 to an SD card and when they detect movement they send alerts and hold clips on their own service for free. You can view the 24/7 recordings from your cell for free.
This is kind of true - at least it should be true. I've ordered several recently which advertised themselves as "IP cameras" which either (a) required downloading an app to do the initial configuration via China and/or (b) only showed video through the app. They were returned. There's now even some that say they work with Blue Iris (normally means they have a generic video URL) but turns out they need to be configured via app.
For example, if you pick Amcrest, their ProHD range (model numbers IPxx) are fine but any model number starting with ASH isn't, despite being labelled as a "Pan/Tilt Wireless IP Camera".
Just check it carefully. If it says ONVIF then usually that's a good sign. I'm fairly happy with Dahua and certain Amcrest ones, but the first thing I do is firewall the heck out of them so they can't call home to China.
To the OP, if you want 24/7 pull from a server, this fairly simple for any IP camera using the software of your choice. If you want the camera to push 24/7 so that you don't need any server software (just a generic file store) then most won't do that - you need to do something like set the detection threshold super low.
Build your own camera?
This will probably cost $80~100 but video encoding can happen locally instead of in the server, so that you can use a storage server only and not pay for a compute server.
This might help
https://www.cameraftp.com/CameraFTP/Support/SupportedCameras.aspx
I have never used their service but the show cameras that they support so they should work for you?
Thanks, going to be my next project.
❤
I've used a dozen or more cheap Chinese IP cameras, and none of them "required" an app. It might not always be obvious but they all have a RTSP stream you can access directly.
Then we are probably talking about different cameras.
Honestly - I have found that most of the "OEM" bullet and dome IP cameras on AliExpress have that RTSP stream available at all times. Not the "cloud" cameras, like dlink and others, but cheap 4/6MP chinese cameras. You can confirm, by asking the manufacturer (note that some will be clueless though and might not know their own products). I had a zoneminder setup a few years back, which pulled the RTSP streams from all 24 cams connected to the network. It took about a day to find out where the RTSP stream is hiding. Basically nmap the cam IP to get the port, and then try different ways to get the stream.
With that being said - you need to also properly calculate your upload speeds and the bandwidth needed for the X amount of streams to be uploaded to the server simultaneously. Because, for example, Comcast in the US gives about 20-30Mbps upload, and that will be the bottleneck in this case.
This might help
https://www.cameraftp.com/CameraFTP/Support/SupportedCameras.aspx
I have never used their service but the show cameras that they support so they should work for you?
I have Amcrest cameras, indoor models have remote-control pan/tilt/rotate. Interface is packed with picture controls like exposure and contrast, controlled by a web browser and app. Support ftp upload of 24/7 video and motion-sensing screenshots (no fee required outside the hosting costs). Supports NAS, but I only use remote FTP. Tweaking the motion-sensing screen area works great. Night vision works well. Daytime picture quality is one of the best I've seen in < $60 cams in the US. Has RTSP for live viewing on the LAN.
Not the best tech quality though. 1 of 4 died after 2 years of 24/7 use. Documentation and support are not good. Plenty of bugs, especially with daylight saving time change messing up the clock. FTP upload doesn't delete old videos for me, so I had to program cron on the server to free up space. Also, indoor models don't have PoE.
I programmed the server to post uploaded screenshots on a page, so I can see if there's certain videos I should download for watching. I could set that up to email/sms me. So, alert programming would be outside of the features of the camera.
I use Eufy indoor cameras at home. They've gone up a bit in price, but still reasonably priced. In the USA, their base model is $39.99 https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B08571VZ3Q/ and one that can tilt and pan is
$51.99 https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B0856W45VL/. I bought a few of the tilt and pan ones on sale for maybe $37 each? I have one mounted on the wall in my living room to keep an eye on my dog when I'm not at home, and one facing outside through a window that looks out to the entrance to my apartment, to record and let me know when someone is there.
Decent camera, 2K video resolution, and all the AI stuff (detecting people and pets, only recording when movement is detected) is local, not in the cloud.
By default it stores to an SD card in the camera itself (which means there's no monthly fees), but there's also options to either store it to their own cloud, or expose an RTSP stream. They expose the RTSP stream specifically for storing on a NAS (since some NASes have a security app that can record RTSP streams), but you can do whatever you want with it.
Eufy look nice. They were not around when I bought my cameras, and do have better reviews on Amazon.
I forgot to mention that Eufy is owned by Anker, which is a very well-known and reliable brand of chargers and USB cables.