DIY WiFi Cam Tutorial

[TheBean]

18 hours ago, thepanda66 said:

Is there a limit to the amount of cameras that can be used? Wanting to do this with roughly 10 raspberry pi zero w /cameras and one raspberry pi 4 as the hub (mainly to live view all of them and motion alerts) then also a standalone PC as well acting as another hub mainly for storage and cloud services. 

10 pi zero's may be too much for the rp4 to handle. thats a lot of video for 1 rp4 to process. i would say 3-5 max per rp4

[Lightning]

My Motion eye hub doesn't display any video from my wireless motioneye network camera, however I am able to view the stream by logging onto the network camera itself.

 

How can I fix this?

 

[TheBean]

9 hours ago, Lightning said:

My Motion eye hub doesn't display any video from my wireless motioneye network camera, however I am able to view the stream by logging onto the network camera itself.

 

How can I fix this?

sounds like the motioneyeos software is corrupt perhaps. try reinstalling motioneyeos

[Lightning]

16 hours ago, Saksham said:

sounds like the motioneyeos software is corrupt perhaps. try reinstalling motioneyeos

I browsed it using microsoft edge and it works, it looks like chrome was the issue.

[TheBean]

1 minute ago, Lightning said:

I browsed it using microsoft edge, it looks like that was the issue.

chromium edge or regular edge?

[Lightning]

Just now, Saksham said:

chromium edge or regular edge?

regular

[TheBean]

41 minutes ago, Lightning said:

regular

was it working in chrome for you?

[Lightning]

3 minutes ago, Saksham said:

was it working in chrome for you?

nope, but it works on edge.

[TheBean]

Just now, Lightning said:

nope, but it works on edge.

buy i thought you said it doesnt work in edge. im confused

[Lightning]

49 minutes ago, Lightning said:

I browsed it using microsoft edge, it looks like that was the issue.

 

1 minute ago, Saksham said:

buy i thought you said it doesnt work in edge. im confused

sorry I edited my post.

[realdavid]

Hi,

I have a Question:

Is it possible to get some kind of notification if the cam detects movment no matter if email or some kind of app...

I hope sb can help me

[TheBean]

3 hours ago, realdavid said:

Hi,

I have a Question:

Is it possible to get some kind of notification no matter if email or some kind of app...

I hope sb can help me

ummm... what? do you want to elaborate? your questions makes no sense. 

[realdavid]

21 hours ago, Saksham said:

ummm... what? do you want to elaborate? your questions makes no sense. 

I changed it

[Metric Tons of Imperialism]

First of all I'm a complete normie and can only work with existing materials or code pieces...

 

A bit more than 2 months ago I started deploying my home surveillance setup with PI Zero Ws and a Pi 3B (right when Pi 4B turned up but motioneyeOS had not supported Pi 4 at that time, I did get one afterwards and you'll see in a bit)

For the most part I installed motioneyeOS on Pi Zero W boards (I call them satellites) with one CSI camera attached to each. the Pi 3 model B board with no camera attached is serving as the hub, motioneyeOS installed. 

 

As for networking, I initially connected all satellites to my router via wifi, Pi Zero W supports only 2.4GHz so I spared 5GHz bands for laptops and other modern devices. hub was connected with a cable to the router.

I have a DS218j NAS wired to the router as well, so naturally I planned to record directly to the NAS.

 

I finished setting up this first loadout step-by-step from what's in the original post (big thanks for putting the info together btw). From the browser frontend, the monitoring quality seems fine, I had every satellite on 800x600@15FPS and hub recording with H.264/OMX encoder, leaving enough bandwidth for my other wireless devices.

 

#H.264/OMX (as opposed to H.264) means it uses hardware encoding offered by Raspberry Pi's GPU, significantly reduces CPU usage on hub, H.264/OMX is currently NOT usable in Pi 4B version of motioneyeOS(20190911), see https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneyeos/issues/2043 note: latest motioneyeOS dev build(dev20191031) will show OMX for Pi 4 but it will NOT output recorded files unless you apply fixes specified by the author and collaborators, info can be found in his github, I'm too dumb to understand how the fixes work... There's also a V4L2 encoder in this dev build but it's meant for ODroid XU4 and if you force it on RPi the video will has a green overlay.

