Submitted 1 day ago by Flamekebab@piefed.social to selfhosted@lemmy.world
I’ve got a server running Debian and I’ve previously borrowed a wildlife cam for my garden. It activates on motion and records, has night vision, etc..
That said the only way to get the footage is to go out there and pull the SD card.
Is there a self-hosted approach to this? I don’t know what weather-proof camera setup people like for this sort of thing.
If it is onvif compatible or similar sure, but it’s most likely not. If you’re lucky someone else have had the same camera as you and made a custom firmware for it, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Frigate and shinobi are two alternatives to use software wise on the server, but you still need a compatible camera.
I borrowed a camera - it’s not the one I would be using for this.
That’s why I’m asking. I haven’t bought anything yet and don’t want to get the wrong thing.
Get a CCTV camera for it. Make sure it supports ONVIF. An IP camera can be run 100 meters on CAT5.
Trail cams are not intended for remote viewing. They are battery powered and a remote connection would drain the batteries quickly.
I would think you would need a wifi trail cam or something more permanent using buried cable.
That would be possible, yep.
Yes, there are trail cameras with WiFi or 4G connectivity, but the good ones are expensive. The Chinese ones are often a pain.
I had one with 3G, it wasn’t reliable. I had a Moultrie one that was nice, but like yours, only SD card.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| CGNAT | Carrier-Grade NAT |
| NAT | Network Address Translation |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
[Thread #1009 for this comm, first seen 19th Jan 2026, 12:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Are you buying a cam or borrowing the same one? If you are borrowing again, you know the model? That will help us give better advice.
I would be buying. The cam I borrowed wouldn’t fit the setup I want, I just mentioned it because I want that functionality but without the hassle of pulling the SD card.
So far it doesn’t sound like what I want exists, unfortunately.
There appears to be many wireless options available. While there is no off the shelf option available, you may be able to automate connecting to the Wi-Fi of the cam and pulling the files from a Windows share. From there, you could put the files on a share for a service like photoprism.
If the only way up interface with it is through an app, and you don’t have an old smartphone to run the app, then you could consider running an android emulator.
You can get a WiFi or LTE trail cam that essentially to works the same. If you get LTE though, you’ll almost certainly need a VPN setup on your network as well to work around CGNAT issues.
WiFi would be easily sufficient. We’re talking a distance of 10m from my router, tops.
Most of the cameras like this that I’ve seen have an app that lets you transfer the photos too. The issue is that you need to connect to the camera with Bluetooth, which then turns on the camera’s wifi for the full connection. The apps do this automatically.
I’ve been wondering if there’s a way to run the app from a computer, and connect to the camera through that, but I don’t know how you’d get it to wake the camera to allow the wifi connection.
papertowels@mander.xyz 2 hours ago
You’ll want to be running frigate, a self hosted nvr solution.
Camera wise, you’ll probably want a power over Ethernet (poe) amcrest or hikvision camera for continuous video to be sent to the nvr to do the detection. A list of recommended hardware is found here.
I’ll be honest though, depending on where this is you might be better off with a non-self hosted setup. For example, reolink makes several battery/solar powered wifi cameras that record on motion, shooting notifications to your phone. No cables to run