Wow... that's quite a price tag. For ~$60 USD you can pick up a 1080p camera with quite good quality, nice Sony sensor and hardware H.264 with no mandated cloud connectivity - then hook it to Xeoma, Zone Minder, Blue Iris or similar software and automatically ship the latest motion detection results up to your favorite cloud storage platform or your own server.
I guess I'm probably not the target market for this though, but if you're a tinkerer there are some interesting options. And fun to be had in the firmware reverse engineering department too.
I'm just getting into the world of surveillance cameras, but I think it's more important to decide what you want to get out of any given camera, than to be concerned with any particular brand of hardware. For example, if you are hoping to capture license plates you will likely want a camera with a narrower field of view so you can get the maximum pixels per inch of coverage area. If instead you want to monitor a large area to just see people coming and going, you might want a very wide field of view, but then don't expect to be able to read license plates or get a really clear face shot from that camera.
Only catch with the Pi might be decode/encode performance if you plan to do anything with the video on that side of things, you'd have to have video software that can take advantage of hardware acceleration on the Pi.
I'd be interested if you know any shortcomings of these, so far my experiences have been quite positive, though I have only been running a Hikvision and a cheap rebranded one for about a month.
Biggest catch is probably software - you basically need a Windows box or VM for one-time configuration as ActiveX or proprietary tooling is common, once that's done you're all set and don't need to touch that tooling again, just monitor your camera via the standardized ONVIF and RTSP stream.
There's potential security catch too - I managed to dump the firmware off one and crack a telnet password, but I had to manually enable telnet and so long as you do not expose it to the internet, there's not much harm there. I've read about older cameras that had hardcoded default telnet passwords with telnet on by default and unable to be turned off, fortunately I haven't seen anything that egregious yet.
Overall, the shortcomings, while present are very manageable as far as I've seen. Definitely not a perfect "out of the box" experience like a Nest device will be, but cheaper, more flexible and more interesting to me as a tinkerer.
Can you link to a specific product which achieves all those things? The cheap cameras I've tried either don't support open protocols, or they want to stream your video to China, or both.
I have had good experience with an amcrest camera. It encourages you to set it up with their (terrible) service, but it also has an RTSP endpoint. It works pretty well with Zoneminder as well.
How is the security of Amcrest with where they stream and store your video? I can't find anything on their site on where the company is actually based out of. They just mention that sales in the US are sold out of the US. It's like they go out of their way to avoid answering the question of where they are headquartered.
Any cheap Hikvision or Dahua camera will usually support ONVIF. ONVIF is the key search term, if it has that it supports the standard open protocols and it'll work with most software around. Try searching it on ebay or aliexpress. Some of these do offer their own cloud too, but it's disabled by default on all I've tried so far.
There really isn't a good reason to have used the first 2 pictures. They just make the presenter look bad. It leaves me wondering what they were thinking: Did they only take 3 photos? Do they need a certain number of photos per an article?
I guess it's totally unavoidable, but installing hard power lines (even if it's 12v PoE) for cameras is really a deal-breaker for DIY residential installations in countries with brick and mortar construction techniques.
Anecdotally, I've a Synology NAS and any* IP camera can be hooked up to it, and there are plenty with PoE, etc so what's stopping me having a camera system at home is figuring out how to drill through 60cm thick walls made of three layers of brick, insulation and render without compromising the weather seal of my house... not lack of smart features.
Also difficult on homes with vaulted ceilings / finished attics. I have about 6" of clearance between the insulation and the sheathing and zero inside access
Ease of installation matters most. Your current setup is way beyond what most consumers would bother doing on their own
Plugging this camera into a standard AC outlet and connecting to wifi is easier than it's ever been! I'm guessing you can stick it on with a strong sticker, epoxy, or something similarly easy. ADT built a $7B-valued business predicated on how hard this used to be for consumers to do. Maybe in the future these cameras will be cellular connected so no wifi setup needed.
EDIT: I originally said: "Nest is clearly cloning: https://ring.com/spotlight-cam-wired "
But Nest launched first, as commenters point out below. HN crowdsourced knowledge based and fact checking FTW :)
EDIT2: original Nest outdoor cameras had a magnetic attach option -- even easier than the sticker/epoxy/etc path I mentioned.
Aside: Ring seems like a really popular brand in my neighborhood. Can I use my own equipment for recording video from these or does it all get sent back exclusively to Ring HQ?
I don't know if the word cloning would be appropriate. Outdoor security cameras aren't really a new product and the features such as light and two way talk are pretty obvious.
Cloning? Nest has been shipping their basic outdoor camera since 2016 (which itself is not exactly innovative). The Ring device appears to have hit the market two months ago.
Agreed on the point that the deployment is only going to get easier over time.
The Netgear Arlo cameras include a battery so you don't need to run power. You do need to bring your cameras down and charge them once every few months though.
FYI, apparently all those Arlo cameras have a bug where they occasionally don't start recording video until a couple seconds after motion detection. So you basically just end up with a bunch of useless video where the thieves have already left the camera's view.
A hammer drill (even a Harbor Freight one will do fine for a one time project) and masonry bit will drill through brick just fine. Put the line through, use raintight fittings, and then seal the hole with caulk. It's definitely not beyond DIY.
It definitely isn't beyond what normal people can do because I did exactly that (even bought a Harbor Freight hammer drill) and I'm pretty clueless when it comes to this kind of thing.
I ended up mounting it too high though. At the time I was a little afraid of somebody stealing or damaging the camera but now I realize I was being stupid.
Is a security cam really the best deterrent? I figure my two pitbulls would beat out a security cam on their own merits, though I'd preferably combine the two.
true! but the time delay of a dog eating meat is random. I would think most dogs can finish some meat before the attacker can unmount a tv, and some dogs would prefer to...play.. with an intruder over food.
Of course your dogs are better but its not helping the world to advertise their security benefits.
