Security camera with web embed

podperson@lemm.ee to Technology@lemmy.world – 14 points –

Looks like none of the consumer-grade security cameras (Nest, Arvo, Ring, etc) support being able to embed the feed on a web page anymore. I think many of them never supported it, but looks like since Google bought Nest, they are slowly stripping features out of that one.

I'm looking to set up a security camera or two in a park-like area (it's a parking lot and landing area for a freeflight club), and am looking for something that checks the following boxes:

  • Ideally, a solution that doesn't need an external computer (a full blown machine that's running software that might have to be restarted by a human on-site; a self-contained hardware device or rack mounted solution that would start all necessary services up after a power outage or other failure would be fine).
  • Video would be ideal, but if there's something that would take snapshots every few seconds, that's acceptable.
  • Stream (or photos) would need to be publicly-accessible. A webpage embed would be ideal, but not something where a whole bunch of people have to use a dedicated mobile app to access it.

I looked at some of Unifi's product offerings, but hard to tell if some combination of their cameras and routers would accomplish that. Anyone put something like this together recently and can recommend anything?

14

I might violate your top "ideal solution" checkmark, but I have a raspberry pi running Motion Project (https://motion-project.github.io) on site and it makes an easily viewable webpage-stream. My Rpi4 can handle 2-3 video streams, with motion detect-video-save, periodic snapshot, etc. etc.

Not for the feint of heart, but it is the way I solved a very similar problem. I'm using random mixed brand of IP Cams, whatever was cheap at the time.

Yeah - that's something I'd be comfortable running at home, but it would be best if this was easy to support by any random human (have a lot of older folks in the club that aren't super technologically-minded).

Unifi cameras support it, but I'd not expose the camera to the public internet. I'd use a proxy or restreamer

Yeah - putting it behind a proxy or restreaming it from something else would be perfectly fine, but I'm trying to figure out which combination of hardware would get me to that point. So far, it seems like most solutions would involve having to have a dedicated computer running at that location to handle some of the aspects of the whole setup.

A dedicated computer can be a raspberry pi or thin client you buy on eBay for $50 and run Linux on.

If you want to have a site somewhere else show them you can send the traffic over a wireguard tunnel, and have the site elsewhere on the same tunnel display the video

Have you looked into blue iris? It's similar to a PC powered NVR. It can also support streaming to other browsers.... I think. It's been a while since I worked with it. I've actually met the 2-3 guys that developed and maintain the software.

Wyze with CFW supports RTSP streams, as do all unifi cameras

I think wyze forces you to use their apps to view streams, but perhaps I've missed something there?

EDIT: Looks like it does support RTSP, but only accessible from a local computer (so I'd need to have a machine on that network that then restreams that out somewhere): https://support.wyze.com/hc/en-us/articles/360051619871-Does-Wyze-Cam-v3-support-RTSP-

All RTSP streams are local only unless you forward ports, which is not recommended unless you lock them down with auth & 2FA. If you’re decent at coding you can whip up a quick webpage that displays all your cameras in one place and then secure that page, keeping the cameras local only.

That would mean I'd need to run a web server at that location, which I'm trying to avoid. I have the background to do that but want low/no maintenance and minimal fuss - administering a server is more than I want to do for this project.