I am trying to plan out my first diy home security setup. I am open to any advise or suggestions. I would like to try to keep costs down where ever possible, but at the same time I want something that I am going to do once and not have to touch it for along time or ever. I have two buildings I want to setup exterior security cameras on. They are both going to be built so running cables etc is not a problem. The goal is for a quality system that will last 20-30 years without needing to replace anything other than a hdd.
I have old hardware I want to use if possible to save on costs. The current plan and setup is:
i7-4770k, 512GB SSD(os/software), 32gb ram, gtx 1050ti, 14tb hdd for recordings, and possibly coral usb if needed.
I plan on installing Linux mint xfce with docker installed on bare metal for Frigate. I also plan on using home assistant for alerts and tailscale to access the cameras remotely.
The current camera plan is 4 × Reolink Duo 2 PoE($132/ea USD) 8 × Reolink RLC-810A PoE($83/ea USD). The Duo 2s will be on the sides of the building and the 810a’s will be on the corners.
I plan on running Cat 6 solid core and using TP-Link Omada SG2428P 28-Port Gigabit Smart Switch with 24-Port PoE.
I was wondering what you thought of this plan and setup. Any suggestions? Ideas to cut costs or things to upgrade that are worth the extra cost? Should I buy a reolink bundle/system with a nvr to save costs? Am I missing anything else? Thanks for any advise in advanced.
No going to happen. A lighting strike hits near buy or a camera leaks and water gets inside and go you go replace the camera and discover nobody makes a replacement camera that works with your 10 year old system. Then you are paying major bucks for a vintage camera from a collector that will work with your old system.
As I am not even going to go into trying to make a modern computer system last that long, running 24/7
I have a Linksys WVC80N from around 2015 still in my system. 11 years old now. It’s a bit of a pain to support as it only can use MJPEG. The image quality is so poor compared to modern cameras that I just keep it around to see how long it will last. I have other cameras covering the same area.
Out of my 32 cameras on my home CCTV system, they tend to get replaced around every 5 years. The image sensor degrades, water seals leak, they just crash in the middle of the night, they no longer support modern web browsers so I have to keep a copy of Win7 around to configure them. And the image quality just keeps getting better.
Look into Frigate NVR, you’ll have to do maintenance on it from time to time but it ties into home assistant nicely and I use it over tailscale all the time.
I’m running 7 5mp cameras with an older server setup and it handles it ok, does draw a lot of power though.
Frigate lets you pick and choose many different camera brand. So you are not locked into one system. But Frigate, as with any computer system, is not a set and forget. You will be wanting to upgrade it and keep it current. Same if you want notifications so integrate it with HA.
I used to shuffle the cameras around. A new camera would go into the critical spot, and the old camera would get migrated down to a less critical location, but when the good cameras cost $100, it’s not really worth the effort.
Also another tip, you will NEVER say that you had too many cameras looking at one critical location. Same thing that you will never say the night vision was too good. When something happens, you will wish you had a different angle, or the lighting was better. Pull extra cable and cover any critical areas with several different views. IR lights help a bunch.
Ya, I just choose mine based on specs and price. I am hoping I do not have to upgrade for a bit though. I would prefer not to have to keep purchasing things every so often. The main objective was to have everything locally and no subscriptions and keep costs down etc.
Thank you for the information. Having multiple cameras looking at important spots is a good idea.
My guess is you plan to use the 1050ti for it’s hardware encoding/decoding capability as you got 12 camera streams to process.
If so, did you check what output codec the Reolink cameras use and which your hardware supports?
The 4770k igpu and gtx1050ti both only support up to h264 hardware acceleration.
And I’m pretty certain both cameras you mention only output the main stream in h265 codec.
Like this post: Here
Reolink dropped support for h264 on the main streams a while ago, the sub-steam still output h264 I believe.
Also a 4770k is not fast enough (by a wide margin) for software transcoding so many h265 streams I can tell you from experience.
Frigate does not need to transcode if the incoming and outgoing format is the same. All my cameras (AmCrest) support H264 (with the exception of the old Linksys) on both streams, and all playback devices support H264, so it’s good. I do have QuickSync setup on the CPU, so it can transcode if needed. (I had some old PTZ Frosscam units, but they only supported an old H263 and became a pain to support, so I retired them in favor of the “just works” AmCrest units.)
At may parents, I put in an RX580 just to handle transcoding for some old cameras on their Frigate server.
You may have to switch to SSD for storage. I found spinning drives to be too slow to support a bunch of cameras.
I combine Frigate with a Coral to cut down to storing only the interesting stuff and making Frigate so much more useful. I keep 2 weeks of just general movement, then 60 days of object detentions. I use a used 1TB enterprise drive just for CCTV storage and it runs about 50% on average. More when it rains or lots of motion.
Most of my cameras are set to 720p at 5fps for the main steam, with the ones that are more critical at the front gate being 1080p. With modern cameras, there is little difference visually between 720p and 1080p.
Beware of cameras with wide angle views. They are awesome when you can get the camera right up near the thing you want to record. If the need is to record something happening in the distance, then smaller objects are harder to detect, especially with lots of movement around them.
Camera is an AmCrest IP8M-2796EW-AI. The image above is the point Frigate detected a car. Humans are detected around the point of that no trespassing sign. It’s a good example of how large you want items in your camera view.
This is really a horrible camera view and I should use a camera with a tighter view (more zoomed in). But this road ends here, so the only thing the car can do is back up. And if the car keeps going past this camera, there is 2 other cameras next to the road that get a real close view of any cars/people/animals.
I am looking into cameras. I do not think my plan is good. I will attached the layout of the home. I am looking for suggestions on how many cameras and what type of cameras to get. POE is the only thing that is required. There also will be eight flood lights on the corners.
I know going with reolink or similar would be easier so I can just plug and play but if they change their policy in the future to subscription or stop all together I do not want to run into a situation like that or anything similar. I would rather take the time to self host and that way everything stays local as well.
I rather take the time now to do it right. I do not want to lose access or have to pay in the future for convenience now. I do not mind taking the time and spending the money to self host. I’d rather keep it local and have control instead of relying on someone else.
I am open minded and open to suggestions. I assume that reolink or similar was going to be the suggestion.
I think Reolink is still a good option in this, as the most features they offer align with your wishes to keep everything local.
And are know to support implementations outside their own ecosystem. (not always a give unfortunately)
Also I think Ubiquiti and Foscam fit a similar profile as Reolink and are good options.
I also think TP-link, Hikvision and Dahua are worth the effort to evaluate if they fit your requirements.
