I’m looking at dusting off my motion setup. It was an old setup to monitor what my pets are doing in the house with a webcam.
However, I need cameras outside to monitor my gardens and the webcams are not really usefull for that (for one, the’re not waterproof and USB cams)
I try to look for stand alone cameras, but can’t find a good test of them. (probably user error) Any tips on good, safe, cameras for outside? (pref poe, wifi when it can’t be avoided, not battery powered)
Thanks in advance
Thingino makes sure your cameras are yours and no one elses, they have a list of cameras that work with it:
https://thingino.com/I’ve had a good experience with Reolink PoE cameras. They do RTSP and ONVIF and integrate well with Homeassistant.
Reolink, Amcrest, and Eufy (only for their newer PoE line, they have a nice multi-lens feature and on-device processing for identification).
Wasn’t Eufy caught uploading data workout consent? Memory is a little fuzzy but I believe it was something like thumbnails being stored in an insecure cloud whether you liked it or not.
With the app, yes, if you enabled notifications with thumbnails. Using the app and giving cameras internet access is the issue there. Deleted data stayed longer than people expected, too.
The crappy generated URLs for camera access was eufy’s fault, but thumbnails in notifications from the app I would consider a user ignorance issue personally.
That said I do not ever recommend using any manufacturer’s app, or giving a camera internet access. Isolate it on a vlan, firewall it off, and use a local open source NVR that you’ll access directly.
That was my idea as well, wall the device off, don’t let it escape it’s vlan, but allow it to answer internal traffic. I want to use motion to capture activity, preferably including animals. (WAF, she likes to see what animals visit at night)
Reolink are easy and cheap enough.
i am not sure what “stand alone” means but unifi protect is self hosted. amcrest can tie i to home assisstant
The only reason why I hesitate to recommend Ubiquiti cameras is even their cheapest offerings are kind of expensive.
And although you can run isolated from the Internet, managing updates is a bit painful. (Ask me how I know)
With “stand alone” is meant a camara you can use without suplier software (at home or in the cloud).
I just want a camera that I can use with motion. (unify has local software, but still you need their software as far as I know)
amcrest. i got it working with home assisstant
I think they mean a cam that doesn’t need to be plugged in through usb to work, like an ip camera.
They gave POE cameras that will just work with an Ethernet cable (although they gave weird POE requirements). Their USB powered ones are wifi connected.
Source: I’ve had them for years and am happy with the setup.
I’m running Dahua cameras. They can pull new firmware straight over the internet, but they don’t rely on any cloud services. All kinds of flavours available and they do run on POE.
