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Comment by ferar | Hacker News Reader

Can you specify ideal hardware (camera, computer) to deploy the solution? Thanks

Here are hardware recommendations from another similar (and well established) project: [1] [2]. Even though they don't recommend Reolink cameras, I have both Amcrest and Reolink cameras working well with Frigate for more than a year now.

[1] https://docs.frigate.video/frigate/hardware

[2] https://github.com/blakeblackshear/frigate

+1 for Frigate and Reolink. I have it running in a Proxmox VM on an old dell r710 (yes, it’s sucks watts and needs replacing) but all said, Frigate, is, amazing! The ease of integration with HA is equally great.

Many Amcrest IP Cameras are manufactured by Dahua and use localized versions of Dahua firmware. The same applies to the Lorex brand in the United States.

Some things that matter when it comes to configuring your IP Cameras (Beyond security, etc): - Support for RTSP - Configurable Encoding Settings (e.g. h264 coded, bitrate, i-frame intervals, framerate) - Support for Substreams (i.e. a full-resolution main stream for recording, and at least one lower-resolution substream for preview/detection/etc) ...

Make sure the hardware you select is capable of the above.

Configurability will matter because Identification is not the same as Detection (Reference: "DORI" - Detection, Observation, Recognition, and Identification from IEC EN62676-4). If you want to be able to successfully identify objects or entities using your cameras, it will require more care than basic Observation or Detection.

Isn’t it illegal now to import HIKvision and Dahua to the states now ?

AFAIK, the FCC ban pertains to particular applications (or marketing of products for such applications). It did not apply to consumer applications.

"On November 25, 2022, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released new rules restricting equipment that poses national security risks from being imported to or sold in the United States. Under the new rules, the FCC will not issue new authorizations for telecommunications equipment produced by Huawei Technologies Company (Huawei) and ZTE Corporation (ZTE), the two largest telecommunications equipment manufacturers in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

The FCC also will not authorize equipment produced by three PRC-based surveillance camera manufacturers—Hytera Communications (Hytera), Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology (Hikvision), and Dahua Technology (Dahua)—until the FCC approves these entities’ plans to ensure that their equipment is not marketed or sold for public safety purposes, government facilities, critical infrastructure, or other national security purposes. The FCC did not, however, revoke any of its prior authorizations for these companies’ equipment, although it sought comments on whether it should do so in the future."

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10895/1

You'll want to find an IP Camera that supports the RTSP protocol, which is most of them.

If your budget supports commercial style or commercial grade cameras, looking at Dahua or Hikvision manufactured cameras would be a good starting point to get an idea of specs, features, and cost.

Maybe don’t buy surveillance hardware from those brands

Not OP, but the reason may be:

US - FCC Ban The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) banned Dahua and Hikvision from new equipment authorizations in November 2022. Most products that use electricity require FCC equipment authorizations; otherwise, they are illegal to import, sell, market, or use, even for private individuals. Jul 5, 2024

Shame, they are the best cameras available.

Also it’s not like you stop supporting these OEMs if you buy other made in china cameras. They’re essentially all designed and manufactured by very few of these large OEMs, all of which are implicated in CCP state surveillance.

You’d have to buy from actual Western companies like Axis or Dallmeier.

A lot of the commercial-style or commercial-grade IP Cameras sold are rebadged Dahua or Hikvision products.

Compromised firmware or other backdoors are a concern for a wide range of products. With IP Cameras, a commonly recommended practice includes putting them on a non-internet accessible network, disabling any remote access, UPnP type features, etc. You can run IP cameras in an air-gapped configuration as well.

Home/consumer-grade cameras have plenty of shortcomings too.

If they are rebadged, that's fine :)

You're going to have to explain the reasoning here

”Analysts noticed that CCTV cameras in Taiwan and South Korea were digitally talking to crucial parts of the Indian power grid – for no apparent reason. On closer investigation, the strange conversation was the deliberately indirect route by which Chinese spies were interacting with malware they had previously buried deep inside the Indian power grid.”

link? i am close to CCTV retailers and dahua and hikvision are only brands of CCTV widely available with two exceptions of "cp plus" and "hawkvision" which are in all lilkelihood rebranded or made in china products.

https://www.amazon.in/s?k=cctv+system+4+channel

so what are your options? i have been contemplating getting a door phone + cctv for my home for the past so many years but problems like these prevent me from investing into an ecosystem.

edit: oh. looks like pager attacks has their attention now.

https://trak.in/stories/pager-bombs-govt-can-ban-chinese-cct...

i guess time will tell and then there is lobbying so yeah

> are in all lilkelihood rebranded or made in china products

IPVM did all the legwork on this a while ago and unconvered that, not that surprisingly, two and a half OEMs (including Dahua and Hikvision) are manufacturing essentially every not-completely-garbage CCTV camera coming out of china, and a bunch that very explicitly claimed to not come out of china.

Could you elaborate? What’s up with those brands?

I can recommend the Axis brand. Very user friendly while power user friendly as well, true local offerings. I personally bought mine used, it's an older model, and even then, it holds up really well.

+1 for Axis

Default yolo models are stuck at 640x640, so literally any camera that is at least capable of that resolution. Llava I believe is about the same. You'd need ubuntu and something that can run a llava model in vaguely real time, so a 4090/4080.

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