Camera System around House

calypso · February 8, 2021, 6:31am

You do get PC based NVR’s that do all the smart analytics for you when using cheap/dumb cameras. That being said the industry is moving to cameras which do their own processing and then pass that over to the DVR/NVR for indexing.

In my mind, DVR’s are pretty antiquated and leave you locked into a system that one can’t really ever upgrade, but they are simple and cheap, that’s enough for many people.

If you looking for a more long term solution, I would do a PC based NVR. Many people like Blue Iris but there are many options available.

TheTerribleTriplet · February 8, 2021, 9:58am

Dankie JACO!!!

Bought 2 x RLC-420 and 1 x Argus 2, which comes with a microphone and speaker, to see IF it can work to sort the gate issue I have, out.

ebendl · February 16, 2021, 7:39pm

Sorry I’m a bit late to the discussion.

I use mostly Hikvision 2mpx cameras (I have one 4 mpx camera) since I am able to buy them from Communica. Didn’t know about the reolink order-direct-from them option, otherwise I might have been tempted to go via them.

I originally bought two bullets with some of the smart features and SD cards for about a year for basic recording. But honestly the best part was integration with Home Assistant and my outside PIRs - when these detect something it orders a snapshot from the closest camera and push notifies me. Works brilliantly.

Same for when my gates are opened - takes a snapshot and sends it to me.

After some security incidents last year I added a bunch more and also invested in a Google Coral for local Tensorflow-based AI processing, paired with a “mini PC” (Lenovo ThinkCentre M700 mini) which now also runs Home Assistant. This is after I discovered the Frigate project: a full open source local person (and other objects) detection system designed to run in Docker and to use Google TPU for low power AI processing.

As the project progressed it just got better and better - the developer has since added full DVR capabilities integrated with Home Assistant’s media browser. It monitors for movement and then people (or other objects) on the cameras’ secondary streams, sends notifications over MQTT if it detects an object, and also records a high resolution clip (main stream) of the object from x number of seconds before and y number of seconds after. It has automatic retention policies, and categorises everything through the Home Assistant media browser. The Home Assistant integration adds high-resolution live-stream cameras automatically, which streams via frigate and uses the stream: component in Home Assistant to provide a high quality stream directly in the app. Frigate also provides a JPEG snapshot via it’s API to attach to push notifications sent from Home Assistant, so I don’t have to grab a snapshot to file via Home Assistant first.

Here’s some screenshot in the HA media browser on my phone (I now only use Home Assistant to view recordings):

You are able to mask out areas where it shouldn’t detect, and it also offers zones - where you can mark an polygon area of interest (thus any shape) and set up detection rules for it. I’ve recently installed an Ezviz camera to monitor the driveway outside my house for

people walking up to my pedestrian gate
cars (like delivery vans) stopping in my driveway
dogs waiting outside the gate (my dogs tend to slip out and then wait for me to open the gate when I discover they are gone - now Home Assistant warns me).

Here’s the clip of the last dog it picked up and recorded:

(only recorded since the dog walked into the zone)

Since all of this is fully integrated in Home Assistant it can easily notify me via a Google Home or my phone or flash some lights.

I also use it to switch on outside lights at night when it detects a person - no more lights/alarms activating due to wind or hadedas.

The project is greatly recommend if you can find a Google Coral! GitHub - blakeblackshear/frigate: NVR with realtime local object detection for IP cameras

Louisvdw · February 17, 2021, 5:59am

Very cool!

I also like your cat object that it tracks

calypso · February 17, 2021, 6:18am

Frigate is great, I must migrate to V8 sometime soon. I do feel like just going to be eaten up by camera processing. Another one to look for is Intel OpenVino. That’s what I now run on my production system as an approved plugin on my NVR software. So no setup or config files, it just works. Also hardly hits the CPU even though it’s not using a TPU.

ebendl · February 17, 2021, 6:47am

Haha, it simply means that it didn’t pick up a cat yet for the specific camera.

jykenmynie · February 17, 2021, 7:20am

Insanely cool! Doubt I have the skill or time to implement something like that, but if I could, I’d really like it!

ebendl · February 17, 2021, 7:27am

That’s the thing – I just use the guy’s software as is. Yes there’s some configuration pains but I didn’t write a single piece of code to get this going (other than Home Assistant automations).

I just find it much better than most DVR / NVRs.

ebendl · February 17, 2021, 7:49am

Looks cool, what NVR do you use? Blue Iris with an OpenVino plugin?

calypso · February 17, 2021, 8:17am

I use NXWitness. What’s quite cool is that you can chat with the engineers on Discord and they very open with their update plans. You can add as many cameras as you like but you just pay around R1500 per camera once off to record.
The free trial allows you to set up 4 cameras for a month, but let me know if you need a bigger license. While the recording/server portion of the software can run on something as light as a Pi, you will need a fairly new Intel processor to run OpenVino.

iiznh · February 19, 2021, 2:09pm

Where did you manage to find a Google Coral? I tried to convince a couple of the local shops to stock them since I also wanted to buy one. Shipping from Amazon was $78 at the time on a $67 unit.
I wrote my own little program using openCV but was meaning to checkout frigate. Just needed a coral.

ebendl · February 19, 2021, 5:27pm

I bought it end of 2019 via a colleague who traveled to the US. IT is a pity that Google doesn’t want two sell the stuff here.

calypso · February 21, 2021, 9:34am

Just freight forward one down.

