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Comment by hot_gril | Hacker News Reader

> stop using third party vendors for data storage

No. I need a system that detects motion during scheduled times (ideally only humans) and buzzes my phone instantly, giving me a live view and saving a recording around that time. And most of all, it has to be reliable enough that I don't question whether it's working. Anyone who says this is easy is underestimating it.

Something on-prem could do all that, but nobody sells it, and most DIY systems don't have those features (does yours?). So here I am with the Ring.

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I have several cameras hooked up to an NVR that has 2TB drives for constant recording (when space runs out older recordings are deleted. I usually have a few weeks available).

I then have frigate[1] set up on a small fitlet (with a usb CORAL TPU), which gives me excellent control over detection (Humans vs dogs vs cars vs ...). Frigate grabs the streams from my NVR over rstp.

This is then hooked up to my Home Assistant where I have various rules to send alerts to my mobile devices based upon object detected, location of camera, and time of day.

Everything is internal. I have an always on wireguard on my family's mobile devices allowing them to access the cameras and home assistant alerts from anywhere.

It works great, but I have refused to set this up for my extended family (even though they have the same NVR and _really_ want my system), just because there are a lot of moving pieces that need to be maintained (not to mention having a server + vpn)

[1] https://frigate.video/

Frigate looks pretty interesting. Do you have an estimation of how much CPU it's using for your cameras?

I have about a dozen 4k cameras I'd love to migrate to a much more capable NVR, but doing so with software typically means I go from a 30W NVR to maxing out a 8 core 200W Xeon even without object detection.

Would love to kill my Duaha NVR and toss this on the Proxmox cluster instead.

The Frigate website seems to heavily recommend a Coral card to offload the bulk of the processing from the CPU.

EDIT: looks like CPU still used for video decoding regardless of Coral being available: https://docs.frigate.video/frigate/hardware/#do-hwaccel-args...

I really dig this idea. I think you just gave me my next project.

Could you share which model cameras and NVR you're using? I've been wanting to put something together like this for a while, but all of the solutions I've seen require a Windows box (usually running Blue Iris) for the NVR which I want to avoid

Someone should sell a complete solution to make it easy for non-techies to use. Sell a small computer (perhaps a Raspberry Pi) with the right software installed, the Coral accelerator, and several cameras bundled in a package. Make it clear that this is just a sale of hardware, not cloud data storage. It should be as easy as buying a Ring or a Nest, otherwise it will forever just be tech people's toys.

This is what I was thinking. Is there maybe not a big enough market for non-techies who care about privacy and understand the implications?

It needs to be basically the same as a Ring with just one additional requirement, plugging another box into power and your network to act as the DVR/brains, with a QR code that you scan to link it. Sure that can have more customization options, but the default has to be zero config. Probably gonna need a cloud server for notifying and serving the mobile app without having keys to the video (users have to know the difference), which would cost money monthly.

There are hundreds of different NVR solutions out there. The consumer ones are... meh. But they mostly work.

The reality is that except for companies, almost no one REALLY cares about it. It's an expense they'd usually rather not have (like backups), so it always gets the short end of the stick.

I tried that product a couple of times on Google ads, and fewer people clicked on "buy now" than my sister's joke product of "lipstick for your pit bull."

People really don't understand this enough to even know that there's a problem. I have explained to a lot of people that "the cloud" just means renting someone else's computer, and they still don't get it.

Google Ads is too aggressive for this sort of product that requires knowledge of many things. The product is niche and would need a simple youtube video series to explain it, with a descriptive title and description text.

Ideally, in the video(s) you can talk about how the viewer can setup the solution themselves, breaking it down into components, why each is important and how it all works.

Also introduce how the viewer can buy the entire solution from you directly, where’ll they’ll get some custom support/troubleshooting or they may just hire you for consulting.

This will function as your funnel to let your target customers find your solution as they search for ways to problems they have self-identified.

If you’d like you can also do retargeting ads on the viewers of your video, as they’d be more likely to buy your solution vs the avg joe.

I'm more hopeful for humanity now that I know my testing methodology was bad. Thanks for the information!

For this kind of thing, you'd want to advertise it on e.g. Tindie - that's where the likely target audience would look for it, I think.

I just wish it hasn’t been almost impossible to get a coral you for the last few years

I was okay with Arlo for several years — primarily because it didn't have a subscription. With Arlo circling the drain now, I think a cloud-less DIY option is an excellent idea.

What NVR? I’m trying to put together my own system. Also, curious - all cameras POE or do you have some that are local wifi instead?

Oh they definitely do sell it. And the more money you spend the crazier it gets (cross-camera facial recognition? you can go full blown surveillance on your neighborhood).

I bought a Synology NAS and I just added cameras on my home network in the web UI.

