Small website project, advice needed

I’m not usually the type of person to just come out and ask for help starting a project like this. I usually sit down and do research and stumble through it until something comes out that sort of works. But this time it’s a bit different.

I have basically zero experience building a website from scratch, and hosting it locally. I’ve set up a builtin board and mumble server on a VPS, but that’s about it.

My idea, in a nutshell, is to make a website that displays a webcam stream. The idea is my dad wants to put a camera at his lake house, and he wants to be able to view it from his main home. So my brain immediately jumped to a website you can go to and see the lake.

I have a Raspberry Pi 3. I may have either an IP camera or a USB webcam. The lake house has fiber (10 down 1 up). The website, at least in its first form, doesn’t have to be anything special or fancy. I’d just like to get essentially a proof of concept going. Maybe down the road I’d like to make it more secure with a log in system or something.

So, I was hoping for some pointers on where to start. I’m not sure how to display a video feed. I’m just not sure where to start.

It might be easier just to run something like zoneminder (https://zoneminder.com/)

Hi mate,

I have a much easier solution, it’s what I’ve done at home. Grab yourself an Ubiquity G3 bullet cam - it has a 1080p feed and the main cost would be that.

You then need to get it plugged into a router; it comes with a PoE injector in the box, so you’re set there.

Next, see if you have an old PC or even say a NUC. This will run

  • Unifi Video software - it’s a simple install and the Java build runs as a service.
  • I’d recommend setting up an OpenVPN (server) on the same box.

All you need to do now is configure the router, forward basic ports (for OpenVPN) and you can VPN securely into your box.

I’m doing the same thing at home, although with a few more bells n’ whistles attached (Docker containers, VMs) etc, but in a nut-shell that’s what I’m doing.

Raspberry Pi -meh, sure, but the great thing about the Unifi Video package is that they also maintain native mobile apps. It’s just one aspect of development/polish I wouldn’t be able to achieve on my own (with a budget of $0 on the dev side, be it money or my time).

I demo this setup at 4:20 in the video below -

Two routers that run ddwrt, setup your own VPN tunnel. An IP cam will have its own web interface.

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That too ^^

I think I may be leaning towards zoneminder. I’ll have to do some testing this weekend to see if the rpi can handle it. I put fedora on it and it was really struggling. I may have a couple old (read: crappy) IP cameras to try with it.

FYI this is exactly how I setup the OpenVPN server on my end - used the same script that Tom demos in the video.

The VPN solution may work out. I’ll have to look at it closer and see what I can do.

My dad gave me two IP cameras he wants to use. Both are Longse brand. I figured out the default IP address, but when I go to it all it does is auto download an installer. I can’t figure out if it has a web interface. I scanned it with nmap and found all the open ports. I may have to install the software on a Windows machine to see what it does. If I can change the camera settings using that or not. They are both 960p, and one is outdoor rated, so they aren’t horrible.

A weekend or two ago my dad went to the lake house and brought a Windows 7 PC and a USB webcam with. We were able to set up remote desktop and I could view the webcam with VLC. But it was essentially a slideshow; the webcam feed changed every minute or two. No live video. Possibly because of the slow internet speed, maybe because of the RDP session.