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Comment by rahimnathwani | Hacker News Reader

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rahimnathwani

What do you use for recording?

I've thought of replacing cloud cameras, but I'd still want:

- recording (not just live view)

- alerts

- offsite storage

What's the best way to set this up these days? Zoneminder running at home? With syncthing handling off-site storage to a VPS?

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I run frigate (mines runs off their Docker image but you can use other alternatives like home assistant plugin). I also pair frigate with scrypted so you can tie the cameras into HomeKit. It’s pretty much the best of both worlds, online storage and detection using iCloud (if I trust a company when it comes to privacy, it’s Apple) and local storage and detection using frigate.

Not OP, but I configured a mosquitto server. Then a simple shell script service with 'mosquitto_sub' and ffmpeg to fetch the rtsp stream on motion events [0]. Somewhat crude, but it was only for a temporary setup.

Another option seems to be Home Assistant [1]

[0] https://github.com/EliasKotlyar/Xiaomi-Dafang-Hacks/blob/mas...

[1] https://github.com/EliasKotlyar/Xiaomi-Dafang-Hacks/blob/mas...

Ftp upload, local storage and some that I dont mind being exposed are sending to telegram. Looking into frigate right now, guess that makes me a grandpa ;)

I've been using Agent DVR for recording, alerts and local storage though the alerts rely on a non-local MQTT broker (HiveMQ) due to the double-NAT setup my ISP imposes, otherwise I would have used a local Mosquitto broker. Here is a diagram I put together about my setup. https://i.imgur.com/mAmP9rA.png

Zoneminder is your grandpa's NVR.

The kids are using Frigate these days.

Or if you aren't against proprietary software, Blue Iris on Windows is a popular option.

Haha that shows how long it's been since I looked into this stuff!

I did a clearout recently and gave away 5 Xiaomi Xiaofang cameras that I'd flashed with samhacks firmware years ago, but never gotten around to using.

If I'd known about Frigate, I might have kept them. But I guess there are better cameras available now?

Not OP but frigate works with any camera with RTSP. You can get Amcrest PoE cameras that are great quality that are around $50. Works without wifi or an app but someone in HN posted that the newer ones need an app? But I haven’t come across one and the newest one I got was about six months ago.

Frigate was a bit limited in usefulness until they added OpenVINO and TensorRT support in April. Trying to find a Coral TPU these days can be a bit of a challenge.

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