 

Anyway, using Pi 3B as hub was fine until I realize ALL recorded footage during daytime have very low FPS(2~3), at first I thought it's a processing power issue so I OC'd all satellite to turbo in motioneyeOS settings. It didn't help much and making it worse, my satellite boards were heating up that it will crash without rebooting.

It's only recently that I realize wifi signal was the issue. so I pulled out my surplus wifi router and set it as wireless bridge mode, placing it physically closer to satellites (all at first floor, surrounding living room, kitchen and garage). Then I move the hub to be physically connected to the bridge router, to have shortest latency and strongest connection with satellite boards (hopefully, lol), AND set to record footage directly to onboard micro SD card(128GB). Recorded footage's FPS is greatly improved, I finalized satellite settings at streaming 1024x768@10FPS,quality 10%, all with medium OC. And hub is set to record motion triggered footage, using H.264/OMX encoder@75%quality, directly to onboard microSD card, and upload via SFTP protocol to my NAS after each footage is recorded, onboard footages are kept for 1 week to save space.

 

#NAS write speed was another issue, I have 2 Toshiba 8TB HDD in it and they are good for backup and archival purpose, but real-time CCTV recording was apparently something they are not up for. After I switched from directly recording to NAS to rather upload media files to NAS via SFTP protocol, this problem is considered resolved to me. I shortened time-to-keep period on hub to 1 week and if things run stable, I will further shorten it to 1-2 days to achieve a cleaner running environment (and security concerns as well cause I'm not sure about encryption status of the micro SD cards).

 

Now that it's November 2019, after the latest firmware update for Pi 4 rolled out that helps greatly with thermal management (apply fix manually or automatically in Raspbian), I installed latest Raspbian on it and set up motioneye with default loadout.

#The author, Calin Crisan, provided most information you need together in his github pages. Specifically, I followed instructions here to set up motioneye in Raspbian https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneye/wiki/Installation 
#You will notice that Mr. Crisan recommends the use of motioneyeOS for SBCs like Raspberry Pi, but since Pi 4 support is very early stage and it has a much stronger CPU than every Pi before it, I believe running motioneye in Raspbian on Pi 4B is a better choice for now, and you do have better customization with this setup if you know your way around it.

 

This hub setup can record footage from all 3 satellite during daytime (where output data is at peak due to the nature of motion JPEG) and at much lower CPU usage (15~20%, only in motioneye+Raspbian, NOT in motioneyeOS, I don't know why, maybe early optimization issue). I also noticed significantly higher monitoring FPS from browser (on another PC ofc, monitoring in Raspbian's Chromium browser while acting as a hub completely tanks your CPU).

#If you followed installation instructions, the motioneye session will start automatically when Raspbian is booted up, essentially as hassle-free as using motioneyeOS.

 

#The catch for motioneye+Raspbian setup, is that you lose certain options to conveniently set things up via browser frontend, such as ALL expert settings and options to record to NAS directly(you have to manually config it through terminal, not a problem for pro people I think), etc, while available in motioneyeOS. However, H.264/OMX is usable on Pi 4B in this setup, so it can bypass some optimization issue that a specially build motioneyeOS img has to overcome. Further testing shows that vedio encoding still very slow and outputs large low FPS vids. It might still be broken for Pi 4 and the option was probably just there as a place holder. 

 

I have finished testing and plan to replace my Pi 3B hub with newly configured Pi 4B hub. Might update soon. Nope, the Pi 3B hub works fine and will stay in place until major update hits Pi 4.

 

#please note the difference between motioneyeOS and motioneye, the latter is developed first and can be installed on existing OS, mainly Linux distros like Ubuntu or Debian, but also Raspbian, WSL and Windows 10 virtual machine. 

 

I hope this is helpful to some people.

[Touch My Hamm]

With IP cams what have you setup for security? My main issue with random Wyse cams or IP cams is that most are easily accessible by anyone with anybit of networking knowledge. That is the ONLY reason I would purchase a reputable brand for a camera as they would lock it down to the software. This doesnt meant its 100% but most people who take advantage of IP cameras are just looking for easy jobs and not to hack some phone application. 

