I'm all about DIY and working on a DIY IP cam for home myself (just got the PoE switch in), but for your application a Piper sounds like the sweet spot- nigh vision, Zwave controller. You could have a door sensor setup to message to your phone and also start recording and from my googling Piper hasn't been hacked- yet. They also starting working with IFTT so you can have various recipes. I have it right now, bought it when it looked like a really cool kick start and have been pretty happy with it since, but its more tuned for an appartment / room vs. a home, hence I'm wanting to expand with a zoneminder build.
Not interested in that feature. I like to have large corps knowing as little about me as possible (looking at you Google and MicroCock).
I know that, however, I'd want there to be a second backup of the camera data (RBPi or home Server method) incase that camera is found and tinkering with.
I got a couple old ANdroid phones laying out. I'll check those apps out. Thanks! :D
I called the College and nearby potential residences, and both are fine with me recording my own room for security purposes.
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Way out of my price range :p
"yet", however, probably does have lots of backdoors which are known about and are kept on the down-low (but I guess that can be said about everything now-a-days if it's connected to a WAN).
Can you elaborate on this? What do you mean by it?
Does it have the features that I want (motion detected recording, auto-backup/stream data to FTP/SFTP/LAN device)?
I'm not sure how google or m$ are in question...
The camera generates the email, It just needs an smtp relay of your choice to bounce off.
But if that's really your concern then you should look at having the rpi run the camera. OSS is the only way you will know whats going on behind the curtain. You can get sensors at a reasonable cost and its basically plug and play.
Yeah the key word "yet", but for track record its good, and a DIY setup very likely could be less secure, especially a DIY setup trying to do what the piper does, which is services like texting your phone and/or pushing a notification to the app on your phone, relaying from the app zwave home automation such as turning on lights.
Meaning its a single all-in-one-unit vs buying something like those IP camera kits that come with 6+ cameras and a box that acts as the switch, DVR and internet connection. Just a power cord to the unit and its your motion sensor, fish lens camera, temp sensor, light sensor, zwave controller, alarm buzzer and you can use the app to talk through your phone to output that from the Piper. And going back to mention of security, I sure don't trust the many many cheap IP camera/DVR kits out there. Piper at least commits to encryption and updates and has US based support to address issues (or is it Canada, same difference).
Not the FTP/SFTP/LAN part- it uses the companies servers for services (AWS actually for at least some of it) it was a kickstart that got bought out, but still one of the only 'security camera' services that doesn't charge monthly- it is always loading video to their server and if it gets triggered, indexes the stream to be 'recorded', you can download those recorders locally if you want to keep them. Google it and check it out. But if its out of your price range, probably a waste of time.
If I were to do it all over again, I'd like to try out a home monitor build on a VM with USB passthrough for the zwave usb stick, and zoneminder with PoE IP Cameras for outside (or maybe try to keep everything within home monitor), and access home monitor via VPN or just risk it and try to forward services. In the end I doubt it would be as reliable and secure as the Piper has been, but I'd like the DIY and customization part of it, and also the security learning part of it- I splunk my home router for fun, and the second I open up a server ("hardened" at that) to the big bad internet, the logs get very entertaining, and I even had to shut down a pi3 when it became obvious the litter bugger joined a botnet- was a WordPress issue--- note, making something face the internet (gateway, port forward) to offer a service, its "door" will be knocked on, A LOT, don't just setup your camera system and leave it, at the very least check your logs manually and get tools to monitor things the OS does not/cannot.
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I currently use Google and MicroCock as my email service providers. Don't host my own yet, sadly, but i'd love to set one up one day, if it's easy.