Hey all.
So I was asked recently to look into security systems for their house. I was wondering if some of you have experiences, resources, and recommendations I can base my research on. What could be things to look out for?

Their basic requirements are: a window opening alarm; the same for the door; and a camera system with at least one camera, but maybe more (sorry for not knowing the technical terms of each… :P).

Now, I don’t want to recommend anything that relies on a remote server, especially not for the camera feed. Not only for privacy reasons, but I’m also afraid that the system is e-waste, if the service ceases to exist in the future (i.e. because the company goes away or the service is not profitable anymore). I also have some experience with setting up a home assistant instance with a camera and motion detectors, but I’m still a bit hesitant to whether I want to set up (and then probably also maintain and being responsible for it to work) their system. I’m fairly certain they wouldn’t be able to do that by themself.

Maybe there is such a all-in-one, offline solution already? I could probably get myself to setting up a Raspberry Pi with Tailscale or something similar, as this seems low maintenance and high reliability.

Curious to hear your opinions. :)

-mx

  • kriss0706@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’m a bit too late to the party, but i will tell you about what i use.

    I use a wireless IP camera from Reolink. You can use any camera really.
    Then I purchased a license for Blue Iris, so i have that running on my computer downstairs.
    Blue Iris is so under-rated. Its really good, there’s a setting for anything you can think of and quite advanced motion detectors.

    Hell, it can even detect license plates!

    • mx@kbin.socialOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      Thank you for the suggestion regarding the hardware. Two follow-up questions:

      1. Would you mind letting me know the model of the camera you’re using?
      2. Blue Iris sounds awesome! But it also sounds like quite a bit of compute is required to run it. Is that true? Or could I also run in on a RPi, maybe even with Coral AI stick?