Another in a long line of reasons to avoid low price, off-the-shelf, unauditable, cloud-enabled cameras.
I continue to be amazed that there is not a reasonably priced, open source, audited, local-first solution, which doesn’t require a significant personal investment of time to install and maintain.
I swear sometimes you people post this ignorance bait to get product suggestions.
Local-first cameras are super cheap and easy to find. Most just run their own local RTSP server, which you can connect to live with VLC, homeassistant, whatever. OpenIPC is like ddwrt for ip cameras, here is the supported devices page: https://github.com/OpenIPC/wiki/blob/master/en/guide-support...
But unless you're Richard Stallman, go with the closed source Reolink RTSP camera, which is about $100 and used by big corporate installs. It can integrate with the cloud, but you can set it up to just have each camera run a RTSP server with user/pass auth. You have to secure your own network.
But there isn't a really great open source platform for the kind of multi cam security that businesses might need. You have to do your own storage. But grab four reolinks, send the feeds to homeassistant, and most homeowners will be fine.
You yourself just admitted that there "isn't a really great open source platform", so what exactly was ignorant about my request?
I have spent days searching for an affordable solution that meets my requirements. I know there are a lot of people that want the same thing, have done their own research, and have reached a similar conclusion. What we want simply does not exist.
I will stop posting this kind of comment when someone finally gives me a straight answer, but no one has done that yet.
At least with my setup I prefer Amcrest over Reolink (based on compatibility and setup and plugins with the software I use). An open source option that just requires cameras, a computer, and a network is Scrypted + Frigate (+optional Google coral). Amcrest plugin in Scrypted to create a rebroadcast point, then capture it in Frigate for a birdseye view and other security features. If you have Google coral frigate can also do AI object detection (it can do it without but slower). Since Scrypted is the rebroadcast point I also have it hooked up to Apple home kit since I have an Apple TV 4K. Pretty happy so far.
Personally I'm using Shinobi[1], but I've heard good things about frigate too if you're more into the ai detection and HA integration. There's a proxmox helper script one liner guided installation of you're into that [2]
I cringe every time I browse Amazon and see the random cam/cloud service/Play store apps that I know so many people are installing without questioning anything about them.
Not open-source/audited, but Apple HomeKit Secure Video is light years ahead. Encrypted in-house on your own hardware (ATV or HomePod), they don't have the keys, excellent UX, hosted service, super easy to use. I'm all about the self host, but assuming Apple isn't straight up lying, they have build something that's too good and too easy. I buy cheapish HKSV cameras, and block them from accessing the WAN, so there's minimal Apple tax outside one hub.
NAS companies like synology have an offering too. The main problem is that they still live in 2012 when it comes to cpu power and sell vastly underpowered boxes
Price. I don't need CPUs to do rendering on my NAS, and wouldn't pay the premium for it.
The margins on these devices are already pretty high because they're enterprise and business focused - I "buy once cry once"'d when I bought my <vendor>* drive for the home. I would have bought a different vendor if I was forced to pay an additional premium for a render capable CPU.
(* - I'm probably tin foil hating here, but realized from a security posture perspective I don't want to publicly state the vendors I use in my network.)
I continue to be amazed that there is not a reasonably priced, open source, audited, local-first solution, which doesn’t require a significant personal investment of time to install and maintain.