1. The cost of Dog Food + Care makes them much more expensive than almost any security system.
2. Here in Las Vegas more than half the dogs in our shelter are Pit Bulls. Almost all were purchased by people who wanted a "security dog" more than a pet.
If the deciding factor for you to buy an animal is the security benefit, ultimately you will not be happy with that decision. And neither will the animal.
I bought one of those shitty $30 ones. They don't work. They freeze and then you have to reset them like twice a week. I'd much rather have something made by a company like Nest that I know won't get knocked out.
Nest has a history of shutting down product lines and rendering them unusable. One of which was just 49 days old at the time, as I recall. Revolv was the product line, though there may be more.
For simple cameras, I'm a fan of the Hikvision DS-2CD2032-I CCTV POE 3MP Bullet IP HD Security Network Camera, 4mm camera for 1/3 of the price. They've done well in below -20F degree weather.
Also another vote for Blue Iris. It's not the most user friendly software but it's awesome for the price. It can be tricky to get configured just right though...
I would love to hear if anyone has any recommendations for getting Blue Iris to do some of the features of this camera, such as compare face images against a Google Photos API?
I would also be curious to know if the cameras that move & try to auto focus are actually better. That seems like a potential plus but I could see wind blowing trees or a squirrel running causing the camera to focus on the wrong things. Maybe the Nest is smarter & only goes for certain objects that it can recognize... Motion sensor recording is kind of a pain to get right on my Blue Iris. Windy trees & spiders cause me to get a lot more video than necessary.
Just be wary of Amazon vendors. I purchased a camera fulfilled through Amazon and it was a fake. Returning/Exchanging was simple but the difference in the label was clear when viewed side by side.
Not only that, but some companies offer 0 warranty when purchased through Amazon or BH. You have to buy through a distributor who will only warranty it if you have them install it. Like ACTI.
I always hear people recommend Hikvision cameras but then I wonder where they buy them from, because it seems there is a lot of this counterfeiting you mention going on. Hikvision even has a page about it.[1] Makes me wonder how many folks have knockoffs and they're not even aware of it.
I almost bought one from B&H Photo, but even they're not on the authorized partner list.[2]
To be clear, Amazon sells a lot of fake cameras labelled as such for like $12. These, some alarm window stickers & a Beware of the Raccoon sign are my main security system.
Appreciate the recommendations. We considered getting a Nest, but we don't have great internet and therefore can't handle HD streaming up to the cloud 24/7. Until (unless?) the Nest can do bursts based on motion, we'll opt for a camera with SD backup instead.
I have a Netgear Arlo system and it only captures when it detects motion. I'm looking for a continuous camera system that doesn't require cloud service but haven't found anything I like.
I got an Amcrest IP2M-841 (1920TVL). It has wired or wireless network, usb powered, and a local SD card. I'm writing to a Synology, which does not have good software, but works. I'm using it indoors and I'm using the Amcrest app on the phone for live view, which is much better than the Synology app, but not fantastic, either.
I have friends that have an Arlo and like it. I was specifically looking for a continuous camera and didn't want a cloud service.
If I didn't have the Synology I would look into Blue Iris...but I haven't heard great things about any of the software out there.
Sorry for repeating a shameless plug (I posted elsewhere on this thread), but if you're interested in these cameras, but with cloud storage and more reliability, my company uses extremely similar cameras to this (we run our own software on Hikvision cameras, with tons of improvements across the board). We don't really focus on home systems, but at worst we are VERY good at recommending something for it. Our site is www.viaas.com.
I too have a Hikvision camera that I bought on Amazon. I hooked it up to my QNAP NAS box. The camera works great, but the software (Surveillance Station and QVR) is awful.
Have you found decent software? I saw a recommendation for Xeoma and that's next on my list to check out.
My other camera system is a wireless Netgear Arlo setup and the software is comparatively excellent.
I use Blue Iris. It's cheap & handles multiple cameras. It is updated often. The UI/UX is pretty decent. It's popular so any questions you have are probably available online. It works great for my experience level. I would recommend it for people who aren't looking for a very advanced program or a very simple hand holding program.
Thanks for the recommendation. I took a look at it and it looks like it checks most of what I was looking for. It would be nice if it were a application on my NAS box so I don't have to dedicate a Windows machine to be on all the time.
Thank you as I was unaware of this. At quick glance of what you shared, it doesn't seem like most users should be effected by this.
I'm assuming the typical setup is putting your cameras on a router & then using software like Blue Iris if you want to allow remote access to the videos. I would hope no one actually allows someone to connect directly to a camera using the camera's software over the internet.
If your approach to network security is "putting your cameras on a router", I don't suppose you'd mind me attaching this little black box to your network?
That requires getting your box connected to my network through a network cable. I'm not saying that what I suggested is flawless security. I'm just asking if it is preventing the attacks in the link you included.
I have Hikvision cameras, but they are on their own private lan with no Internet connection. These things phone home by default and disabling that functionality is kind of buried in the web interface.
IoT (and especially IIoT) devices are special beasts that really don't fit well into the existing network security models. For ones that need cloud access, they really shouldn't be accessible from the rest of the network, let alone the internet. They also shouldn't be able to talk to each other. This leads to either ACL hell, or VLAN hell (with a L2 wire type firewall or L3 router/firewall). There are some solutions like ForeScout that will do this for you automagically, and software defined networking also holds promise in making this less nightmare inducing, but for now it is a poorly addressed problem AFAIK.
This isn't news, but the best way to deal with cameras is to isolate them on a VLAN that has no route out. Just connect one NIC of your DVR solution to that VLAN, and broker all access thru the DVR. Only view cameras via the DVR software.
You really shouldn't be putting your security footage into the cloud anyway, IMO. It creates too many unneeded dependencies in this age of cheap LAN/CPU/HD space. Replicating that footage into the cloud is defensible, but that should still all be moderated via the DVR solution. A UPS and Cellular internet connection could make cloud options more resilient.
Please correct me if I am unaware of some awesome way of doing this!
