Recommend me an IP camera

sanvit · March 2020

Long story short, I would like to buy an IP camera which should look at my door 24/7.
It needs to be

Compatible with ZoneMinder (a.k.a. RTSP available)
1080p or higher resolution
IR capability (night vision?)
reliable enough to use it 24/7
Cheap

I was originally thinking of buying Unifi G3 Flex, but looking for opinions, as these aren't that cheap and am going to use it long-term.
Any recommendations are appreciated. Thanks!

seriesn · March 2020

I use Swann in most of my locations. Pretty solid for the $

https://www.swann.com/us/

seanho · March 2020

Dahua 2MP with Sony StarVis sensor. Can see in pitch dark, it's like magic. (Some of the Swanns are rebranded OEM Dahua.) Andy at EmpireTech, drop him a line on ipcamtalk or his AliExpress store; his Amazon prices tend to be higher.

Also, BlueIris is the de facto standard NVR software.

InceptionHosting · March 2020

@seanho said:
Dahua 2MP with Sony StarVis sensor. Can see in pitch dark, it's like magic. (Some of the Swanns are rebranded OEM Dahua.) Andy at EmpireTech, drop him a line on ipcamtalk or his AliExpress store; his Amazon prices tend to be higher.

Also, BlueIris is the de facto standard NVR software.

Do you happen to know or are you able to make a suggestion on who is making the best solar camera's right now? or at least battery powered with a charging port?

I spent about £1000 on reolink kit (argus 2's) which was great for the first 6 months, after 10 months 2 batteries are dead, 2 cameras are dead 3 panels have failed so they have zero longevity.

AaronSS · March 2020

https://wyze.com/wyze-cam-pan.html

I have 1 at home and 5 at work

SagnikS · March 2020

Out of curiosity, is there any good peephole camera that lets you use your own software?

Neoon · March 2020

@aaronstuder said:
https://wyze.com/wyze-cam-pan.html

I have 1 at home and 5 at work

Meh, I would not trust these.
Actually you can buy a Pi Zero + Camera for about 20$, the SD card these days is basically free so you pay in the end around 30$ with a PSU.

debaser · March 2020

I have 2 Eufycams at home. Very happy with it: local storage, supports RTSP. They run on a battery but those are long lasting. Indoor camera in my hallway worked 14 months on one charge. Outdoor camera in my backyard worked 9 months.

If wired is a requirement, the Unifi is a good option.

gestiondbi · March 2020

Take a look to ipvm.com You will find review and comparative of cameras on the market.

AaronSS · March 2020

@Neoon said:
Meh, I would not trust these.

Why?

terrorgen · March 2020

@aaronstuder said:

@Neoon said:
Meh, I would not trust these.

Why?

IP cams have been known to be easily hacked and used as part of a bot net. Plus, hacker can see what you see.

I'll go with the pi Zero + camera route

Neoon · March 2020

@terrorgen said:

@aaronstuder said:

@Neoon said:
Meh, I would not trust these.

Why?

IP cams have been known to be easily hacked and used as part of a bot net. Plus, hacker can see what you see.

I'll go with the pi Zero + camera route

Yea, but you can put the camera's on a different SSID without Internet if you want.
And for some like Xiaomi ones, you can put custom firmware on it, so you can even SSH into it.

seanho · March 2020

I have not used solar powered cameras. Everything I've seen points to sticking with PoE. For power, the daily charge/discharge can be taxing on batteries. For data, local-only storage is useless if it gets stolen / destroyed, and WiFi tends to flake out precisely when you need it most. I'm confident the industry will improve on both fronts, however.

Running cat6 is certainly a pain, and for long outdoors runs you'll want to have some sort of lightning protection. Direct burial is simpler than conduit. With conduit you can leave pull lines and use it for other things, but there's also a risk it leaks and fills with water.

Wyze are improving, but IMHO they're toys, sorry: image quality and firmware. Pi camera even more so. UniFi G3 is quite nice, but pricey (as with most things UniFi).

All IoT devices, including cameras, should be treated as having untrusted firmware and be isolated on a VLAN without direct internet access. The cams only need to talk to the NVR; you can VPN in to the NVR to view remotely. Managed APs like UniFi can broadcast different ESSIDs for different VLANs, using the same radio channels.

In planning it out, you want to consider your desired DORI distances and sketch out placement and focal length; this is much more important than just going as wide and high-res as possible. If you're thinking of submitting images to law enforcement in case anything happens, they'll have guidelines on minimum number of pixels for a face. Landscaping, lighting, access/traffic flow to create choke points, all work together to optimize surveillance. I know it can be challenging in wide-open farmland.

