Do you have a CCTV system at home?
What kind of cameras and NVR do you use?
Does it integrate with your home automation system, alarm, etc...?
I'm curious about how other people are tackling this.
Questions are welcome too.
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Do you use one of those? I've tried ESP32 cams but their quality is too bad for serious CCTV.
They have too low res & framerate, doesn't really work well with low light, and the ESP32 is too limited to do much postprocessing, like smart events or whatever...
I personally use commercial products for this. I'm open to going DIY if there was a good enough option, that was better at least at something compared to my current cams, but for now I'll keep them.
what are you talking about
it does 720p at around 15 fps just fine, the camera is not bad either but if you really want to you can upgrade it to something better
more than enough for a security camera
and if you use the esp32-s3 you can easily add ai slop on top if that
picrel was a live feed in extremely unfavourable conditions (bad lighting, bad connection) and it still did fine
Clearly our expectations are very different.
My cameras are recording 4k video at 25fps. And for me, "bad lighting" is recording at night something 10m away from the camera (which they do fine), not daylight with the sun shining, like on that pic.
That's anything but usable for security, no matter how fun it might be as a project.
its just bad placement, camera is in the dark with bright sunlight reflecting in right in front of it
the stock camera is tiny, obviously it doesnt handle that well
i was testing a bird cam setup, with more favourable conditions it looks completely fine
i dont know what your expectations are other than to be able to boast because saving hours of 4k footage is an extremely wasteful use of resources
you either need terabytes of drive space to store the uncompressed/barely compressed feed from the camera or an insane encoding rig to transcode the files on the fly
I even took a snapshot of one of the camera streams just to make a point.
I don't think this camera is specially good, but the bare minimum nowadays. Still, the image is sharp and has good contrast all across the image.
What you posted has horrible artifacts, is blurry, and has parts burned out by the sun, while others are lost in the shadows.
That's not even close to enough for CCTV. Of course it can be enough for fun projects like the bird nest, but you can't compare that to a CCTV system.
Regarding the storage space, my NVR has a cheap 2TB disk, which is enough for a week of 24/7 recordings of 4 cameras. All my cameras encode in H264 or H265, which is very efficient, so my NVR doesn't need to transcode anything, just save the stream, which a Pi could do perfectly.
the conditions are terrible, bad lighting, poor connection and i didnt focus the lens
all things that can be fixed, yet even here its still more than plenty for a security camera
i think you fundamentally misunderstand the point of security cameras, its purely for insurance reason
it only needs to show a logical chain of events
only reason youd need resolution is for licence plates
>i think you fundamentally misunderstand the point of security cameras, its purely for insurance reason
>only reason youd need resolution is for licence plates
Every person has different reasons for what they have. If that's your use case, and your camera is ok for it, that's great.
But you should acknowledge that other people needs might be very different.
I've only had a need for the videos twice. Especially on the last instance, the video showing clearly the face and actions of the involved person was key to a successful resolution of the problem. A blurry, burned out image wouldn't have been of any use, and this wasn't anything insurance-related; there are may things that a video can clarify, not just burglaries.
For me, the point of having CCTV cams is knowing they are always ready, no matter the light, connection or whatever, and providing the best evidence posible if the need arises. All this at a reasonable cost.
I could buy two cameras like the one I posted for the price of that guy's project, and have it work perfectly out of the box.
I have many DIY devices around the house, including many ESP devices with ESPHome, but for this I'd rather buy something better and more reliable.
But, again, if the ESP-Cam is enough for you, and you had fun with the project, that's perfect too!
i dont know where you get that from because camera footage is such a low standard of evidence that its functionally inadmissible
for instance the way youve set up your camera is illegal here
This is delusional, old shitty closed circuit cameras sure.
But 4k night vision cameras where you can see the individual pubic hairs at 10 feet? That shit is gold in court.
Just checked that guy's video and man, it was shit.
First, it's full of ads from his sponsors. Second, he managed to spend almost $400 to get a camera that is worse in every way than a $20 one I could buy right now.