Does it work off-cloud? Can I firewall it entirely behind my own LAN? If so, sold.
I've spent so much time screwing around with generic Chinese hardware that's, well, sometimes great (and sometimes truly worthless). Most generic brands (that exist for 6 months at a time) have software/firmware that leaves much to be desired, and is sometimes outright broken, but at least more often than not at least implement (most) of an open-source IP-cam standard (unlike the fancy expensive cameras).
But I have no interest in trading any sort of even theoretical access to video of my home for a fancy web interface: http://shodan.io/
Have they fixed this issue yet? My neighbor with a Nest was just complaining that her house was so hot because the internet was down and the AC turned off.
Mine works fine without internet. You just can't control it remotely. People probably don't realize that the app doesn't connect across your home network. It will complain there's no internet connection, but you can still twist it and set the temp manually.
Yea, cloud-only was the deal-breaker for me for Dropcam (now Nest). It just seems so silly and wasteful. You have a camera on your home LAN, uploading video out to a server somewhere, just so you can... download the video back to your home LAN for viewing??? WTF? Why can't I even have the option to operate it LAN-only? Just seems like a bizarre limitation from a product point of view. Obviously their business model depends on upwelling you cloud services.
The idea is that you can get alerts and view the photos/videos remotely when you're not at home. For example, when you're at work or on vacation.
But for that, you might as well buy a cheaper camera and configure it yourself to upload to a cheaper service like CameraFTP [1]. It's run by some cloud storage provider, I forget which one.
burglars will cut your internet connection to the outside
How, exactly?
OK, so the question is a little facetious, but most burglars won't know (or even know to consider) that they should cut a particular cable before breaking in.
In many installations, that cable won't necessarily be visible/reachable: want to climb a telephone pole to cut what's hopefully an ADSL cable and not a mains electricity cable? Without anyone noticing you?
Some users may also use a backup 3G/4G data connection, hook the alarm up to a UPS, and in some cases of monitored alarm systems, a data outage is in itself an alertable/respondable alarm.
Your degree (and expenditure) of defense will very much depend on your perceived threat profile, but for the most part, a burglar cutting your internet connection isn't high on the threat list.
I used to live in Tacoma, WA, which had a lot of petty crime. My neighbor was a cop and he told us that the biggest problem with security cameras was that they didn't capture faces and so the videos were useless to police and prosecutors. People typically place them up high and the burglars wear hoodies. He recommended putting them down low and hiding them, like in a bushy potted plant on your doorstep, in bushes, a hole in a fence, etc.
I don't get the point of expensive, tamper-resistant cameras for home use. I'd rather have more cameras.
Also, even if the camera captures a face, most local police departments won't be able to do anything with that image except put up "wanted posters" for a while. They don't necessarily have the authority/luxury to run it through a facial recognition system to find a stolen tv.
Even without the need for a facial recognition system, they rarely care.
I've sent them footage, along with the name of the guy who's face it was and they did fuck all. The guy's in jail now though a few years later for beating his wife.
I had video of someone opening my mailbox, rifling through the mail, and stealing a check. Neither the NYPD nor the USPS gave a damn, despite this being a federal crime.
My neighbor did the same thing (not on good terms; allegedly looking for misdelivered mail) and again, no penalty despite having clear video of the crime. At least if he does anything else I can it out then and show his previous malfeasance.
My house got robbed and I found my DVD collection at a nearby used video store. Inside most of the DVD cases was my name in sharpie. The owner of the store had a photocopy of the guy's driver's license and the cops did nothing at all. I called them once a week for months, nothing.
This was about a decade ago in Morgantown, West Virginia. Yeah it was pretty terrible. I even went to the station a couple of times and they just totally blew me off. It was a good life lesson at least.
I have good experience email police department and CC any public official email addresses you can find - Mayor, City Manager, Head of Police, local city council men/woman etc.
The elective public officials seems to response to these emails very fast and the head of police is CC.
The public official will put your email to their own email list - I don't mind that and support them if they act to provide solution to the community problems.
Thanks, that's good advice. This happened in 2004, and back then I just wasn't as up on this stuff. If it happened now, I'd definitely approach the situation much better.
Even in cities there are extremely good odds that the person will be known to the local law enforcement. The local police knew the perp in almost every encounter I've had where I witnessed a crime.
Whether or not they care may still an issue, unfortunately.
> People typically place them up high and the burglars wear hoodies. He recommended putting them down low and hiding them, like in a bushy potted plant on your doorstep, in bushes, a hole in a fence, etc.
Sounds like there's a tension between high-visibility for deterrence and better placement for apprehension/prosecution. Perhaps the best plan is to put up a dummy camera up high and a real one down low.
I find the biggest problem is that even if you have a picture of the person's face, the cops really, really don't give a shit.
There was talk about someone stealing packages from someone's front porch on NextDoor in my neighbourhood, and the cops told them to contact the Post Office General. The Post Office General told them to contact the cops. Literally no one cares, especially the cops.
The quality is fantastic, very sharp. We can also HEAR everything that happens on our street through the microphone. I can't really understand a bad review. It dutifully does its job without hassles, and is super convenient to use.
To the people saying the local police do nothing even with a face or even the identity, you need to go up the chain. Start contacting the local prosecutors and your city council.
If that doesn't work then it gets a little difficult, you need to make it political and change the local government. If it happened to you, then there are probably 100 more people who have similar stories.
I'm really having a hard time understanding what their target market is here.
Most home users aren't going to pay full retail for cameras, hire a professional installer to put 1-4 cameras outside, then pay for cloud storage... or at least not without a huge amount of Support effort. Given their feature list, they aren't going to be able to compete with the business/enterprise market due to both having worse features AND being more expensive.
