Thanks, looks cool, frigate certainly seems the way to go.
Comment on Cams, anyone?
swizzlestick@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
For hardware, anything that can provide a local rtsp stream is a good place to start. I run cheap and cheerful mix of tapo, unbranded and homebrew esp32 cams. Offload the motion/object detection and alerts to something that can pull in the feeds, and isolate the cams to local network only.
WiFi usually ok, but at least hardwire the power to save future grief.
Using frigate to manage mine, which is running under Homeassistant - another project worth looking up.
A few images, featuring Freddie the visitor:
jabeez@lemmy.today 1 day ago
grue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Tell me more about your homebrew esp32 cams, please!
swizzlestick@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Ok so the combination is:
And the finished item:
Image
All assembled, they will give a decent enough feed back to frigate for the basics, just don’t expect miracles in the resolution or framerate departments. 3fps does fine for my use case of tracking critters.
grue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Neat, thanks!
I’m not thrilled about the camera quality (compared to a purpose-built surveillance cam with 4k and good low-light performance) and I wish it had PoE, but damn, can’t beat that price!
(Side note: does anybody else find it weird that PoE is so uncommon and/or adds so much to the cost of these IoT dev boards? I get that normal people don’t want the hassle of running cable, but it feels like the hole in the market is bigger than it should be.)
swizzlestick@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
It would definitely be a size thing for adding Ethernet (PoE or otherwise) to small boards like these. The ones I am using are already bigger than they ought to be - the bottom half is just a glorified serial interface and power input for USB. The esp plugs into this through pin/header. If I were less lazy, they could be about half the thickness in a final product. no PoE I suppose also keeps them cheap, which is always good for me. The casings were my first ‘proper’ design and entry into resin printing.
The Tapo kit I have found to be a good balance of price, features and quality. I have a Tapo C310 mounted outdoors at another building, which has done great in all weathers. Initial setup does require the app/service last time I checked, but it can be made to serve RTSP locally after that. Very good for the ~£30 price point.
swizzlestick@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Gladly. I’ll collate a few bits later - time for work.