Raspberry Pi + Webcam = Surveillance camera?

[Bugses]

Hi everybody, I hope it's okay to post this here.
I haven't owned or tried to use a Raspberry Pi yet, so I don't know a lot about it yet. I'm in the market for a IP camera, but kinda annoyed with the picture quality on them. I stumbled upon a post, that had a guide for making your own with a Raspberry Pi and a Webcam. Is it true that you can do that? And as a complete beginner, is it hard? I don't need anything fancy, I just need a good picture quality, being able to watch the camera live with my computer or phone, and it would be nice if I could record the footage on a SD card on onto my NAS.

[unijab]

Install motion and set it up

[XDfuzion]

 

[Bugses]

Thanks.

Is it easy to set up though? It looks easy in that video, but is it, when you haven't tried something similar?

[KrYpToCiD]

22 hours ago, Bugses said:

Thanks.

Is it easy to set up though? It looks easy in that video, but is it, when you haven't tried something similar?

Hi. I have some experience with the RPis  I can assure you that is kinda easy to do his method. All that he has done was to install the OS (which in his case is custom build and that is pretty cool),after that he entered on the IP and configure it. It's like installing a custom firmware on wifi router (if you have done it you will know how simple is it). The trickiest part is finding RPi's IP address. In order to do that you must to connect it via RJ45 cable to your switch and after that you are able to find the IP. Fill the settings you want in web UI and voila, it is up and running.

 

As an advice, you might want to use an internet cable to stream the footage. The RJ45 and the wifi are using the USB chip (being a headless OS might be a minimal lag in streaming)but even so,you might want to use this option to capture as much footage as you can  better safe than sorry, you know? And keep the minimum video resolution too, higher resolution=more processing time= harder to write on sd or on NAS. 

 

P.S. Sorry for the potential non-sense that I had wrote up there but it is on my nature when I talk about something that I like and know how to do it

 

I really hope this will help you

[KrYpToCiD]

Oh, I have almost forgot. If you want to use it in dark places you need to get a nigh vision camera ( here is a full DIY video (he went "overkill" i might say......) and here is a place where you can buy a camera with infrared build in). You can find some videos or instructions about installing and using the "night vision" camera on internet so there are no problems.

[KrYpToCiD]

Another tip. I've just remembered about it. You could run power via internet cable ( 2 pairs of cables from CAT cable are not used by network because they are for PoE protocol). An Raspberry Pi needs 5V*2.5A=12.5W and the cable supports 40W or even more. Like this you can run a single cable for footage and power but you need to do some soldering. All of this stuff are on YT so you have some tutorials that you can follow.

 

If you need any further more info you can contact me via PM and I'll try to response as quick as I can.

[DarkPlatinum]

You should just buy one RPi 3 to start off with. They don't break the bank.