I’m in the market for a camera security system and I have NO clue. I’m an avid HA user so ideally I would want something that fits nicely into the solution.
Here’s a list of wants But not musts: (in no particular order)
Waterproof ( these will be going outside under eves)
Wired for power ( all my eves have power outlets in the locations for cameras)
Wireless for data ( no data line runs so ideally I would want to go wireless for video and sound)
Cheap(ish) - I would need about 5.
night vision
some sort of free storage option. Even if it’s limited to 2 days.
Well, I am kind of biased because I have a couple of them, but Amcrest cameras are good. You have an advantage over most in that you have residential power available where you will mount the cameras, but Amcrest cameras can do both plug-in power and PoE. They most definitely have Wireless cameras, in fact, an indoor camera I have has both Ethernet and WiFi capability.
I don’t know what your definition of cheap would be, but I have seen some of their bullet and dome style cameras for less than $100 on eBay and as far as I know their outdoor cameras come with what seems to be pretty good night vision.
As for the storage option, I am not sure since I am using my own FTP server for that.
All that said, however, I think you woud find most residential security cameras would have the features you are looking for, there are exceptions though. There are cameras out there other than Amcrest though. Foscam is another name, but I think Amcrest and Foscam may be from the same company. Hikvision is another name out there as well.
For outdoor I run 3 Foscam and 1 Amcrest. I have the older models and have relatively positive feedback for them. I run a combination of wired & wireless although all the cameras have wireless capabilities. None of mine have local storage but support ftp - What I did was setup a server running Zoneminder to record all of my cameras (currently 7). This way I can go back and review at will, export, zoom, etc.
I’m happy with my VStarcamera cameras as they were inexpensive and work well with HA, but if I was going to buy again and had a few extra bucks, I think I would go Amcrest like @StormStrikes because there is better support in HA for them.
This is really great information. I will start researching the amcrest cameras. For budget, I was hoping to gt 3 - cameras for under 500 bucks… something like that makes sense for a security solution for me. I love the idea of running a local instance of zoneminder to capture allthe camera footage.
CAMERA
check amazon for HOSAFE 1MB6P HD IP Camera POE
$35 POE RTSP capable camera
they have 1.3MP version for about $40 and 2MP for $50. 1MP is good 6-10ft, 1.3 10+ft, everything else is unneeded probably
I had Ubiquiti ($100 each) cams for 2yrs and switched to these because of price and better image quality.
NVR/RECORDINGS/HARDWARE
-get cheap POE switch (wifi texas makes decent stuff, I use ubiquiti but plan to move these to dedicated camera switch)
-use motion or motioneye for recording (both python, motioneye is frontentd for motion and looks as good as anything. also works well. again I had Ubiquiti for a 2yrs and honestly like simplicity of motioneye over ubiquiti)
-i used zoneminder for 1 month but difficult install, unstable, and unfriendly interface made me switch
-i tried kerberos.io for NVR but install on docker was a pain. I believe this is based on motion as well but not sure
-I use jshridha/motioneye:0.35.1 docker image for motioneye
SOFTWARE
-RTSP from camera can be used with FFMPEG component
-Viewing security Recordings is done outside of HA but you can figure out a way to bring these in.
-Motioneye was good enough standalone and works very easily (recording cannot be viewed in browser, they download to PC or Mobile but this still works. You get thumbnail preview of recordings and can download a
WORD OF ADVICE
-motioneye has CPU requirements but you should be good with an i5 processor or better (i7 preferred, (4-6) camera have same requirement as single plex 720p transcode stream)
-block outgoing WAN of IP Cams (I dont trust cheap IOT gear/dont install the software that comes with them)
-the Hosafe cam time is wrong (i have script that ssh into them and change time on schedule but you may possibly spoof NTP server they look for I would guess). This is not big issue since motioneye adds time into recording video
I am currently running it on a HP DL380 G7 running 1.29 ZoneMinder (complete overkill). I was previously running it on a old HP i3 desktop and it ran fine as a dedicated machine but I am trying to reduce my PC clutter and learn some new things about servers/networking at the same time.
I run Ubiquiti G2 and G3 and is quite happy with them. G3 really has some improvements regarding size and picture quality. NVR is free and can be installed on both Win/Linux.
They are not wireless but have POE and can be attached to AP.
Working with HASS too
I plan on setting up a Zoneminder docker and obviously integrate them with HASS. Currently have 1x AVTech 357, it works well, but that was probably 3x the price of these units and without local storage.