Who's still running their own home CCTV servers?

[rcx132]

I know some people on here were running home CCTV servers, mainly using Blue Iris.

I recently got scared by the leccy bills caused by having a PC turned on 24/7, especially with the horrific CPU usage that CCTV causes. I junked the old i5 CCTV PC and bought a new, modern, fanless, integrated server from Ali Express for £180. It's cut the power usage down to less than half and should pay for itself in no time. And it's silent

I also took the opportunity to junk Blue Iris as the cost of updates builds up over time. I've installed Linux and Zoneminder instead. Linux has improved a lot since I last used it, though it still took more effort to set up over Windows. I found Zoneminder is no more complex than Blue Iris, so not sure what people are complaining about with it.

So all that is working fine. But I've now come across Frigate. This is another open source Linux CCTV software, but this one is heavily AI based. It fully uses AI to identify movement and start recording, making it far more accurate. It's also more actively developed and modern than Zoneminder. The catch is that it needs AI chips to be installed into the PC, and they cost £60 each and each one can only manage four cameras, so I'd need two.

I'm tempted to give it a go. I'm wondering if anyone else has already tried it ?

 

[MetalMonkey]

I have an old PC running the community version of Genius Vision - does the job but something that's need to be improved/redone for much the same reasons.
I wasn't that impressed with Blue Iris when I evaluated it years ago. An upgrade has been on my "to do" list for a while, so I'm interested to see what (free) software options are out there now.

 

[jmp49]

I use reolink poe cameras, and use the person/vehicle intelligent detection baked right into the cameras to throw alerts and sd cards to back up the weeks images.
These feed into a homeassistant instance, which throws a alarm if certain sensors are triggered when the alarm template in homeassistant is armed. So camera person detection, vehicle, some of the micromillimeter presence sensors, and some fixed trigger sensors. You can also set it to start recording the stream after a trigger so you have a local or offsite copy of whats on the sd card in case someone physically removes them to scrub the evidence. No zoneminder etc involved.
There's a lot more IR etc sensors, and motion sensors on the camera alerts are exposed too but cats/wildlife trigger them too much to rely on the decision to trigger for one of them firing, but there's some intelligence that if a group of sensors trigger it can flag the trigger as more interesting, and I get alerts in real time if groups of things or subsystems or the entire system goes offline.
How homeassistant see's each camera in its config. I've been in there until about a hour ago, so its been detecting me properly walking round working on something and the motion event from 34 minutes will be one of the cats nipping in to do their job of rodent control.
I've been considering cutting power to the poe switches that run the cameras with a automation in homeassistant when the alarm is inactive to cut down on power consumption there too.

To reduce the power cost of the device to run homeassistant on, I run it headless as a virtual machine hosted on a spare repurposed adsl router which is a modern quad core arm system but very low power consumption.
I have a spare rockpi sbc with a 8 core arm chip that I've been meaning to make the backup host when I get time.

You can get operating systems of images for homeassistant (HAOS) or install it into a normal linux machine. For years I ran the linux instance on a mail server locally now, but with the advent of on premise voice control etc, life's easier with a haos instance on dedicated hardware (or in this case as a virtual machine). Homeassistant foundation do low power sbc's dedicated to the task of running their hardware too, but I've never had one of those, though I have the voice assistant preview edition hooked up to my vm of haos.

Home Assistant

Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server.

www.home-assistant.io

Home assistant green, its just a sbc in a nice box with easy setup, but :
Energy consumption
Idle: ~1.7 W at 12 V
Load: ~3 W at 12 V

It doesnt have enough grunt to run a local LLM or voice model 100% locally though, unlike my repurposed router which surprised me when it coped.

Home Assistant Green

The easy-to-use, versatile, and trustworthy smart home hub for everyone.

www.home-assistant.io

You can do a lot more than monitor a few cameras with it too, its a bit addictive tbh, tinkerers dream.

 

[droopsnoot]

I used Zoneminder back when I was at work, interesting to know it's still around. My issues were mainly down to a lack of familiarity with Linux, I wanted a "one stop" installation that would do both Linux and Zoneminder and the only one around at the time was quite a way behind the latest ZM release, if I recall correctly. I had trouble with finding compatible cameras for a reasonable price (it was an unofficial project in work so I didn't really have a budget) and I never figured out (though I never really put any effort into finding out) how to grab video files from the machine onto something else. Most of what it did was give me advance notice of when the lunch truck was about to arrive.

 

[brewdexta]

I'm using both Frigate and Blue Iris. On both I'm using Coral AI processors. The Frigate is an USB AI dongle, the Blue Iris is internal, fits in an SSD M slot.