[Metric Tons of Imperialism]

13 minutes ago, GodSeph said:

With IP cams what have you setup for security? My main issue with random Wyse cams or IP cams is that most are easily accessible by anyone with anybit of networking knowledge. That is the ONLY reason I would purchase a reputable brand for a camera as they would lock it down to the software. This doesnt meant its 100% but most people who take advantage of IP cameras are just looking for easy jobs and not to hack some phone application. 

motioneyeOS offers 'surveillance credential' option, but the credentials are really transmitted in plain text (found out thru trying to set up in my NAS software...) this is a major limitation in its security that I have no ways to overcome with my knowledge.

Right now all my satellite cameras are connected to bridge router with WPA2-personal keys, I might try to deploy a RADIUS server at the parent router level to see whether it helps. I don't even know whether motioneyeOS takes this kind of login so have to try out.

 

As for defending attacks from within, I guess that's related to my housekeeping skills  

[Touch My Hamm]

5 minutes ago, Metric Tons of Imperialism said:

motioneyeOS offers 'surveillance credential' option, but the credentials are really transmitted in plain text (found out thru trying to set up in my NAS software...) this is a major limitation in its security that I have no ways to overcome with my knowledge.

Right now all my satellite cameras are connected to bridge router with WPA2-personal keys, I might try to deploy a RADIUS server at the parent router level to see whether it helps. I don't even know whether motioneyeOS takes this kind of login so have to try out.

 

As for defending attacks from within, I guess that's related to my housekeeping skills  

If you are getting attacked from the inside you have more problems than your IP cam being turned on. 

The security uncertainty is the main reason I would spend more on cameras that connect through an application. Most are locked to only work with the built in app. There are breaches for these but for the most part they are way safer in that regard then ip wyse cams. if there is an OS that locks them down and you have control I would love to know as it would add more tinkering I would love be build for more house camera's.

[Metric Tons of Imperialism]

1 minute ago, GodSeph said:

If you are getting attacked from the inside you have more problems than your IP cam being turned on. 

The security uncertainty is the main reason I would spend more on cameras that connect through an application. Most are locked to only work with the built in app. There are breaches for these but for the most part they are way safer in that regard then ip wyse cams. if there is an OS that locks them down and you have control I would love to know as it would add more tinkering I would love be build for more house camera's.

I agree with you when it comes to spending money on real security. I spent ~$250 for everything including accessories for final placements of camera housing and cabling, and have some surplus to place another 2 cameras. If I had a nicer place or kids at home I'd scale up that budget considerably.

In this particular setup, I believe RPi Zero W lacks the processing power to impose meaningful end-to-end encryption on the transmissions. Should we use more powerful Pi boards then it stops being cost-effective for its purpose. So there's that for me.

[WarriorKenth]

has anyone set this up with the port forwarding part? I have 1 raspi zero as a camera and 1 raspi 3b+ as a hub. I'm trying to setup the port forwarding on the hub to connect to it remotely on my phone. I've added the local ip of the hub to my router, and I'm forwarding port 8081, but this is the first time I'm doing port forwarding so I don't know if I'm doing it correctly.

 

When I try connecting with my public ip and the port 8081, it just says the site can't be reached. Any davice on how to do this correctly? Thanks!

[mathieufitzgerald]

On 5/15/2018 at 7:39 AM, jakkuh_t said:

then place it into the root of each Micro USB

Hello There!

Fairly new to this but would like to know how this is done! (On a mac)

Thank You!

[ethanbrecke]

Has anyone tried setting this up with a desktop as the hub? Would a GPU help with video encoding, or if i had something like a ryzen 5 2600x, would that work alright as a hub?

[TheBean]

23 hours ago, ethanbrecke said:

Has anyone tried setting this up with a desktop as the hub? Would a GPU help with video encoding, or if i had something like a ryzen 5 2600x, would that work alright as a hub?

not sure but it seems overkill. if a ras pi can handle the work, a 2600 will be WAYYY overkill. 2600 is like 10x faster than a ras pi 4

[K.Lum]

Any way to add mics? or best to look for a camera with one?

[Frederico Giaconia]

Has anyone put this to work for sale as a complete kit?

[TheBean]

6 hours ago, Frederico Giaconia said:

Has anyone put this to work for sale as a complete kit?

I doubt it. If somebody does, people will complain that its just a kit you can make yourself. then they will also complain if somebody tries to make a profit... so no. nobody will sell you a prebuilt rasberi pi security camera setup