(shameless plug: I work for a company making enterprise IP cameras, and both our cloud storage AND cameras are cheaper, while having way more features)
I was very interested in seeing what made your cameras and plans cheaper... but was disappointed. VIAAS seems to charge $479/year for 30 days of 1080p video and $399 for the camera. I don't use Nest's new camera but I have two of their indoor cameras elsewhere, for which I pay $150/year for the first camera and $100/year for the second (I think) for 30 days video. They also have a $50/year plan for 7 days of video. It also sends me e-mail and APNS alerts when it senses motion or people. So, I don't really see how your parenthetical assertion is true - despite really wishing it were true.
I have evaluated and intend to use a UniFi camera system at my home when I can get around to running the PoE wires.
After a lot of consideration, and wanting to stay away from IOT horrors and complicated setup, I ended up just getting a game camera:
- No wiring
- Battery lasts up to a year depending on settings
- Can be plugged into power
- No internet, software, or 3rd party dependency
- 10MP photos, HD video
- One-time cost of $100 + $15 SD card
I don't need to view photos or videos remotely, I only need evidence if something were to happen, so this is an acceptable solution for me, especially considering the one-time costs.
Bonus: I also purchased an ADT sign + window stickers from ebay.
I recently researched outdoor security cameras for our home and discovered that the the outdoor security camera market is a _complete_ mess.
My requirements were, I thought, fairly simple. Good quality outdoor camera which uploaded motion off-site (cloud, FTP, whatever).
Apparently, that doesn't exist.
Most of the cameras fail the first requirement. Terrible video quality, tiny field of view, poor build quality that results in frequent failures, and/or bad track records with security bugs.
Some do okay on the first mark, but fail on the second. It's beyond me why most security cameras don't have at least _some_ ability to upload motion off-site. I have an Amcrest indoor camera, really terrible, but at least it will automatically upload motion to an FTP server. But it seems none of their outdoor cameras upload motion; only still images. !?
Hikvision cameras were frequently recommended as capable and good quality, but they were riddled with security bugs. Totally unacceptable for a _security_ camera.
Nest, from the article, has good build quality, and AFAIK no serious security issues. But no normal American can actually use them, because for all intents and purposes they require ~2 Mbps of constant upload bandwidth per camera. Google being Google requires the cameras upload all footage, 24/7 to their servers. For decent quality, that means 2Mbps of bandwidth. There's really no other way to use the cameras without doing that constant upload. Most Americans don't have much upload bandwidth. I only have 10 Mbps egress, which means each camera eats 20% of my bandwidth. Totally useless.
Not to mention uploading 24/7 live footage of your home to Google, and paying hundreds of dollars per year in subscription fees for the privilege.
Cleverloop sells a system similar to Nest, but they they do all their machine learning motion detection and such locally. So you don't have to burn upload bandwidth, and you don't have privacy issues. Plus no subscription fees. But their cameras are unreliable, 720p, limited FoV, and not standards compliant so you can't use them outside of Cleverloop's system.
There was another system, who's name I forgot, which was all around good and met all the requirements ... except that apparently all the cameras have a bug where they often delay recording after motion detection for 5 seconds or so. Wow...
All the other systems fall into either poor quality, buggy software, security issues, etc, etc.
Basically, for the average consumer there are _no_ good options. I'm an engineer so I have the advantage of getting my hands dirty customizing things but most people don't have that option. Most people need a system that just works. It's totally crazy that such a thing doesn't exist. And personally, I'd rather not spend my time building a custom camera system. I, too, want something that just works.
Well, after days of research the solution I landed on: I bought some plain ole PoE cameras from Costco. They have good specs (4MP, 90 FoV) and I trust Costco to vet for quality. Still fairly cheap (~$150 per camera). I bought an old small form factor Dell, Core i5, 2TB storage for $250 to act as the local recording station. I'll slap some software on there, ZoneMinder or Blue Iris or something, and hopefully get it to detect motion and upload those clips to the cloud. The cameras will also automatically upload snapshots over FTP (seriously why can't they just upload video!?) as at least a redundant system.
I'm just aghast at how difficult and cruddy all of this is.
> There was another system, who's name I forgot, which was all around good and met all the requirements ... except that apparently all the cameras have a bug where they often delay recording after motion detection for 5 seconds or so. Wow...
You might be thinking of Netgear's Arlo -- I've got several of them and have for a few years. I've seen the camera lag 0.5s on motion but never 5 seconds!
As far as I could tell, SS is some feature of Synology NASes. So you still need cameras, then you need to buy a Synology NAS, and then you need to license SS (which is a per camera cost after some number of cameras, IIRC). It didn't seem compelling versus just buying the Dell for $250 + software. And, again, it doesn't solve the problem of finding good PoE cameras.
Hmmm, strange headline as Nest launched an outdoor security camera last year. This "IQ" model is a new version with higher definition picture and person-recognizing features. The original is still available.
I have a few Nest Cameras. They are awesome, because the killer feature is the person-detection feature. It's very, very good and unlike other cameras or software packages like Blue Iris (which I bought), the person-detection and machine-learning stuff is fantastic and actually useful. I get almost zero false positives from shadows, etc.
I have gone through the entire gambit, having bought Arlo, Nest, Foscam, and trying Blue Iris, etc and can definitively say that Nest is the easiest and most reliable outdoor camera.
That said, I'm not going to buy this trumped up version of the camera mainly because I don't know what it buys me over the currect camera. The fact this has made the front page is kind of weird to me.
Hmm, I constantly get false person alerts when two of my tiny yorkies are in frame at the same time. Must see the eyes from one, and the hips from another? Not sure. It's not super annoying though, I enjoy getting alerted a few times a day with a picture of my pups.
D-link makes reasonable wifi cameras that can be used for home security and they double as baby monitors. You can buy 5-7 of them for the price of a single Nest camera. They have motion/sound detection (lot can be improved though). Mobile app is slow but works ok. E-mail alerts with stills/videos are useful when you are away from home.
I work for a large alarm monitoring service. For years, I've been sending management notifications of new entries and updates in the 'personal monitoring' space.
Its actually humorous to see these old school guys who have enjoyed having a low churn subscription service cash cow for decades, be slowly disrupted.
Total denial at every turn LOL.
