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Comment by badatnames | Hacker News Reader

Worthy thread to ask: is there such a thing as a white label IP camera (or similar) with a supported open firmware? Not asking for open source, but something close to plug and play that nonetheless has a way of stripping the rootfs as desired for bespoke use in a manufacturer-supported way.

I have looked around before but I only found genuinely dev-oriented kits that weren't even in a shell, and crazy priced.

edit: seems there are some options now (or I missed them before), e.g. https://www.goodcam.io/#for-independent-developers

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Not exactly open firmware, but something like ONVIF on an isolated network is pretty close. An ONVIF camera should talk to basically any NVR (network video recorder), there are several open-source ones available.

There are tons of ONVIF-compliant and cheap PoE cameras, and with this setup you really don't care about the security of the manufacturer firmware since you aren't exposing them to the network publicly. However, you do need to be extra diligent when configuring your VLAN/network segmentation.

For anyone who wants a setup like this but the nice notifications and quality of life capabilities (recordings, easy remote access for family), and are ok being on Apple infra (end to end encrypted) -

ONVIF camera (or one compatible with Scrypted) Block WAN (ideally, VLAN) on the cheap cameras Home computer to run Scrypted AppleTV (for Apple home bridge)

This is what I moved to after getting away from Ring and it works quite well. Reolink cams, old desktop, and an hour of setup.

Getting this right is hard, speaking as someone who has ARP poisoned an exposed ethernet connected to some cheap switches to monitor cameras in whole buildings before. The problem is the endpoint itself, adding layers on top doesn't solve things. Ideally I'd like a device that could be connected to public wifi and still be robust. For example including padding any data it's transmitting to avoid observable compression side effects being usable as a proxy for motion detection (which is a cool trick you can try even without a working wifi key)

There is also https://thingino.com/ which has a clear set of supported cameras. The installation is straight forward if you choose a cam with SD-Card flashing support. I upgraded two of the Sonoff Slim Gen2 without any issues.

I also use thingino and it was very easy to use. It has wireguard support, but I just set up my firewall so cams are only accessible over tailscale.

I bought the cheapest PTZ camera they have listed and, as you say the install was easy. The interface is useful and it does what it says on the tin.

I found Thingino to be very buggy and frustrating to use despite using 2 different supported cameras. The stream would constantly drop out, services would sometimes crash and wouldn't get automatically restarted. I tried tweaking all available parameters, resetting, updating but eventually I just gave up (a few months ago).

e.g. https://github.com/themactep/thingino-firmware/issues/640

You can get close.... I guess...

Some cameras do support thingino, so you can override their firmware. Then there's this: https://openipc.org/supported-hardware/featured

Seems like the shop is broken?

> Stránka nenalezena

> There's been a glitch...

> We're not quite sure what went wrong. You can go back, or try looking on our homepage.

Czech for 'page not found'

Huh, it was working an hour ago. The outdoor 8MP variant was around the 85 euro mark.

Not exactly what you have asked for, but ESP32 based M5Stack and Seeed Xiao modules might fit the bill. They are not so expensive, are Linux-free, and there's no report so far of secret ping home features in the SDK.

ESP32 are powerful enough to run realtime image processing?! Wtf.

  https://docs.m5stack.com/en/unit/poe_cam

Pinecube from pine64.

https://pine64.org/devices/pinecube/

Would it be so difficult to include a simple plastic case? Having to find/design 3D printed cases adds time to getting these projects set up. I don’t have a 3D printer and have to go to the local maker space to make anything.

Yeah, this does seem like a needless omission. Cardboard cases work sometimes. Plastic cases aren't too hard to find, but they do require modifications.

ESP32-CAM

I so want these to be a viable solution but man my experience so far is that it can barely be made to work and only in the most favorable environments. Compare that to the blink cameras I used to run outside where it occasionally went below -20F and they still went over a year on a couple batteries.

You would be better served using a USB capable camera behind an RPi to have assurance that broken firmware isn't compromising your network.

