Hacker News Reader

Comment by miiiiiike | Hacker News Reader

Whenever I look into IP cameras I close the tabs because it feels like I walked into a store brand cereal aisle where all the boxes are exclaiming “Now with fewer razor blades!” or “Only half the reported cases of salmonella than similar store brands!”

What’s a good brand for IP cameras? What’s the best, in terms of open source support and reliability?

I need a mix of PoE indoor and outdoor cameras. 15 outdoor/10 indoor. Cost isn't a factor, I need something reliable.

View on HN

Axis.

I have 5 outdoor and 6 indoor cameras. They all support PoE power; for some of the internal ones I'm using PoE, others I got an injector & wifi dongle.

They'll talk to basically anything, the outdoor ones have handled several years of every possible kind of weather. I had one camera that died a week after it arrived; the RMA process w/ Axis was smooth and easy.

Their support windows are what you'd expect from a company whose primary customer base is commercial rather than consumer: IIRC they emailed me a year or two ago to warn me that they'll no longer be shipping software updates for my outdoor cams starting in 2030.

Thanks, Axis looks promising.

I'll second Axis. If you have the budget they are the best general IP cameras you can get. You also get root access on the OS (which is Linux-based).

I'd love to get Axis but they are so expensive

While not open source, I have had good experiences with Reolink. They integrate well into Home Assistant and Frigate.

Yeah, I need open source firmware.

Yeah, you have to choose. Either a decent camera, or open source. Can't have both.

You could rig up some rPi's, but then you gotta maintain everything yourself. Weatherproofing is probably a PITA too.

rPi don't have an open source firmware either.

And no decent image sensors.

The ones they sell aren’t great, but you can - with a bit of perseverance as it’s non-trivial - connect CSI-2 MIPI to a Raspberry Pi, and use any image sensor that supports that. Which includes a ton of great Sony CMOS sensors.

Are you sure? My info might be out-of-date, but a few years ago the MIPI support was in some propriety Broadcom firmware. So your choice was basically the ~3 sensors on official RPi camera boards (although people would sell you things like different lens mounts etc)

https://www.tindie.com/products/will123321/fourthirdeye-v10/ and a few other third party options have been available.

3d printer plexiglass and silicone caulk ez pz

What is the requirement for open source FW? As long as you get a camera that is ONVIF certified then there is no risk of lock in as it is an open standard that is compatible with most VMS software.

Don't forget that it is still an IP connected device, which will realistically never receive a security update.

Best-case scenario it'll call back to the mothership, worst-case scenario it'll turn into a backdoor for your entire network and you'll start receiving ransomware threats with awkward photos/videos attached to them.

You can avoid this by preventing any traffic to or from the device except from Frigate.

> worst-case scenario [...] you'll start receiving ransomware threats with awkward photos/videos attached to them

Honestly, I can kinda understand having outdoor cameras, if you're in a high crime area - but I just can't empathise with folks who feel more secure after putting indoor cameras in their own home.

I think it's for the case of if you have a nice house and you have a party and people come over, and they bring people that you don't know over, and something goes missing, they want to be able to see who took it.

> I think it's for the case of if you have a nice house and you have a party and people come over

thought this was going down a P Diddy route there for a second

Imagine you hear a sound late at night and you are sleeping. You can check the cameras and see if anyone is inside.

Also, we use them for kids and cats - keep and eye and find out what happened. In fact for our one cat we heard a sound and we were able to see she fell off a desk and was hurt. So we could help her immediately.

It is best practice to put your cameras on a VLAN or otherwise restrict access to the internet. If you must expose it to the internet expose the VMS software and properly access not your cameras.

Also very interested in PoE cameras with open source firmware. Most of these seem to be wifi + power cable; I figure if I'm running a cable anyway it might as well be a data cable. Maybe wifi is easier to set up a couple devices, but once you get to 5+ cameras PoE is worth.

Criminals are using wifi jammers, so you really want a wired camera if you're setting up a system.

Hard wire your cameras and have a blinking red "recording" light that actually only responds to wifi jammers which cause it to stop blinking. They think they got the cams down, and stroll on unaware.

Then they don't even realize the real camera isn't visible. It's next to that big obvious one.

The goal isn't to trick burglars into burglarizing you.