Does motion tracking, auto recording and the app rocks. It doesn’t ping me but I also haven’t looked for that feature.

What cameras did you end up using? I'm looking for good recommendations.

Amcrest is pretty good as long as you get an ONVIF-compatible model. Their PoE cameras are better than their Wi-Fi models, but I found that their indoor Wi-Fi models are not bad. I haven't had any luck with their outdoor Wi-Fi models though.

For Wi-Fi outdoor, I've been trying Reolink. I actually have had one die and another one keeps resetting so I'm not sold.

I've heard Hikvision is good but they're more expensive and I haven't tried them yet. I also think they really care whether you buy it from an authorized retailer.

> It doesn’t ping me

Well that's a crucial requirement. Should ping by default. Even if you can turn it on, I don't trust that they really put that feature first if it's buried in the settings.

It may not be buried. I might have just turned it off. I always turn it off right away.

I consider pinging a major cause of paranoia (see NextDoor), an invasion of my community’s privacy, and honestly I live in a safe area and insurance covers everything anyway.

Synology's Security Station will 100% notify you.

https://www.synology.com/en-us/surveillance/feature/mobile

Synology + a cheap RTSP camera and it has all the features OP requires.

Ubiquiti does that. I have motion detection alerts disabled but human motion detection enabled depending on the camera. You can also set regions in the view that it ignores for motion detection.

Tech-savvy people say great things about Ubiquiti wifi, but my experience was that it's way more annoying to deal with than the AirPorts I was replacing. So I have doubts about relying on their security solution to "just work," but maybe I'll give it a try.

And sure I'm tech-savvy, but I also don't want to deal with things. The real test is at my parents' house, where I don't live but I manage some of their stuff remotely / occasionally in person. I can't babysit whatever gets installed, and they don't understand computers. Like, whenever their internet was having problems, they'd only know how to reboot the router; eventually they automated this task with a lamp timer. But they were fine managing the Ring once I set it up.

I did a basic UniFi setup at my house back in the fall and it’s been pretty simple and fully reliable. It’s pretty much the apple of home networking and security.

The Apple of home networking was Apple until they discontinued AirPort. It was much easier.

It's my understanding that now ubiquiti used to be a good company/solution, but they ruined that recently by introducing a lot of "phoning home"-like "features" for their routers. Given that the tech group is almost always more privacy/security oriented than typical, and that's Ubiquiti's target audience, it was a very poor choice on their part and probably removed a significant portion of their customers.

Perhaps the solution that the tech-oriented crowd will move to now is just making things from scratch, I haven't seen the clear consensus on it yet.

You can opt out of remote/Ubiquiti managed login. This is just FUD. Ubiquiti is still excellent.

But it's an aggressive default. Tbh I didn't even figure out how to opt out of it, I just grumbled and made the account. It's wifi for crying out loud, should be plug n play.

My parents replaced the Ubiqitis themselves when they started having issues I wasn't there to fix, with some no-name Amazon wifi APs. MAC address manufacturer lookup just said "Shenzhen." Plugged in, and they worked.

Unifi makes onprem NVR solutions for the home with everything you said. It’s all connected to their cloud for auth but you can turn it off if you want.

We used https://github.com/Motion-Project/motion for crude version of that in our office closet datacenter.

It just detected movement, sent an email with video file attached and a link to stream.

No face detect AI but this is ancient software, and minimum effort to set up

Wyze sells that. My camera stores local footage on an sd card. When motion activates it, Wyze sends me a push alert that something happens, I open the app and it requests directly from my camera. Video doesn’t stay on wyze’s server. If they’re served a warrant, they have no video.

You can do all that locally with Frigate, FYI

Yeah, Frigate is pretty cool, but here are the moving parts: https://docs.frigate.video/frigate/hardware/ and https://docs.frigate.video/guides/ha_notifications/ . I don't trust that to all work without maintenance.

"Something on-prem could do all that, but nobody sells it, and most DIY systems don't have those features"

I don't have it set up that way but thought about it. Zoneminder does motion detection and can be scheduled too. I'm not sure about the human recognition part, but I think I heard there's so sort of plugin out there for that, but I could be wrong. It will also send alerts and can be visible from the web if you have a static IP or a service that provides the same functionality (forget the name).

Frigate -> Home Assistant -> WhatApp Messages DIY, $2 per month + electric change. The $2 cover WhatsApp group messages - as it works for all phone in family with the app sleeping. Easy to share clips.

For example - who was the person who approache dthe door with an umbrella today.

Frigate makes sure its a person, Frigate makes sure it in the correct area of camera. Cheap rtsp camera, standalone wifi network. Frigate is the bridge to 'normal' lan.

Unifi Protect can do that on-prem. Remote access is optional.

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