I'm a fan of DIY, but not like this...
these not only are shit but also have the worst antenna reception ever, they come with a plug for an external antenna but the clowns decided that for some reason you need to desolder a really small component if you want to use it
>cant resolder smb component
skill issue
they actually sell premodified boards for morons like you though
it would be kind of kino to have a controllable camera on my roof so i can see the front of my house, but i don't want to wire it up
It's nice fun, honestly. I installed mine with the excuse of security, but they are pretty amazing toys, and I love being able to check all around the house from my desktop or anywhere with the phone...
Not a fan of PTZ, though. All my cameras are static; I made sure they would cover the places I want them to, without needing to move them around and lose part of the image. This way they are also useful for timelapses, which I've always liked.
Are there cams that have tele lenses? I'd like to spy on some windows in front of my window where I saw people have sex with my 20x telescope, of course wide lenses are useless.
Yes, there are some, but nowhere near "tele" enough for what you want to do.
But why do you want it to be a CCTV camera? You're going to use it from inside your window, you can use any kind of camera. If you already have a telescope, just buy a 2nd hand camera you can attach to it, and call it a day. Any old DSLR will have mount adapters for most telescopes, and give you amazing image quality.
Ideally I'd like to move to various windows. I'm lucky enough to have seen sex in twelve different locations and I'd like to cover most of them. Even more ideally I'd like a function to scan the various location until found the proper one. But I understand that a 20x lens isn't useful for what those cameras are intended for. Probably an used superzoom DSLR camera and a tripod would serve the purpose better: to tell the truth the neighborhood is getting old and sex isn't any more common as it was years ago when I could see bjs on the balconies, sex on the terraces and students making out in the dark with hands in the panties: ah, memories. Thx!
Telescopes are much better for the kind of zoom you want, so a motorised telescope with a DSLR mounted on it would probably be the way to go, and would give you nice PTZ functionality.
Yep, thx. Problem is I don't live alone and I'd like to keep my voyeur passion for myself. A tele lens CCTV camera sat on a shelf near the window would have been "my network camera project, not pointing at anything, really", a telescope + DSLR camera + tripod is a bit difficult to disguise and it tells too much of my vices 😀
I'm pretty mad about the state of CCTV
First of all the "good" NVRs cost way too much, my dad keeps getting shitty chink ones that have no brand, no support, no updates, outdated activex web interface with vulnerabilities.
Then the cameras somehow became hard to find, there used to be ip cameras that were completely standalone and could be picked up by an NVR or whatever, nowadays EVERY SINGLE ONE comes with a chink cloud service you have to pay for, unless you pay a lot, the cheap standalone ip camears are completely gone from the market.
Back to the NVR, I still haven't found a decent and recent PC application to watch the cameras, I still have to use an ancient app that came with the NVR, the website doesn't even exist anymore so I have to pass an ancient executable around.
The "official" app is abysmal, there are way too many shitty apps on the store to even find one that would work at all.
I had some success with Frigate NVR and home assistant, but it crashes a lot because it requires a lot of manteinance, but at least I get a slightly saner interface.
I mostly agree with you.
Most cheap cameras want you to use their app, their servers, their everything, and have zero documentation on their streams, don't implement ONVIF, or are missing key functionality, and if they still have a web panel, it doesn't work in any supported browser.
There are two kind of exceptions: the "IPCAM" firmware ones, which are bad but at least are easy to work with and integrate, and the professional grade ones, which are expensive, but have robust ONVIF implementations and stable, good quality streams.
Same with the NVRs. Frigate is a usability nightmare, but still beats most commercial products, and at least it integrates with HA. I didn't like it, though, so I ended up writing my own...
yes, I have an NVR system - currently with just 3 cameras
>one facing front door
>one facing balcony area and living room
>one facing hallway
I use motioneye, and the recording action is triggered by homeassistant through doors being opened or not.
>door sensor is triggered, start recording for 10 minutes, in one minute segments
>the recorded videos are instantly uploaded to onedrive (using rclone mapped folder with encryption configuration so that it's encrypted in and unreadable in onedrive with decryption password+salt)
>videos are still viewable locally, but in case someone fricks with the server or something - I have a onedrive backup as well.
>videos are saved for 1 month
Homeassistant also alerts my phone if the door sensor is triggered and neither me nor my wife is home. If we are home, it still records but doesn't notify. The cameras themselves are on an IoT network that isn't allowed internet access, so they only communicate with the motioneye server. I run them off of isolated wifi atm.