Maybe we don’t need to overcomplicate things? Cameras won’t stop theft, heck even police sometimes doesn’t stop theft (lookup California)

On the other hand, you probably want it to indicate that it's working even if it's not, just to scare the perpetrator and prevent any further action.

I really like Ubiquiti but they're pricey and to get the full value you really need to be running their network gear too.

When I looked they had premium pricing, gen old hardware, and dependencies on either cloud with subscription or proprietary hardware.

Same with their doorbell cam, proprietary hardware or cloud subscription.

I bought 2 reolink cameras for the same price, they work with everything, can trigger external devices where there's motion, and integrate well with whatever else you have around. The reviews that did direct comparisons didn't rate ubiquiti well.

Unlike the Ubiquiti APs that just need a java program they give you to run somewhere and not even all the time, just when you need to make config changes.

There's no reason to re-invent the wheel - ipcamtalk has a comprehensive set of explanatory posts. Don't buy Reolink, avoid Amcrest - Loryta (rebranded Dahua) and Hikvision are the strongest, but there are other strong options, especially on the refurbished commercial camera front.

ipcamtalk feels completely captured by resellers and affiliates. I'd suggest taking any advice you see there with a grain of salt.

What's wrong with Amcrest IP cameras?

Was wondering the same. I have 10 and they have been pretty good.

(But they are on a VLAN without internet access.)

Here's what IPCam says about Reolink. Mostly bad night time performance: https://ipcamtalk.com/threads/convince-me-reolink-is-bad-to-...

hikvision are great, not sure why annke aren't mentioned more also, thats what i run and they're also really good.

amcrest and reolink are some of the only large Chinese resellers that actually ensure onvif is implemented.

yeah they have a login wall without a reflash, but most of them do -- but the hardware isn't bad and you can keep it local after setup.

That said -- yes : hikvision is the de-facto generic IPcam without issues. Most CCTV softwares are built around hikvision cameras and firmwares as generics.

Why not buy Reolink? I bought one for my parents and it just works for them as well as can be expected. Local storage, local vision recognition of people/pets/vehicles, an app with push notifications. Maybe a little rough around the edges but for a non-cloud device it's pretty darn good.

We got the Duo Floodlight PoE for reference.

I have Reolink Duo Floodlight connected to frigate and it work great.

Excellent in Lowlight and has a configurable floodlight.

Also mega-wide field of view

I was looking at $200 cameras that were PoE, designed for outdoors, and had an IR emitter to protect my car that someone tried to steal from my driveway.

Ended up with a pair of reolinks for $120, the spec was a bit less, but I got two cameras. I pointed them from the top of my garage door to both sides of the car, which doubly illuminated the driveway. The red illumination rings on the cameras were easy to spot from the sidewalk, hopefully preventing another attempt. The image quality was great, color during the day, B&W after dark. Ended up using it surprisingly often. Deliveries, kid pickup/drop off, mailman, identifying whatever big truck was visiting our dead end street, and ended up seeing more wildlife than I expected. Even at night I could clearly see the black seat belts inside a black car with a black interior.

I run a separate network for the camera so they can't talk to anything buy my server, so I'm not particularly worried about their network security and I like that the cameras are PoE and not wifi. Sure open source would be better, axis is decent on that front. They run a linux distro, you can ssh in, and even modify the linux distro with an overlap to customize it however you want.

I have a whole bunch of brands. I wrote ONVIF stuff, some years back. I gave up on it, as the spec sucks.

Hikvision has probably been the best "all-around" camera, but they may be subject to import restrictions.

Axis is very good (but un-cheap). Bosch is crappy (and also un-cheap).

I have a Dahua, which is quite good. I also have a pretty good Panasonic.

Funnily enough, probably the most reliable camera that I have, is also the cheapest. It's a $40 FLIR "eyeball" camera (not an IR camera -it's an OEM Chinese camera that several manufacturers rebrand).

A bunch of my cameras are obviously just rebrands of the same cheap crap. The software is abominable.

> Cost isn't a factor, I need something reliable.

Don't consider at all: All non-OEM Chinese stuff (1 trillion brands, way too many to list, including the usual consumer garbage that you might find in a store like Reolink etc.)

Consider if cost turns out to be a factor: The two major Chinese OEMs, Hikvision and Dahua.