I was working with Raspberry Pis, starting with a college honors project, around 2018.

For a while, I thought about building a network of surveillance cameras around the interior of my home. The Raspberry Pi seemed like a tempting platform to hook up a bunch of cameras to it. Sadly, I could not find a backend surveillance app or system that was suitable for running such a network. The best one I found was some kind of modular Linux app that was for-pay, and actually seemed based in Russia or something, and personally I wasn't comfortable about handing over my domestic surveillance needs to Russia!

I also considered exterior sensors, such as a camera, or perhaps a nice little weather station, outside on my balcony, running on the little Raspberry Pi.

Then I recalled two things: I live in the Sonoran Desert, where the desert highs can go up around 115℉, and any plant on my balcony was guaranteed to wither and die, not to mention the blowing dust and thunderstorms we have.

I determined that there was basically no way to house or protect a Raspberry Pi, as well as supply it with connectivity and electric power, and keep it outside on the balcony in conditions where I'd benefit from those active sensors. Sad but true!

As an — I am guessing — American, you should feel more comfortable with handing over your domestic surveillance to Russia or China than to a US-based company. They absolutely have no interest in your domestic matters, nor do they have a clear path to monetize your attention.

There are non-IP cameras and coax interfaces, which would expose a USB video device on any Linux system, RPi included.

Plenty of software to handle that, though don't know what's the state of the art.

Why should I want to hand mu domestic surveillance over to any company? Why wouldn’t I prefer a private solution that lets me host my own data?

Being more comfortable with a foreign company compared to a domestic one does not suggest you should be comfortable with either ;)

> They absolutely have no interest in your domestic matters

This is categorically, not true, I'm afraid. Reaching into domestic networks, where you can find influential people through mass harvesting, is an actively exploited technique by the spy agencies of our world.

How do you find the gardener of someone influential? You target all gardeners.

We are talking here about someone at least technically savvy who would know if they are of interest or not (ok, maybe not). They'd also be able to monitor their outgoing traffic.

We are also not talking about a potential Russian product that will reach into large number of homes since — being paid and privacy focused — it is already a niche product. So getting into someone's home of interest would need a lot of luck, and there are probably better ways to do it.

The current observed strategy, broadcast by ASIO chief Mike Burgess, in 2025, is "if there is a way in, use it". Being niche is not a defense. Being a nobody is not a defense.

Every product is useful in some way.

Targeting everyone, rather than some, is precisely how America's government networks were breached. Everyone is of interest. Because everyone is connected to someone else. Six degrees of separation, or the real world equivalent, means that everyone provides a soft target for achieving access to someone else.

There are better, more targeted approaches. Which is why both are done. One doesn't preclude the other.

> As an — I am guessing — American, you should feel more comfortable with handing over your domestic surveillance to Russia or China than to a US-based company. They absolutely have no interest in your domestic matters, nor do they have a clear path to monetize your attention.

Unfortunately, that isn't exactly true. Sure, they don't have any usage for your porch camera and its data, but the fact that it is hooked up to an IP classified as "US residential" or "US small-business" is the valuable thing. DDoS nodes, "residential IP proxy" malware or running botnet campaigns all benefit from a high bandwidth connection that is 99% not getting flagged in any list.

That is certainly a different matter: "handing over domestic surveillance" vs enabling a foreign company to run a node on your network.

However, that is mostly about trusting or not trusting someone's business. Eg. DJI drones and action cams and gimbals are omnipresent, and they have the potential to do the same when it comes to China.

But they also have plenty to gain from building a great product and selling it and not reselling your IP addresses.

Pine cube

https://pine64.org/devices/pinecube/

Thank you. Ordered one to play around and see if this is a viable alternative.

I wish... The best I've found is https://openipc.org/ which is a very manufacturer unsupported way of reflashing certain chips with open-source firmware. It seems very fiddly as only certain SoCs are supported and good luck finding out if a specific Chinese camera has one.

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