Video surveillence system upload to Dropbox

Third party integrations
1

Hi!

I’m absolutely new here at Home Assistant, and to all what concerns automation, video surveillance, coding, etc., but planning to install a camera surveillance system (about 5 cameras) with help of HA, Raspberry Pi, and what else needed for a DIY system.
It should upload pictures (or small videos) to my Dropbox when/if cameras gets activated by motion detection.
When searching this forum I found the thread Video surveillance (from October 2018) where Michael_Davydov uses Dropbox for this purpose.
The first question, in my case, is: Will this work with the free version of Dropbox, or do I have to have a paid version?

Kind Regards

2

Dropbox free is 2GB. This is more than enough for a few days images but for video it’s depends on your needs and expectations.

Why dropbox? What is your purpose?

Take a look at frigate.

3

Thanks for reply :blush:

Frigate looks fine when using a local NVR.

The purpose of the camera surveillance system is to detect potential intruders (no children or pets to be supervised). Thats why I want to have the recorded material (pictures, or very small videos) uploaded to a distant server, ant not to a camera SD-card, or a server, or NVR, in the premises where the cameras are positioned. Mainly in order not to risk the server/NVR being discovered and thereby risking the recorded material. My home is petty small and hiding a server/NVR will be almost impossible. So, the NVR or server solution won’t fit here.

Using the free version of Dropbox would, on the other hand, be perfect since there probably (hopefully) won’t be any recorded material uploaded – or, in the unlikely event that there is a break-in, then surely that will be considered a one-time occurrence and the cameras I intend to use will be set to stills (with, as I roughly estimate, a maximum of 4-8 frames/second).

Therefore, compared to a paid service subscription to upload camera stills (or small videos) to the cloud, with monthly payments year after year, uploads that most likely will not occur, the option to use the free version of Dropbox seems, for my needs, the best option.

And in that aspect I’m not so worried about the 2 GB not to bee enough, but more concerned if a free version of Dropbox will allow you to administrate your account that way (considering other solutions described here on HA regarding uploading different types of material to Dropbox, for example discussed in: Backup to Dropbox).

So, what do you say, will it be possible to use the free version of Dropbox for the project described above?