Note: All Chinese OEMs are obviously implicated in the Chinese surveillance state. Obviously. A lot of "major" brands are OEMed by these two, even ones you might not expect. For example, much of Panasonic stuff is rebadged Dahua. Basically 90% of any CCTV camera Made in China comes from either Dahua or Hik, the lesser brands just mostly get (or rather, choose) the bargain-bin hardware with monkey-model firmware and of course no FW updates ever.

If cost really isn't a factor: Bosch, Axis, Dallmeier, Mobotix

Note: Most of these you cannot buy directly, and the vendor won't talk to you.

> What’s the best, in terms of open source support and reliability?

These are found at completely opposite ends of the spectrum. All good CCTVs cameras use signed and more-or-less well encrypted firmware, even cross-flashing isn't much of a thing.

Hikvision and Dahua make a lot of cameras but I wouldn't call them the major OEMs, that would probably Ingenic, Goke, HiSilicon, uhhh Sigmastar, probably others I can't recall. If you're looking for one outside the PRC, Novatek is based in Taiwan.

Doesn't Ingenic just make the SoC? For example, Wyze cams use an Ingenic T20, as do a lot of no-name cameras.

I feel like a few of those are SoC and not actual cameras

This is pretty much exactly wrong. Dahua and Hikvision are by far the largest OEMs in the industry. The other companies you list are SoC vendors only.

I've worked with Mobotix cameras before and they are fantastic... also about $3500.

Usually we go for Geovision (still around $300 - $800) or Axis (little higher).

Just looked at our price list and a bunch of Mobotix are now under a $1k... not bad.

A lot of the current Geovision line-up looks suspiciously Dahua to me.

Geovision is Taiwanese and has been around since 1998.

I think it's worth mentioning that, if you can, set these IP cameras up on a separate VLAN that doesn't have internet access (or access to the rest of your network), run an open source PVR, and use firewall rules to allow the PVR to access the local streams on the IP camera VLAN. I think this mitigates much of the risk of using Chinese OEM cameras.

> I think this mitigates much of the risk of using Chinese OEM cameras.

I see two major problems buying from these companies.

The first is the practical risk that they will deliberately spy on you or just (through poor software quality) make it possible for others to do so. And yeah, putting them in a (V)LAN that can't access the Internet seems more or less sufficient. In theory they could exploit your browser in some way but I don't worry about this too much.

The second is the moral injury from buying from a company that actively participates in the Uyghur genocide. Not just "making cameras that the Chinese government buys through a retailer" but "writing software specifically to identify Uyghur ethnic features" [1] and/or "contracting with the Chinese government to install cameras at internment camps". [2] And there's no simply VLAN configuration that will wipe the blood off your hands.

They're nice cameras especially for the price, and I still use some I bought before I knew about this, but I can't bring myself to buy more or recommend others do so.

fwiw, I'm not aware of any evidence Reolink has participated in this, despite being a Chinese company. I try to stay away from Dahua, Hikvision, and Uniview, which is harder to do than it sounds because they make cameras sold under many brand names.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/world/chinese-tech-patents-t...

[2] https://ipvm.com/reports/hikvision-targeted

Some Reolink PoE cameras are OK, though a lot of people don't like them. Otherwise I would be looking for Axis (probably one of the best choices) or Dahua gear. Depending on how crazy you want to get, there are some vendors that make really excellent cameras like Costar/CohuHD, but be prepared to probably pay big dollars (and a lot of their stuff like my PTZ are huge cameras).

I have a friend with quite a large Reolink set up and he swears by them. I’ve been looking at them to replace my aging Ring outdoor cameras. Big downside for me is having to run a bridge for Home Kit integration.

I have used MindVision gigabit cameras, I believe they have some POE models (but they are mostly indoor-industrial-machine-vision. They do have a Linux SDK (basically a .so and a Python wrapper for the .so).

I'm going to look at all the links in the comments in this post to see if I can find things which are: better documented, more affordable, and easier to integrate.

Haven’t seen it yet so I’ll mention Hanwha, they were part of Samsung before the unit was spun out. They are probably the best competition to Axis and sit differently in the geopolitics, coming from Korea

Axis, Hanwha - not cheap but good and reliable

If Chinese brands don’t scare you: Hikvision is very good allarounder, Milesight, Uniview (UNV), Vivotek - good too

Dahua cheap but still usable

All other - don’t even bother

Seems this comment thread is now its own cereal aisle

Reply on news.ycombinator.com