If I didn't live in the top floor of an apartment building, I would also add outdoor cameras and add motion detection and recording triggering to certain perimeter areas, or potentially just record 24/7 (I would also run the cameras off of PoE).
If you're looking for NVR systems, ignore everything but the following three:
- Motioneye
- Blue Iris
- Zoneminder
anything else is garbage.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing your setup.
> the recording action is triggered by homeassistant through doors being opened or not.
Why don't you do motion detection, in addition to the door sensors? I prefer to have some kind of redundancy on these things, and all cameras have built-in motion detection nowadays. If you have pets that could trigger it, many cameras have AI detection too, which works great for this use case.
I have my cameras facing outdoors, and simple motion detection would be useless because of trees and grass. The AI cams work fantastic, and they give me an event in HA much before anyone gets even close to the door. I wouldn't want it any other way.
> If you're looking for NVR systems, ignore everything but the following three
I personally don't like MotionEye. The interface doesn't make any sense to me... Same with Zoneminder. Blue Iris seems clearly better, but I refuse to run a Windows machine for it. But I agree that other alternatives are even worse.
> I would also run the cameras off of PoE
For me, this is very important. I have all my cameras wired using PoE, and the switch and NVR are on a UPS.
Otherwise, all it takes to disable your security is a wifi jammer, or a short power outage.
I know, this might be overkill most of the time, but I feel safer with this. I use many zigbee sensors for automation and as an extra layer in the security system, but at least some stuff needs to be wired...
I wanted to get a camera but they seems to all have poor chinoid software with "optional" cloud and ads that's bullshit. Where are the offline cam with decent rtsp with a solar panel?
Depending on your location, and where you're installing it, a small solar panel on the camera might not help much...
That being said, there aren't many packs like that, but you can buy any camera, a cheap panel with built in battery working at the same voltage as the camera (usually 12v, but not always), and just plug the camera into it.
>camera footage is such a low standard of evidence that its functionally inadmissible
Where are you getting that from? And in which country?
Here it's perfectly fine evidence. And yeah, I probably have it pointing a tiny bit higher than what would be 100% legal, I probably moved it last time I cleaned it... Not a big deal, though.
That shouldn't be a problem here and most cameras have big batteries or usb rechargeable. I'm more interesting to get a custom firmware or stream my thing with rtsp. Why all cameras I've seen are smartphones only with a crappy app? buying security products to get fricked in the ass security wise shouldn't be a thing.
>I'm more interesting to get a custom firmware or stream my thing with rtsp. Why all cameras I've seen are smartphones only with a crappy app?
My experience is that the absolute worst and cheapest cameras, and the professional ones, both have readily available RTSP streams, and a web panel to manage them. But low-to-intermediate ones are always forcing you to use an app and you can't find out the stream URL easily. Still, most of the time you can find it with some googling... but I wouldn't buy one of those.
Custom firmware? That's not an option in any range... Sorry.
Anyone has a good recommendation for a wired, local-only, weatherproof peephole camera?
ip cameras + old laptop + ffmpeg
Most NVRs end up using ffmpeg under the hood, after all, so yeah, you can just do it yourself. Add some kind of watcher that makes sure to restart it if needed, and you're set.
Still, having a NVR can be convenient and useful, especially if you'd like to access your videos from the phone.
also nice to have a decent GUI for scheduling shit and changing various settings.
Zoneminder on Linux, several models of cameras.
I had cameras on my previous home.
my conclusion from that experience = 720p is fine inside the house. Outside the more resolution the better. Thankfully good quality 4k cameras + storage is cheap.
also 15 fps is ok. If you have lots of movement in the area then 25-30 fps. More is just a waste.
>More is just a waste.
I would agree UNLESS you have a high-speed roadway within a close distance to your property.
60fps can really help getting a clear frame on a license plate for a faster moving vehicle.
I generally agree with you. That being said, even if a lower res camera would probably be ok inside, I see no reason not to put at least full hd, because they are so damn cheap nowadays. Maybe not 4k, but at least full hd.
You lose a lot of light sensitivity by going higher FPS, so unless you *really* need to capture those plates, I'd keep it in the 25fps range.
oddly specific datamining thread there, rajesh