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Comment by skulk | Hacker News Reader

Got any recommendations on what cameras to get? The market is absolutely flooded with cheap shitty cloud-connected all-in-one cameras making it hard to find good, simple products.

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I got a lot of 6 Axis cameras from eBay, it was around $200. I think they took them off a school or something but they were in great shape. They look great and have no spyware etc because it’s an industrial company. I recommend getting some industrial surplus because they tend not to have all the bloatware and have significantly better weatherproofing, casing, etc, even if the optics are the same as the consumer units.

I was under the impression that most commercial/industrial cameras all required some kind of proprietary ecosystem of peripherals and controllers. Do those work with open source DVR solutions like frigate? (If so, did you know that before you bought them?)

Onvif is the keyword, if it’s supported it works with frigate. I think most of the industrial cams are not as locked down as you might think. They are infrastructure so vendors aren’t going to force customers to tear down their existing setup.

Another method that most cameras support (if you want the bare basics of record video/audio) is accessing an RTSP stream from the camera. In fact RTSP streams are the primary way you get video into frigate specifically. Some of the more fancy cam manufacturers (axis), are just now starting to support encrypted RTSP , but most of it is unencrypted. you can enable authentication, however in general if you’re doing this over the Internet you do it over a VPN via un encrypted rtsp

This! I manage about 70 CCTV cameras, over the past 15 years. Partially as a hobby. and axis cameras are the best bar none. They are expensive, but if you don’t have a need for the latest gen axis, then eBay is your friend, along with one or two generation prior of axis current gen cams. They are just very well thought out in terms of installation, and ui/operation. Axis is among the most responsive to security issues (which mostly can be negated by controlling your cameras at the network level through vlans and firewall rules). They have a very intuitive web based UI, for example one well thought out ability is through events/rules- you can add a physical SD card into the camera and set up a rule that if the video feed is not being accessed ( set a inverse trigger for “live stream accessed”) then start recording to the on-cam SD card (i.e. your NVR has gone off-line or a network issue is stopping the feed, then you have onboard storage saving that video). That’s just one example.

The cheapest (~15 USD bullet, 20 USD dome) PoE cameras on AliExpress (focal length is pretty much the most important parameter to look at, depending on the fov you want) hooked up to a Unifi NVR. Skip all the vendor manuals, setup steps, and apps - adopt them directly to Unifi Protect.

I put them on separate vlan where they get no outbound network connectivity.

For cases where you want things like facial detection or license plate detection (automatic doors/gates) get a Unifi AI though and those things cost, but for normal perimeter/room monitoring the cheap ones are very good

I would argue sensor size is what's most impotant to look for in a camera.

Have a look at this thread [1] I have bookmarked. I found it quite informative. I already got some cheap cameras and set them up, but I wish I would have found it earlier. The ones I got are 4MP with 1/3" sensor and perform absolutely terribly in night setting.

[1] https://ipcamtalk.com/threads/getting-cameras-with-the-right...

Thanks!

Any specific POE with a good sensor/fl on ali that you recommend? I'm all POE/Protect but would like to play with some cheaper poe cameras.

I got a bunch of annke dual lenses, put some in their own local only vlan, others waiting to be installed.

Any of those that mention ONVIF or RTSP will do if you put them on a LAN without internet access

Not my experience. I've tried several such cameras and most of them are underpowered and suffer from very low fps or are fine when there's no movement but with movement the fps drops drastically essentially making the camera close to useless.

Aye.

ONVIF is the (now quite old, but still very relevant) standard for interfacing IP cameras locally on a network.

A cheap-but-performant ONVIF camera on an isolated VLAN (or a physically-isolated network; I won't tell anyone) can be a thing of beauty that is also completely unable to call home to some mothership in the clown.

I'm frankly very surprised that I don't see it mentioned here more often when discussions of cameras arise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ONVIF

ONVIF has it's own problems, like when a NVR require ONVIF and all you have is rtsp. You need to convert somehow.

Or ONVIF has a multiple cameras behind a IP, but a crappy ONVIF client only picks one (Unifi Protect).

ONVIF and RTSP are different things. ONVIF is a device and services discovery protocol RTSP is a video streaming protocol.

ONVIF can be used to discover a camera on a network, query it for its RTSP URL, and facilitate a connection between a client service and the RTSP stream. But you can't stream video via "ONVIF".

I have also found that poor onvif implementations run as root and not as any other user. If you’re sending auth creds, better make sure you have something protecting them on the wire…

And profiles. There are many different feature sets in onvif and just because a camera has onvif logo or compatibility doesn’t mean it will play nice with your gear.

reolink, also look at the frigate nvr software, they have a list for decent recommendations

This is the way.

Reolink cameras are pretty good for what they are. Just dont buy into their NVR solution...

Frigate also has some interesting applications to go along with it, see: https://github.com/mmcc-xx/WhosAtMyFeeder

I also have YOLO on my to do list for the home cameras.

What's wrong with their NVRs? I have one connected to some Reolink cameras (though not yet the full house-surrounding setup I have planned) and it seems fine so far.

Reolink with Synology NAS using their native Surveillance app. All stored locally, no cloud. One issue with Reolink I haven’t solved is that it is unable to detect approaching cars in the night. Departing cars work fine though. Otherwise no complaints.

Dont dorget to pay Synology for the extra licenses for more cameras.

Yes I did pay for extra licenses. I also paid for the cameras to Reolink and disks to WD.

I’m less happy with Reolink and most of Reolink are now in a drawer. Been a fan of Amcrest and Scrypted.

I'd recommend checking out "Project Farm" reviews. They do actual tests and comparisons of products rather than the current trend of reading off marketing copy and shilling sponsored products. I've seen some of their reviews on cameras and the difference in clarity across brands is shocking. Not that important if you just want to know "my package was stolen", but very important if you want to read their license plate.

Here is one such review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYUY61ZFZAs

He does a good job at reviewing the cameras themselves but IIRC, all of the cameras he reviewed require cloud connectivity, and many of those clouds are "overseas."

Depending on your paranoia level, there are lists of National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA: i.e., non-Chinese) camera OEMs:

* https://www.a1securitycameras.com/blog/non-chinese-security-...

Some names: Axis, Avigilon, Bosch, Vivotek, Hanwha Techwin (SK), Acti (TW), Motorola, Mobotix.

With local restricted vlan, it doesn't matter as much, unless they expose a wireless endpoint (wifi or otherwise).

https://www.cctvsecuritypros.com/

Blue-line domes, the $240 ones. Four of them. I'd get more but do not know how to make outside routing look neat. i have one bullet and i don't like it and don't use it, i prefer the wide-angle domes with ir.

I have built out several Amcrest systems. You have the many options for recording and access, that will allow remote access without going to the cloud.

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