InceptionHosting · March 2020

@debaser said: I have 2 Eufycams at home.

Do they have an exposed charging/mini usb port so they can charge while active or is it swap/charge only?

debaser · March 2020

@AnthonySmith said:

@debaser said: I have 2 Eufycams at home.

Do they have an exposed charging/mini usb port so they can charge while active or is it swap/charge only?

They can charge while active. However: they work with a base station, so you should have a mains supply somewhere near the camera's.

InceptionHosting · March 2020

@debaser said: They can charge while active. However: they work with a base station, so you should have a mains supply somewhere near the camera's.

Ah well, strike that one off the list too then cheers.

sanvit · March 2020

Hey everyone, thanks for the replys!

I was personally really busy and wasn't able to read all your comments! I appreciate every comments you guys posted, and will check out all of those!

Thankyou!

WSS · March 2020

@seanho Once again provided the best information, which was almost glossed over. Just wanted to say "Thanks."

seanho · March 2020

You are too kind, WSS! My expertise is not in hosting (nor is it surveillance!), so I have learned a lot from this community over the years.

Neoon · March 2020

So, I purchased a Yi Home 1080p for 22 BUCKS recently, as we know it comes with that cloud shit.
But.... BEHOLD.

There is HACK available, but you need to use the precise HACK e.g:

"Using custom firmware for MStar platforms worked for me (see https://github.com/roleoroleo/yi-hack-MStar). I have a Yi Home 1080p camera (YYS.2016 model) with 4.5.0.0C firmware"

Which can disable all cloud functions and just provide a video stream which you could feed into a Pi that does the motion detection etc, awesome.

Neoon · March 2020

The Hack is working fine so far, nice webUI the camera now has without the app horse shit.
Also RTSP is available, which I use with motioneye on my RPi4.

If I get the lagging fixed in motioneye, while RTSP works fine, it would be a bargain buying these cam's for 22 bucks each.

WSS · March 2020

@Neoon said:
If I get the lagging fixed in motioneye, while RTSP works fine, it would be a bargain buying these cam's for 22 bucks each.

LMK if this works for you. I'm interested in upgrading the old kit.

Neoon · March 2020

@WSS said:

@Neoon said:
If I get the lagging fixed in motioneye, while RTSP works fine, it would be a bargain buying these cam's for 22 bucks each.

LMK if this works for you. I'm interested in upgrading the old kit.

Well, as said the RTSP works fine via VLC, I figured that the network caching was the point, that made it working fine.
1000ms was default and the stream worked, without any fractures or such.

I could bring it down to 100ms when I disabled the motion capturing on the camera itself.

But still it does lag if you have no network caching like in motion eye.
I could not find such an option there.

I suspect, that the camera cannot really output 1080p in real time and the CPU is on its limit so it needs a small cache or my wifi is just to crappy.
No idea if the cpu would be to slow, the cache of 100ms would be eaten up quite quickly but it does not look like that.

Must be some kind of different issue.

WSS · March 2020

Can you scale it down to 720p and have it work? Is it possibly just interpolation internally that sucks at 1080p?

Neoon · March 2020

@WSS said:
Can you scale it down to 720p and have it work? Is it possibly just interpolation internally that sucks at 1080p?

Well, I can only stream on high res via RTSP, whatever that means and low.
Low works a bit better but still its meh.

Also checked my wifi, low ping, no congestion.
VLC with 100ms network cache works better then motionEye BUT....
If the cache is set below 100ms and I set the camera to UDP RTSP motionEye is better but you will see a shit ton of fragments, instead of a freeze frame in VLC.

Lemme SSH into that camera and see what I can fuck up.

Neoon · March 2020

Issues seems to be open since a while:
https://github.com/TheCrypt0/yi-hack-v4/issues/89

g4m3r · March 2020

If you want something solid go with sony https://pro.sony/en_GB/products/fixed-cameras , many major companies use these. But they are kinda expensive (depends on your needs, they also have a cheap line).

If you want to go cheap get hikvision cams https://us.hikvision.com/en/products/cameras/network-camera . They are sony clones, damn cheap (due to the high demand in china) and good quality. Used by many smaller/mid-size companies.

If you want some consumer grade cams get those $20 one's on ebay, they are fine as long as you use them wired in a dedicated vlan.
Don't ever use wifi cams, they all suck (Arlo, Nest, Yi...), are expensive, and don't last long.

foxone · March 2020

At work we use EZVIZ and Hikvision. They worked great so far.
However, we use Shinobi instead of Zoneminder

Recommend me an IP camera

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