Home Security

[kuru]

My parents' home is a bit off the beaten path. It's right next to a stretch of woods. They would like a few cameras around the house.

I'm looking into a small (raspi?) server running kerberos. I'd also get a new, powerful Wifi router that can cover all of the house. No cloud services or subscriptions. Maybe remote access, we'll see.
What I can't get a bead on is which 'proper' camera to get. There are so many out there; feels like there are as many dodgy "review" or "test" sites just in name.
A user on another board told me he has a model from FOSCAM. That thing happily sends GBs worth of data every day to who-knows-where while all the concerning options are turned off. Scary stuff.

So! Any experiences, or trusty resources, vendors, manufacturers - German/European would be perfect - that you can think of?

 

[ClockworkCoder]

I'd be interested too. Only thing I'd mention re wifi is it's apparently trivial to jam wifi cameras by signal blocking / forcing them to reconnect, so I believe wired is better if possible.

Pine64 are working on some webcam, although I haven't investigated it yet.

 

[kuru]

I was advocating for PoE, but my Dad doesn't seem to be into rewiring.

I'm not planning on playing around with the hardware. I'd rather have out-of-the-box parts for my folks.
I'll get a raspi cam for my place though.

 

[levi]

A user on another board told me he has a model from FOSCAM. That thing happily send GBs worth of data every day to who-knows-where while all the concerning options are turned off. Scary stuff.

Yeah, I blame Ring, the internet connected doorbell thingy for that. So hard to get a dumb camera these days.

 

[elw3]

And then what? What exactly are you planning to do with the picture?
If you want a live response, just get a motion sensor.
If you dont plan on watching the stream the whole day: get a hunting cam.

 

[TeDaDeS]

What is the purpose of the camera's?

Just to look outside when your parents are inside, or to use them remotely?

 

[kuru]

Live view from inside is the priority. As mentioned above remote access has been discussed and is in the nice-to-have category. In the end it's just a matter of opening a port in the FritzBox and getting a DynDNS account.

They have a hunting cam, and it's nice to see the foxes, hedgehogs and cats coming to visit the porch.
Dad's a trained and armed retiree. I guess he wants a bit of the hi-tech fortress feel, see what's going on on the other side of the wall. Can't blame him. He's heard, seen and been in enough unpleasantries.

 

[KidPaddle]

Why not use several Pi Zeros with wifi and camera module and send them to a Pi Server. Then you know what's going on with your hardware.

You don't need the server, except for central storage of the videos. A web server could run on each PI and in a browser you could display all the streams at the same time, and if you click on a single stream, it would be enlarged. This is a very simple solution.

Thomas

 

[levi]

Why not use several Pi Zeros with wifi and camera module and send them to a Pi Server. Then you know what's going on with your hardware.

It's not entirely clear to me, but I'm assuming they want security cameras pointing outside, and for those kind of shots it makes most sense to put the camera outside too. I'm not sure how the Pi Camera reacts to being blown around and rained on.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

Dip it in epoxy.

 

[KidPaddle]

It's not entirely clear to me, but I'm assuming they want security cameras pointing outside, and for those kind of shots it makes most sense to put the camera outside too. I'm not sure how the Pi Camera reacts to being blown around and rained on.

You could use waterproof cases for the Go-Pro cameras, or cases for underwater cameras. A small lock for the power supply can be sealed well. Just two ideas.

Thomas

 

[Binky]

Are there any good FOSS motion-tracking / monitoring tools? I can't say I would want to spend all day watching video feeds, but it would be neat to have an automatic alarm for anything unusual.

 

[TeDaDeS]

You can put your electronic project (like raspberry-pi zero or esp32) in a waterproof clear box.
It's probably cheap, low power and via wifi.


It's possible to do some tracking:

 

[levi]

Yeah, that can be done, I'd just be aware of even clear plastic going yellow when left out in the sun, depending presumably upon what type of plastic it is. Also water can wick in along screw threads, but I'd still personally prefer a screwed together box than a clipped together one in a humid or wet environment.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

Also water can wick in along screw threads

Grease the threads or use teflon tape or whatever it is plumbers use.

 

[levi]

I'd expect the sticky they use on tapes of any sort to denature over the course of a year or so. In my experience plumbers doing external pipework mainly solder pipes together. But yeah, grease on the threads is a good idea.

 

[Phlyra]

I'd expect the sticky they use on tapes of any sort to denature over the course of a year or so. In my experience plumbers doing external pipework mainly solder pipes together. But yeah, grease on the threads is a good idea.

The Teflon tape used by plumbers isn’t “sticky” at all

 

[levi]

How does it remain attached to the surface then?

 

[ClockworkCoder]

How does it remain attached to the surface then?

Something to do with static or surface tension, or something.

There's a variety of ducktape that's for waterproofing joints and it seems to work quite well. I've used it to temporarily fix the edge of a roof to stop water dripping down the edge of the wall and inside the roof edge. Thankfully it survived a thunderstorm and a few days of torrential rain.

 

[kuru]

Are there any good FOSS motion-tracking / monitoring tools? I can't say I would want to spend all day watching video feeds, but it would be neat to have an automatic alarm for anything unusual.

Kerberos allows you to set what they call expositors - screen regions for which the movement recognition is active

Machinery

The machinery is the engine of the Kerberos Open Source agent, it connects to the camera and makes recordings.

doc.kerberos.io

That can be a simple rectangle or a user defined polygon.
Edit: e-mail alarms etc. can be configured. I think you should also be able to set pins high etc. on a raspberry

@levi AFAIK teflon tape is used directly on the threads of e.g. copper piping as a sealant, it just gets squidged in there

Edit: Kerberos might not be the right thing to use. It only supports a single camera :-/