Weve tried all sort of cameras. from Grid orion wifi cams from bunnings, to Dahua IP cams.

I’ve yet to find any, that could actually provide image quality enough to ID somone for legal purposes, unless they were to litterally look directly at it from a couple meters away and remain motionless for a second or 2.

Annoyingly it was the cheaper wifi cams that tended to have much better image quality, even at night. Despite on paper having much worse hardware specs. They also had far more reliable recording to SD.
The only downside was that retreiving video could be painful, as there often wasnt a way to simply download or copy to astandard video format. Files could only be played using their propriatry players and couldn’t be automaticallybacked up to a pc hardrive.

The times weve had break in’s assaults and arsons, the footage either couldn’t be retrieved (the camera just silently failed and hadnt been recording for a week, another intentionally destroyed it’s SD card as some sort of misguided antitheft mechanism, didn’t start recording until the actor had already left the frame) or was too low quality (not low res), to id anything useful.

I talked to 3 different australian detectives and 2 police sergeants over different instances and they said that was pretty common. On the rare cases the victims actually know how to use the software and access the video it was almost always useless and even when usefule generally only for estabilishing a timeline or sometimes tricking the perp into thinking the footage was damning and having them confess.

I’ve just had a $300 dahua bullet cam fail after only 9 months. Without the nvr or the pc or mobile apps notifying me, despite it’s last response being over a month ago.

and it seems like even proffessionals are expereinceing much the same, such as the UKs police surveilance https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-30978995

Is it just bad luck? Did i just manage to only buy the bad models/brands? Is this a common as ive been led to believe? Is it just that they know they can get away with selling E-waste to laymen?

My next project is going to use old android phones as security cameras. They have much better quality cameras and wirless connections. They are cheap to replace and can easily be hooked up to a small solar panel or battery or usb C/micro cable anywhere.
There’s alot of programs to control them remotely, like teamviewer and anydesk.
I just need to figure a way to reliably have them periodically send video back to a PC and clear old footage to create space for new.

Someone here recently suggested this. He recommended a few cheap Wyze cameras with MSD cards, as a supplement to regular (like POE NVR). Has anyone done this and is it a fairly good idea? Window mount maybe? Four feet high?

It wouldn’t cost much to test the idea.

Thanks

Hello there.

I’m running a talk at the library for my local town.

It is to get more people involved in home security and home automation… basically letting them know it doesn’t cost thousands to do at least something….. and demystifying some of the terms…

As for my house I’m partially automated. (lights/garage doors/ smoke detectors etc etc..) I have 3 outside cameras covering 90% of my property all POE…..

I’ve done everyting for under about $700 over the years a piece at a time starting with small server and home assistant…..

I’d like to get your suggestions as topics to discuss with a “newbie” type of crowd.

Thanks

-R.

Hi. I’ve been using Blue Iris for a few years. It’s been very stable but I was never happy with the their dated UI, app, configurations, AI and Home Assistant integration. I am using CodeprojectAI for for AI detection and Pushover for notifications. I have 6 5442/T54IR (v1) cameras + Eufy cameras as a backup. I was hoping that v6 would make it much better but it seems to be pretty much the same as v5. I am looking for an alternative.

My expectations are: – low cost (ideally no subscription or <$50 per year) – stable 24/7 recording – easy and stable AI setup – user-friendly UI and app – Home Assistant integration – integration with POE cameras and Eufy wifi cameras

My hardware is a ThinkCentre M920s with: – Windows 11 Pro – Intel i7-8700 – 16GB RAM – 512GB SSD + 4GB HDD + 6GB HDD

Scrypted seems to be perfect and very user friendly but I’m not sure how well it handles AI detection. It’s also a bit too expensive for my taste since it would be $60/yr (not sure if I would have to pay additional $10 per wifi camera). Frigate doesn’t seem to be better than BI.

Is Scrypted really worth it? Or maybe there’s some better alternative?

So I’ve owned a IP2M-841B for about 6 years now. I do like this camera, but lately the camera is constantly restarting, and it’s spooked me and my partner a couple times thinking someone somehow got the login for it and we’re watching us. I was thinking of buying a newer model of it since they dont support my model anymore, but the price is about $70. In my search I’ve seen an Amcrest ASH21-B, which supposedly has ai detection, but the price is $30. Anyone ever use this model and can tell me about the quality/night vision/wifi power?

Hey y’all,

Looking to shop around for a new ADC partner to work with.

I switched away from a local partner due to multiple instances between personal and professional interactions with them being not great.

Moved to Link Interactive for the past couple of years, It’s been okay, but looking to find out if anyone has better vendors they can suggest to work with, I’ve had some privacy concerns.

Mostly I’m just looking for a partner with a decent support team, that can also help with product recommendations when I’m looking to change stuff up and their solution to support issues not being to just throw money at it, especially when it’s not necessary.