Why would anybody want to spend less than a 1/3rd the hardware cost, no installation cost, can be moved when you moved, and no monthly monitoring fee. They just don't get it.
I sent them links to Nests product announcements today. It'll be interesting to see their response.
One of my oldest friends now runs his dad's small alarm manufacturer and he is 100% not interested in any new sensors or applications, at least when I bring them up. Their main goal appears to be stability and maintaining distribution to -- and the happiness of -- their installer customers. It's one of the most 1970s "independent auto parts store" mentalities I've come across in any business.
Biggest reason I went with a Simplisafe system a few years ago. They have a subscription, but it's got no contract, and can be installed in about 30 minutes without leaving any permanent traces. The ideas of permanent installs and a contract were a big turnoff, especially since I had spent time removing the old defunct system that was installed but couldn't be reactivated by any of the companies I contacted.
I was hopeful about this to replace my Ubiquiti cameras, but I really want something that is going to be PoE. Nest really seems to be all about WiFi, so I shouldn't be surprised, but am I the only one that doesn't want cameras on WiFi?
I put up some Ubiquiti cameras last year, we live on a pretty quiet street but we had some kids pulling shenanigans (a car window was shot out with a BB gun, our Little Free Library bench was drug out into the street, change being stolen from cars).
Since the cameras, nothing has happened, so that's a plus.
But the Ubiquity recorder device makes the system nearly unusable. For some reason, recordings usually stop while there is still motion going on, so I end up with a lot of little 15-30 second videos that show only the start of whatever is going on. I've fiddled with it a lot and had no luck.
This is disappointing to read. I just bought an outdoor Ubiquiti camera and their little VCR-cassette sized device and in my indoor evaluations it worked very nicely. I was going to put it up outdoors, but maybe I should just skip that plan and go with a traditional Nest. The indoor ones I have work very well, despite being on WiFi. I do have a solid WiFi at home, though, with two Ubiquiti AP-AC-HDs, unfortunately stuck to a DOCSIS 3.0 modem with only 20Mbps upstream (despite 300Mbps down).
I'd love to hear if anyone has different experience. I also did a small evaluation before I started pulling shielded Cat-5 for the cameras, but it really wasn't until I ran for weeks or months that I had problems.
I really should contact support and see what they say.
We have WiFi problems sometimes, it just seems like I'll have fewer problems if I run wired.
At work we have a Nest and it seems to be pretty good, though it's a much more consumer level thing. Which probably is good.
We install Unifi camera systems for a living - the crazy amount tiny little files and MongoDB basically require that the Unifi Video Controller have an SSD for reliable usage - that precludes the Unifi branded Unifi Controller that has a spinning drive.
Our recommendation: A Intel (Intel Brand) Atom NUC with an SSD and 8GB of RAM. Installing Linux and the Unifi server on it takes about 20 minutes and you're left with a more manageable machine.
I would also admit that the Unifi Video Controller hasn't been rock-solid until about a year ago - current releases now go forever without issue.
I've been thinking about just imaging the Unifi video box hard drive to an SSD and then putting that back in place, hoping the SSD would help improve performance and longevity enough to make it more reliable. I have thought about setting it up as a virtual instance inside a more general purpose "home server", but currently I don't have anything but laptops/chromebooks at home and kind of what to keep it that way. :-)
Thanks for the pointers. I haven't had the Unifi system for a year yet, so I must be running the more reliable software.
I did do an install of the Unifi software on a Ubuntu virtual machine for initial testing, and I agree that it was super easy.
So I assume that if you are installing these systems, that you are more or less happy with them? I was optimistic about it, like the cameras and the promise of the controller software, but wish it was more reliable.
Have you seen the thing where it stops recording in the middle of motion?
Yes - before the 3.x branch got stable - the controller would do all sorts of stupid things - like stop recording at all.
At the same time the controller has gotten more stable, we finally bit the bullet and jumped to SSDs for all our installs - I think that helps with long term reliability. I had a hunch that the controller doesn't deal with SATA timeouts while a spinning hard-drive reallocates sectors. But I really have no evidence of such a theory.
Do you have their NVR, or did you install it on your own hardware? I have used both and had different experiences. With the NVR, I have had no problems, but with my own hardware I had the problem you describe if it was up too long. I was able to work around it by scheduling a daily cron to restart their process.
I did both. The camera arrived before the NVR, so I set up a test VM and installed the software and it seemed to work ok in minimal testing, but I really only ran it a few days. I've been having problems with their hardware box, but I also haven't contacted their support to see if there is something I'm overlooking.
I went through running PoE (also got their PoE switch, so this is all their gear), and I figure that if this hardware doesn't work, I can switch to different PoE gear.
Maybe I should try scheduling a regular reboot? I've wondered if I was running into it just having problems running out of space and having to do maintenance that interfered with recordings, and if a SSD would help. Haven't gone that route yet though.
Mine never actually ran out of space, so there shouldn't have been any real maintenance done. The behavior I encountered only started after being up more than a week or so, and its timing was pretty inconsistent. The regular reboot "fixed" whatever the problem was, though.
Mine hasn't "run out" of space either, but it tends to be using the vast majority of the available space on it, and performance in filesystems tents to drop when you get above 90% full... Maybe I should see if I can reduce the space it keeps free.
I've had pretty poor experiences with Ubiquiti's home networking gear (an EdgeRouter PoE and two UniFi access points). I'm actually in the process of putting the stuff up on eBay and replacing it all with a regular Linksys router, which is unfortunate because my whole goal was to setup something a bit more industrial grade than the typical consumer gear. Their marketing is slick but I think the internals of their products leave something to be desired (in my experience).
Good to know. I've been tempted to try their networking gear, the cameras were a kind of dry run before maybe trying the networking.
But, honestly, the Google Wifi and OnHub have been working really well. We are in a challenging environment for some reason (neighbors with a bad cordless phone or something?). I've added a few wireless mesh nodes and hope to wire them at some point here.
