Private security footage is nothing new to criminal investigations, but two factors are rapidly changing the landscape: huge growth in the number of devices with cameras, and the fact that footage usually lands in a cloud server, rather than on a tape.
When a third party maintains the footage on the cloud, it gives police the ability to seek the images directly from the storage company, rather than from the resident or business owner who controls the recording device. In 2022, the Ring security company, owned by Amazon, admitted that it had provided audio and video from customer doorbells to police without user consent at least 11 times. The company cited “exigent circumstances.”
I love technology but I don’t ever see myself installing a camera in my house that connects to the internet like this. It’s literally big brother…
I give my cam access to the internet when I travel. Outside of that it’s LAN only.
Luckily most NAS’s have software that can capture it and you can back it up to the cloud encrypted.
do you mind sharing a basic explanation about your setup? i’m looking at doing something similar with TrueNAS and NextCloud.
That might be something I would consider but I doubt I have the know how
The perks of being an electronic security installer and wiring up your own house with a real system with a dozen PoE cameras and a local NVR under your control only…😋
Stay away from the Harry Homeowner cloud-connected lick-and-stick BestBuy bullshit.
Gimmie some brands then…
I use unifi. I have their dream machine (router/firewall/vpn) a POE switch, two access points, 5 cameras and their doorbell. I rarely have any issues.
Do you have particular recommendations? I somehow landed on Reolink as the option I’m going to buy in a few months
If you want something easy but not necessarily the cheapest, UniFi will do.
I like UniFi but they aren’t inexpensive and to really make them work you have to go balls deep into the UniFi ecosystem. I HAVE that ecosystem and still went with Reolink for my cameras.
Yeah they’re not crazy expensive but not cheap either, and I’m not a fan of Ubiquiti as a company. There are definitely better alternatives, I just don’t know anything that somebody who’s only used shitty cloud connected garbage could jump right into
Reolink is perfectly fine. They can be setup with or without internet, just remember to put them on their own VLAN that doesn’t have Internet access. If you don’t want to use the Reolink NVR then build yourself a frigrate box or similar.
Mine don’t have internet access and I can watch their feeds directly when I’m home and through my Home Assistant rig when I’m away.
Probably avoid anything by Hikvision if you don’t want to risk having Chinese backdoors in it. My own system is just a hodgepodge of different used cams I pulled off job sites. Just need to make sure they can do ONVIF and they should be compatible with any NVR out there.
If the cameras are on a private network with no routes to the Internet a backdoor doesn’t really matter. I would still avoid untrustworthy manufacturers.
Bit expensive, but I run all Ubiquiti network and camera equipment.
I’m using Reolink and highly recommend it. Without a doubt the best bang for your buck. I bought a bundle on Black Friday a couple years ago with the 2TB NVR and 4 cameras (5MP POE) for a couple hundred dollars, and I’ve since expanded to 6 cameras.
I’m in the process of setting up a NAS, so hoping I can get reolink backed up on it for easy access.
Ubiquiti used to be the only one I knew about that I could host and block internet access. Is there anything else these days? Ubiquiti stuff is kinda shit these days.
Someone set off a bomb close to my house. Police asked me questions about it (time, what it sounded like, etc). They noticed I had security cameras and inquired what I had. The dumbfounded look when I said Ubiquiti (they’ve never heard of it) and that all footage was recorded locally on a hard drive. Like they didn’t understand what that meant - obviously they were looking for an answer such as “google” or “amazon” so they could just circumvent me.
I have their routers and stuff! It’s way overkill but I was having such major issues with the all in one routers one usually gets.
But they still won’t catch the delivery packages thieves.
I had one of those Vivent door to door folks walk up to me one day, garage open. I was polite enough but explained I had no interest in storing a video feed of my house on their servers as I’d like to do illegal things if I want. They assured me it was stored with “aes256 encryption” - which they expect most laymen to be wowed by - but what good is encryption if they own the keys and crumble to government requests?
Sadly, since our country is governed by dinosaurs, the responsibility falls on us to help our friends and family avoid sketchy cameras that force the use of their cloud services.
At least until we can convince them to elect people who weren’t born before computers were invented.
Does anyone have a rec for something you can buy and selfhost beyond a pi setup?
Any closed circuit security systems, ones that aren’t cloud based will come with an NVR (like a DVR) that hosts your recordings locally. Most are wired but some support wireless as well. Generally more expensive but in my opinion worth it.
My mom bought a simple setup for I think 3 or 400 dollars at Costco.
INAL but law enforcement can still request or subpoena your video if they suspect a crime has been witnessed by your cameras AFAIK. But at least you’ll know about it.
Thanks! Very helpful to start looking!
For “commercial but free” There is AxxonOne (was AxxonNext) But free only allows 4 cameras. However this is better than all the FOSS choices in terms of what it can do (and so it should, more than 4 cameras or face detection, fire etc costs money).
For FOSS there is:
- Frigate
- Shinobi
- Zoneminder
- iSpy
- Viseron
- Moonfire NVR
- motionEyeOS
Lots of options but you will need some baremetal or a decently powered server and hypervisor to run in a VM.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
