I’m shopping around for a front door camera and I wanted some input as far as security goes. I want a camera from a company that stores minimal to no personal information and doesn’t share user info with third parties.
I don’t really want to have to pay for cloud storage but if I have to and the company has a secure cloud storage model that would be fine, preferably it’d be nice to be able to store footage on my local file server but a mix of that and the ability to rent cloud storage would not be bad either.
Thanks in advance for your input.
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I had quite a good experience using MotionEYEOS and Pi Zero W’s with a camera upgrades.
Not sure it’s still viable.
I picked up a Unifi G5 Flex and it’s pretty nice. I use it with self-hosted Shinobi, which has a very nice UI for setup and management.
I have it set to only record when there’s a certain percentage of change within a specific area. I store everything at the native resolution of the camera (1080p30) and it takes up maybe 150 GB for a month of retention.
If you have an Intel CPU you could easily make it smaller by transcoding into 720p or something. My shitty old server doesn’t support QuickSync so I don’t even attempt to transcode.
If you’re willing to buy into the brand a bit, Ubiquiti makes some decent cameras. PoE cameras are really great if you can run the ethernet but don’t have a power outlet around, and the wifi ones are great if you have the opposite.
The first thing you have to buy is a CloudKey or Dream Machine from them, and it stores all the video locally. You use their app to review footage and get alerts for motion/people/cars. If you allow it, it’ll connect with Ubiquiti and you can tunnel all your video watching and alerts through them. In theory they don’t record or capture anything, but if they were compromised they could. There is a direct connection option if you expose the CloudKey to the internet, which I think gets you all the same features but without Ubiquiti in the middle. You can weigh the risks of each (internet exposed device that could be hacked, vs Ubiquiti in the middle of your traffic). You could probably use VPN and “direct connection” without exposing anything if you want, I doubt alerts will work right though.
Once your storage device is setup, you just start plugging in cameras and away you go.
Their old software stack came with a version where you could host the server on a VM and store all your video on a NAS, but I don’t think they ever added that support back since the change a year or two ago. A lot of people were really cheesed about that.
Specifically for the doorbell camera, I would avoid ubiquiti like a plague. There is a design flaw in their doorbell cam that causes the internal batteries to die in colder temperatures. Mine gave up after just under a year and I had to fight them tooth and nail to get it warrantied.
I’ve heard the doorbell is bad, never used it.
The data breaches are still up for debate, they’re suing an employee for making it all up. And they still wouldn’t qualify as worst in the industry by far IMHO.
This is why I like them, everything stored on my own premises.
blueiris on a dedicated vlan for management, then a dedicated nic on that box for a dedicated poe switch for cameras with no route to network side. poof done.
I’m rockin’ some Amcrest cameras. Love them. I ran them to my Synology for a while which worked great. Now I have a Amcrest NVR. Security isn’t really an issue since everything is internal. I have a VPN set up to my phone so I can vein the cameras remotely.
Front door camera as in a camera that is pointed at the front door, or Front door camera as in one that’s mounted in/close to your front door?
Milestone VMS is good, lots of casinos use it. It’s free for 8 cameras I think
i recommend not using the cloud at all. go 100% local. you have no idea if the cloud provider is actually properly protecting your stuff, and you are beholden to them continuing their cloud services.
in that regard, it will be more work to be able to access your video outside of your house.
if you get a NAS, there are plenty of NVR software available
https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/zydzyx/best\_free\_affordable\_nvr\_software\_i\_have\_tried\_a/
i personally use synology surveillance station since i already have synology systems.
to ensure security, the cameras should be placed on a dedicated network with no internet access. this is easy since you will already need a POE switch, so the only devices connected to the POE switch are the cameras and the NVR. no higher security (from the camera point of view) than that. then you just need to ensure the NVR is secure.
going to store bought route from Hickvision or others for example, they have horrible security so going with a Linux (or windows if you want to use Blue Iris) machines with the proper security in place is a good bet.