JohanB · February 26, 2021, 4:03am

Please let me know how long the delivery took. I am also looking to buy a few reolink cams. Have a couple in my Amazon cart. But that’s R468 delivery…

Want to know if ordering directly worked out.

JohanB · February 26, 2021, 4:33am

I currently have a tvt poe cam (communica special). Very bad web ui, uses the old activeX plugin to display feed in the web ui. Lucky for me the cam’s quality is good and it is a ONIVF cam with an rstp feed.

So I created a simple Ubuntu VM and installed motionEye, works great as a sort of simple NVR. Can record on motion and send alerts when it’s detected. Allows us to view the cam’s feed on old ipads via the motioneye’s web ui.

Also looking to buy a couiple of reolink cam’s, want to use the small indoor PTZ cam’s as a portable baby monitor and add a few RLC-410-5MP or 510’s for security.

ebendl · February 26, 2021, 2:09pm

Using those cams for baby-monitors are quite nice, we have done the same with Wyze cams. The Wyze cams in particular can trigger by sound, which is very good to use for babies crying.

Tip: if you’re taking baby to family, then you’re likely going to take the cam along. I set up ours on grandma’s Wifi network, then added their Wifi network details as a secondary SSID on my access points. So the camera never needs to be reconfigured, we just plug it out and plug it in that side and it works. It has the second advantage of checking whether grandma actually put them to bed at the specified time

JohanB · February 27, 2021, 6:31am

Great idea about the secondary ssid.

Yes that is the plan have one as a"roaming" cam I was thinking of using my phone as a hotspot but range would probably be the issue.

I was surprised at how much an actual baby monitor goes for and that most still use an analogue signal. So yeah getting a ptz wifi cam with 2 way audio for less than a thousand rand seems like a much better and investment.

Looking into blue iris, if I can get it working in a kvm vm. Otherwise still happy with motioneye as my elcheapo nvr, just a pity it does not do sound, the wife is not entirely happy about that.

plonkster · March 30, 2021, 10:55am

So given that there’s been a string of break-ins in my neighbourhood, and I already have 8 cameras around the place (on a cheaper DVR), what kind of DVR is recommended if I want that feature where you can mark a zone and get notifications if there is movement within it?

Also, @ebendl , what would you recommend for a Frigate setup if I prefer to go with that? The existing Dahua DVR has network streams, so in theory that can be monitored? Is a Google Coral absolutely required? I see they are around 2k locally.

I would much prefer something that is self-contained and doesn’t need constant attention or tinkering

ebendl · March 31, 2021, 7:28am

In my opinion it is some of the best money I spent. It is really stable and reliable - I haven’t had a false alarm on my cameras in months. The money was spent on the cameras themselves, but then also on a mini-PC to do the processing and the Coral of course.

You can always set up Frigate with a CPU processor and see how it performs with one camera. Its performance is dependent on two things:

hardware decoding of the H264 stream. It grabs every frame and looks for motion first, and if it finds motion it sends it to the Coral. The Intel processors with QuickSync works wonders, that’s one of the reasons I moved from a Pi to an Intel CPU (6th gen i5). I purchased a refurbished Lenovo ThinkCentre Mini M700 from Geewiz.
inference speed – in other words, how fast Tensorflow can make a decision. The Coral running on USB 3 is < 10ms if I recall correctly, while a CPU is in the order of 100 - 150ms.

Depending on what the camera sees and how you put in motion masks, you can get the number of images going to Tensorflow relatively low.

Here’s some stats:

Detection FPS: basically the number of frames each camera is pushing towards motion detection.

Coral FPS:
All of the frames in the previous graph are processed by the Coral, so you can see it can go up to 40 fps on my side. 1000ms / 10ms inference = 100 FPS maximum that the Coral can do.

I’m happy to call you somewhere and show you some things more hands-on if you want?

EDIT: but to your point, it takes some tweaking to set up and while it is now fairly stable, I do have to monitor the docker container and do Linux updates etc – something you won’t get with a self-contained DVR. The benefits in my case is that I can basically integrate it fully with Home Assistant and use it for much much more than just a security system.

plonkster · March 31, 2021, 7:44am

After a long discussion with @Paul yesterday, I opted to go with outdoor PIR/beams.

My initial thinking around replacing the DVR is that it would be a cheap way to quickly turn all 8 my cameras into motion sensors, if only I can mark the areas to watch. Looks like the cheapest one would set me back around R2200.

But I’m told that rain can cause a lot of problems. Spiders in front of the camera (something that actually happens). Insects coming to a nearby light (also an issue at night).

Now apparently Roboguard is the one to go for, but goodness, have you seen what they cost? Then I found the “home” alternative, which is called Askari. So I ended up spending way more than initially planned, but I think that will be a better solution.