I hope that means deliberate eavesdropping. The street that runs right outside my window is frequently used by people walking home from the bars, and drunk people don't notice how loud they're talking. I've overheard some strange (and sometimes very personal) conversations.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 233 ms ] threadI guess I'm probably not the target market for this though, but if you're a tinkerer there are some interesting options. And fun to be had in the firmware reverse engineering department too.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15296354
Only catch with the Pi might be decode/encode performance if you plan to do anything with the video on that side of things, you'd have to have video software that can take advantage of hardware acceleration on the Pi.
I'd be interested if you know any shortcomings of these, so far my experiences have been quite positive, though I have only been running a Hikvision and a cheap rebranded one for about a month.
Biggest catch is probably software - you basically need a Windows box or VM for one-time configuration as ActiveX or proprietary tooling is common, once that's done you're all set and don't need to touch that tooling again, just monitor your camera via the standardized ONVIF and RTSP stream.
There's potential security catch too - I managed to dump the firmware off one and crack a telnet password, but I had to manually enable telnet and so long as you do not expose it to the internet, there's not much harm there. I've read about older cameras that had hardcoded default telnet passwords with telnet on by default and unable to be turned off, fortunately I haven't seen anything that egregious yet.
Overall, the shortcomings, while present are very manageable as far as I've seen. Definitely not a perfect "out of the box" experience like a Nest device will be, but cheaper, more flexible and more interesting to me as a tinkerer.
Edit: I also recommend checking out the Zoneminder wiki for suggestions. Here are some pages for Amcrest: https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Amcrest https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Amcrest_QCam
They also have a listing here: https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Hardware_Compatibility_List#Netw...
AFAIK, you don't technically have to keep it connected to their service.
A few samples:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/2015-New-model-DS-2CD2135F-I...
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4MP-Dahua-H-265-IPC-HDBW4431...
Heck, even my local computer store has their own branding of a cheap camera for a quite good price:
http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=37_498...
I bought one of these recently and it seems to be a Dahua based firmware, full ONVIF support and available locally is pretty nice.
Anecdotally, I've a Synology NAS and any* IP camera can be hooked up to it, and there are plenty with PoE, etc so what's stopping me having a camera system at home is figuring out how to drill through 60cm thick walls made of three layers of brick, insulation and render without compromising the weather seal of my house... not lack of smart features.
ps. does anyone trust wifi cameras?
(* not quite every camera is supported)
Why?
>with brick and mortar construction techniques
Are there countries where houses are built using paper?
Plugging this camera into a standard AC outlet and connecting to wifi is easier than it's ever been! I'm guessing you can stick it on with a strong sticker, epoxy, or something similarly easy. ADT built a $7B-valued business predicated on how hard this used to be for consumers to do. Maybe in the future these cameras will be cellular connected so no wifi setup needed.
EDIT: I originally said: "Nest is clearly cloning: https://ring.com/spotlight-cam-wired " But Nest launched first, as commenters point out below. HN crowdsourced knowledge based and fact checking FTW :)
EDIT2: original Nest outdoor cameras had a magnetic attach option -- even easier than the sticker/epoxy/etc path I mentioned.
Aside: Ring seems like a really popular brand in my neighborhood. Can I use my own equipment for recording video from these or does it all get sent back exclusively to Ring HQ?
Agreed on the point that the deployment is only going to get easier over time.
I'm curious and I think it's interesting to see examples from other places.
I ended up mounting it too high though. At the time I was a little afraid of somebody stealing or damaging the camera but now I realize I was being stupid.
1. The cost of Dog Food + Care makes them much more expensive than almost any security system.
2. Here in Las Vegas more than half the dogs in our shelter are Pit Bulls. Almost all were purchased by people who wanted a "security dog" more than a pet.
If the deciding factor for you to buy an animal is the security benefit, ultimately you will not be happy with that decision. And neither will the animal.
The marketing statement from Nest just seemed like some hyperbole and I have a bad habit of fixating on those sorts of things.
Great points though!
https://www.amazon.com/Wansview-Wireless-Security-Surveillan...
Or spend $42 and get it's outdoor parent:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J0V6BWA/
Also another vote for Blue Iris. It's not the most user friendly software but it's awesome for the price. It can be tricky to get configured just right though...
I would love to hear if anyone has any recommendations for getting Blue Iris to do some of the features of this camera, such as compare face images against a Google Photos API?
I would also be curious to know if the cameras that move & try to auto focus are actually better. That seems like a potential plus but I could see wind blowing trees or a squirrel running causing the camera to focus on the wrong things. Maybe the Nest is smarter & only goes for certain objects that it can recognize... Motion sensor recording is kind of a pain to get right on my Blue Iris. Windy trees & spiders cause me to get a lot more video than necessary.
I almost bought one from B&H Photo, but even they're not on the authorized partner list.[2]
[1]: http://www.hikvision.com/us/about_10677.html
[2]: http://www.hikvision.com/us/distributionPartner.aspx?stat=1&...
https://www.amazon.com/Security-Realistic-Surveillance-Busin...
They functioned for a day before nearly catching fire.
I have friends that have an Arlo and like it. I was specifically looking for a continuous camera and didn't want a cloud service.
If I didn't have the Synology I would look into Blue Iris...but I haven't heard great things about any of the software out there.
Have you found decent software? I saw a recommendation for Xeoma and that's next on my list to check out.
My other camera system is a wireless Netgear Arlo setup and the software is comparatively excellent.
https://ipvm.com/reports/hik-backdoor
It's not pretty. You're bordering on negligence using Hikvision, much less recommending them.
I'm assuming the typical setup is putting your cameras on a router & then using software like Blue Iris if you want to allow remote access to the videos. I would hope no one actually allows someone to connect directly to a camera using the camera's software over the internet.
Am I missing some larger vulnerability?