I mainly use Frigate for a few wildlife cameras and Blue Iris for security cameras but I have got a couple of cameras on both. I haven't tinkered with it for a couple of months but Frigate AI models seemed to be a little better at identifying wildlife, but the models for both are developing rapidly so could have changed.

I've got a couple more cameras to add, I'll probably do that soon so will have another tinker then.

 

[rcx132]

I'm using both Frigate and Blue Iris. On both I'm using Coral AI processors. The Frigate is an USB AI dongle, the Blue Iris is internal, fits in an SSD M slot.

I mainly use Frigate for a few wildlife cameras and Blue Iris for security cameras but I have got a couple of cameras on both. I haven't tinkered with it for a couple of months but Frigate AI models seemed to be a little better at identifying wildlife, but the models for both are developing rapidly so could have changed.

I've got a couple more cameras to add, I'll probably do that soon so will have another tinker then.

How have you found Frigate? Would you say it's useful for home CCTV?

 

[brewdexta]

How have you found Frigate? Would you say it's useful for home CCTV?

Yes, it is. A bit more fiddly that Blue Iris etc. the config files are a bit arcane between different camera makes/models but once you have it working its fine. I'm only using hikvision cameras so that make it easier.

 

[Turbo]

If you use a modern pc with an ssd drive and a temperature controlled fan I would imagine the running costs to be very small.

 

[knighty]

I used avigilon at work, and it's really good, especially for scanning through recordings, I've got 3 months of 24/7 recordings over 20+ cameras and you can scroll through it fast with people shooting around the screen on fast forward faultlessly - a bit like they do on tv cop shows... but it's a fortune... I think I'm £4k+ out of pocket, you have to buy the software then a licence for each camera

at home I have a synology nas running and record to that, £45 per camera licence... I think the software is free and you get 2 free camera licences but it was a while ago so I might be wrong... works faultlessly and super easy to setup

super interested in Frigate... I'd really like number plate reading but last time I looked it looked like it was a pain to setup... I was waiting for someone with more time and more brains than me to sort it out and make it easy :-)

my little brother recently rebuilt his home server to save power... but it'll be a 10+year pay back in power savings to make it worth it :-o

 

[awemawson]

I run Reolink and it demanded Win10 so I have a small form factor Compaq running Win10/Reolink. Trouble is Win 10 insists on occasionally doing updates that stops Reolink running. Tried several fixes to stop the updates, stopping various processes etc but I had another lock up this morning. Simply fixed but the win10 pc is remote from the house so it's a pain!

(I've 9 Reolink 510a cameras on my local network spread over about an acre)

 

[gaz1]

I run Reolink and it demanded Win10 so I have a small form factor Compaq running Win10/Reolink. Trouble is Win 10 insists on occasionally doing updates that stops Reolink running. Tried several fixes to stop the updates, stopping various processes etc but I had another lock up this morning. Simply fixed but the win10 pc is remote from the house so it's a pain!

(I've 9 Reolink 510a cameras on my local network spread over about an acre)

there is a windows 10 update blocker

that puts you in control for when you want to update windows 10 when your near the pc to do it

i use it so i know it works as mine hasnt updated since i installed and blocked its spamware as well as update blocker

you also have control to what you want to update as well

as goes for the cctv you could power it in spring/summer/autumn with solar and batterys

and you can power the pcs mainboard direct off car batterys

but for cheapness its better to use the main 7 night tariff at 5p to charge the batterys and use battery during the day

 

[prepman]

I'm under-awed with Swann, Did attempted a PC 2nd card (hikavision?). Got it somewhat-working in Linux,
I presuming you're using a DDNS ... Freedns? It stop beginning free?

 

[Smouser]

I have a 2-bay QNAP NAS running 8 Hikvision cameras.

The NAS comes with a license to run eight cameras, which is enough for me. Synology only includes 2 free licenses for cameras.

The QNAP uses much less power than an old PC, and the program (QVR Pro Client) for accessing footage is not bad either.

The only limitation is that you can only view two weeks' worth of footage through the app (without paying for an extended viewing license).
However, the footage is still stored on the NAS, so you could manually find and view footage older than 2 weeks.

 

[Domdom]

Synology NAS but stopped using it now. No need in Spain where we live, distinct lack of scallies thankfully.

 

[knighty]

I'm under-awed with Swann, Did attempted a PC 2nd card (hikavision?). Got it somewhat-working in Linux,

Are you using analogue cameras?

It'll give you a shock how much better digital cameras are... plus no worries about drivers etc

 

[prepman]

Are you using analogue cameras?

It'll give you a shock how much better digital cameras are... plus no worries about drivers etc

Yes...by digital you mean network connected....they work imdependently and a expense.