This isn't news, but the best way to deal with cameras is to isolate them on a VLAN that has no route out. Just connect one NIC of your DVR solution to that VLAN, and broker all access thru the DVR. Only view cameras via the DVR software. You really shouldn't be putting your security footage into the cloud anyway, IMO. It creates too many unneeded dependencies in this age of cheap LAN/CPU/HD space. Replicating that footage into the cloud is defensible, but that should still all be moderated via the DVR solution. A UPS and Cellular internet connection could make cloud options more resilient.
Please correct me if I am unaware of some awesome way of doing this!
I've spent so much time screwing around with generic Chinese hardware that's, well, sometimes great (and sometimes truly worthless). Most generic brands (that exist for 6 months at a time) have software/firmware that leaves much to be desired, and is sometimes outright broken, but at least more often than not at least implement (most) of an open-source IP-cam standard (unlike the fancy expensive cameras).
But I have no interest in trading any sort of even theoretical access to video of my home for a fancy web interface: http://shodan.io/
Remember their thermostat? The interclouds went down and people lost heat.
But for that, you might as well buy a cheaper camera and configure it yourself to upload to a cheaper service like CameraFTP [1]. It's run by some cloud storage provider, I forget which one.
[1] https://www.cameraftp.com/
Now burglars will cut your internet connection to the outside, then rob your place.
OK, so the question is a little facetious, but most burglars won't know (or even know to consider) that they should cut a particular cable before breaking in.
In many installations, that cable won't necessarily be visible/reachable: want to climb a telephone pole to cut what's hopefully an ADSL cable and not a mains electricity cable? Without anyone noticing you?
Some users may also use a backup 3G/4G data connection, hook the alarm up to a UPS, and in some cases of monitored alarm systems, a data outage is in itself an alertable/respondable alarm.
Your degree (and expenditure) of defense will very much depend on your perceived threat profile, but for the most part, a burglar cutting your internet connection isn't high on the threat list.
I don't get the point of expensive, tamper-resistant cameras for home use. I'd rather have more cameras.
I've sent them footage, along with the name of the guy who's face it was and they did fuck all. The guy's in jail now though a few years later for beating his wife.
I had video of someone opening my mailbox, rifling through the mail, and stealing a check. Neither the NYPD nor the USPS gave a damn, despite this being a federal crime.
My neighbor did the same thing (not on good terms; allegedly looking for misdelivered mail) and again, no penalty despite having clear video of the crime. At least if he does anything else I can it out then and show his previous malfeasance.
The elective public officials seems to response to these emails very fast and the head of police is CC.
The public official will put your email to their own email list - I don't mind that and support them if they act to provide solution to the community problems.
Whether or not they care may still an issue, unfortunately.
Sounds like there's a tension between high-visibility for deterrence and better placement for apprehension/prosecution. Perhaps the best plan is to put up a dummy camera up high and a real one down low.
There was talk about someone stealing packages from someone's front porch on NextDoor in my neighbourhood, and the cops told them to contact the Post Office General. The Post Office General told them to contact the cops. Literally no one cares, especially the cops.
I'll stick with my Kuna cameras. It has a very nice app, face detection, etc.
If that doesn't work then it gets a little difficult, you need to make it political and change the local government. If it happened to you, then there are probably 100 more people who have similar stories.
Most home users aren't going to pay full retail for cameras, hire a professional installer to put 1-4 cameras outside, then pay for cloud storage... or at least not without a huge amount of Support effort. Given their feature list, they aren't going to be able to compete with the business/enterprise market due to both having worse features AND being more expensive.
(shameless plug: I work for a company making enterprise IP cameras, and both our cloud storage AND cameras are cheaper, while having way more features)
I have evaluated and intend to use a UniFi camera system at my home when I can get around to running the PoE wires.
Our 30-day plan is $20/month msrp whereas Nest is $30/month. (Your Nest pricing is not current - you're probably grandfathered on that rate)
Our main market is businesses with multiple locations who need role-based access and/or LDAP integration for cameras with cloud storage.
Well criminals don't have to break in, just swipe the $350 expensive toy and walk away.
They're not going to stop an opportunistic crack-addled bottom-feeder from doing a "smash and grab" burglary.
Good for insurance, however, and check up on old-folks.
No thanks.
The motion software is not great, but it's nice to know that my data isn't being sent off to china or some other bullshit proprietary service.
My next one will be an outdoor camera, and if I can get it to work with a converter (https://www.amazon.com/GE-54276-Polarized-Handy-Outlet/dp/B0...), I think that will take out almost all of the wiring work.
> motionEyeOS is a Linux distribution that turns your single board computer into a video surveillance system.
- No wiring
- Battery lasts up to a year depending on settings
- Can be plugged into power
- No internet, software, or 3rd party dependency
- 10MP photos, HD video
- One-time cost of $100 + $15 SD card
I don't need to view photos or videos remotely, I only need evidence if something were to happen, so this is an acceptable solution for me, especially considering the one-time costs.
Bonus: I also purchased an ADT sign + window stickers from ebay.
A combination of both is recommended. Traditional IP cameras (Foscam etc.) are a pain to setup, but the new generation of "dropcams" are super easy.
Also, unless you hide the camera well, a thief can simply steal the camera, or disable it and remove the SD card.
A lock box for the game camera is $30 and can be painted to match its surroundings.
My requirements were, I thought, fairly simple. Good quality outdoor camera which uploaded motion off-site (cloud, FTP, whatever).
Apparently, that doesn't exist.
Most of the cameras fail the first requirement. Terrible video quality, tiny field of view, poor build quality that results in frequent failures, and/or bad track records with security bugs.
Some do okay on the first mark, but fail on the second. It's beyond me why most security cameras don't have at least _some_ ability to upload motion off-site. I have an Amcrest indoor camera, really terrible, but at least it will automatically upload motion to an FTP server. But it seems none of their outdoor cameras upload motion; only still images. !?
Hikvision cameras were frequently recommended as capable and good quality, but they were riddled with security bugs. Totally unacceptable for a _security_ camera.
Nest, from the article, has good build quality, and AFAIK no serious security issues. But no normal American can actually use them, because for all intents and purposes they require ~2 Mbps of constant upload bandwidth per camera. Google being Google requires the cameras upload all footage, 24/7 to their servers. For decent quality, that means 2Mbps of bandwidth. There's really no other way to use the cameras without doing that constant upload. Most Americans don't have much upload bandwidth. I only have 10 Mbps egress, which means each camera eats 20% of my bandwidth. Totally useless.
Not to mention uploading 24/7 live footage of your home to Google, and paying hundreds of dollars per year in subscription fees for the privilege.
Cleverloop sells a system similar to Nest, but they they do all their machine learning motion detection and such locally. So you don't have to burn upload bandwidth, and you don't have privacy issues. Plus no subscription fees. But their cameras are unreliable, 720p, limited FoV, and not standards compliant so you can't use them outside of Cleverloop's system.
There was another system, who's name I forgot, which was all around good and met all the requirements ... except that apparently all the cameras have a bug where they often delay recording after motion detection for 5 seconds or so. Wow...
All the other systems fall into either poor quality, buggy software, security issues, etc, etc.
Basically, for the average consumer there are _no_ good options. I'm an engineer so I have the advantage of getting my hands dirty customizing things but most people don't have that option. Most people need a system that just works. It's totally crazy that such a thing doesn't exist. And personally, I'd rather not spend my time building a custom camera system. I, too, want something that just works.
Well, after days of research the solution I landed on: I bought some plain ole PoE cameras from Costco. They have good specs (4MP, 90 FoV) and I trust Costco to vet for quality. Still fairly cheap (~$150 per camera). I bought an old small form factor Dell, Core i5, 2TB storage for $250 to act as the local recording station. I'll slap some software on there, ZoneMinder or Blue Iris or something, and hopefully get it to detect motion and upload those clips to the cloud. The cameras will also automatically upload snapshots over FTP (seriously why can't they just upload video!?) as at least a redundant system.
I'm just aghast at how difficult and cruddy all of this is.
You might be thinking of Netgear's Arlo -- I've got several of them and have for a few years. I've seen the camera lag 0.5s on motion but never 5 seconds!
Did you look into Synology at all?
As far as I could tell, SS is some feature of Synology NASes. So you still need cameras, then you need to buy a Synology NAS, and then you need to license SS (which is a per camera cost after some number of cameras, IIRC). It didn't seem compelling versus just buying the Dell for $250 + software. And, again, it doesn't solve the problem of finding good PoE cameras.
I have gone through the entire gambit, having bought Arlo, Nest, Foscam, and trying Blue Iris, etc and can definitively say that Nest is the easiest and most reliable outdoor camera.
That said, I'm not going to buy this trumped up version of the camera mainly because I don't know what it buys me over the currect camera. The fact this has made the front page is kind of weird to me.
Its actually humorous to see these old school guys who have enjoyed having a low churn subscription service cash cow for decades, be slowly disrupted.
Total denial at every turn LOL.
Why would anybody want to spend less than a 1/3rd the hardware cost, no installation cost, can be moved when you moved, and no monthly monitoring fee. They just don't get it.
I sent them links to Nests product announcements today. It'll be interesting to see their response.
I put up some Ubiquiti cameras last year, we live on a pretty quiet street but we had some kids pulling shenanigans (a car window was shot out with a BB gun, our Little Free Library bench was drug out into the street, change being stolen from cars).
Since the cameras, nothing has happened, so that's a plus.
But the Ubiquity recorder device makes the system nearly unusable. For some reason, recordings usually stop while there is still motion going on, so I end up with a lot of little 15-30 second videos that show only the start of whatever is going on. I've fiddled with it a lot and had no luck.
I really should contact support and see what they say.
We have WiFi problems sometimes, it just seems like I'll have fewer problems if I run wired.
At work we have a Nest and it seems to be pretty good, though it's a much more consumer level thing. Which probably is good.
We install Unifi camera systems for a living - the crazy amount tiny little files and MongoDB basically require that the Unifi Video Controller have an SSD for reliable usage - that precludes the Unifi branded Unifi Controller that has a spinning drive.
Our recommendation: A Intel (Intel Brand) Atom NUC with an SSD and 8GB of RAM. Installing Linux and the Unifi server on it takes about 20 minutes and you're left with a more manageable machine.
I would also admit that the Unifi Video Controller hasn't been rock-solid until about a year ago - current releases now go forever without issue.
Thanks for the pointers. I haven't had the Unifi system for a year yet, so I must be running the more reliable software.
I did do an install of the Unifi software on a Ubuntu virtual machine for initial testing, and I agree that it was super easy.
So I assume that if you are installing these systems, that you are more or less happy with them? I was optimistic about it, like the cameras and the promise of the controller software, but wish it was more reliable.
Have you seen the thing where it stops recording in the middle of motion?
At the same time the controller has gotten more stable, we finally bit the bullet and jumped to SSDs for all our installs - I think that helps with long term reliability. I had a hunch that the controller doesn't deal with SATA timeouts while a spinning hard-drive reallocates sectors. But I really have no evidence of such a theory.
I went through running PoE (also got their PoE switch, so this is all their gear), and I figure that if this hardware doesn't work, I can switch to different PoE gear.
Maybe I should try scheduling a regular reboot? I've wondered if I was running into it just having problems running out of space and having to do maintenance that interfered with recordings, and if a SSD would help. Haven't gone that route yet though.
But, honestly, the Google Wifi and OnHub have been working really well. We are in a challenging environment for some reason (neighbors with a bad cordless phone or something?). I've added a few wireless mesh nodes and hope to wire them at some point here.
Ones that got caught.
Note that this may very well violate certain state wiretap laws that require two party consent.
See this with regard to evesdropping:
"New York makes it a crime to record to record or eavesdrop on an in-person or telephone conversation unless one party to the conversation consents. "
http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/new-york-recording-law
Do I think anyone would be prosecuted? No but the way I read it it's a violation of the law.