Whenever I look into IP cameras I close the tabs because it feels like I walked into a store brand cereal aisle where all the boxes are exclaiming “Now with fewer razor blades!” or “Only half the reported cases of salmonella than similar store brands!”
What’s a good brand for IP cameras? What’s the best, in terms of open source support and reliability?
I need a mix of PoE indoor and outdoor cameras. 15 outdoor/10 indoor. Cost isn't a factor, I need something reliable.
I have 5 outdoor and 6 indoor cameras. They all support PoE power; for some of the internal ones I'm using PoE, others I got an injector & wifi dongle.
They'll talk to basically anything, the outdoor ones have handled several years of every possible kind of weather. I had one camera that died a week after it arrived; the RMA process w/ Axis was smooth and easy.
Their support windows are what you'd expect from a company whose primary customer base is commercial rather than consumer: IIRC they emailed me a year or two ago to warn me that they'll no longer be shipping software updates for my outdoor cams starting in 2030.
Also very interested in PoE cameras with open source firmware. Most of these seem to be wifi + power cable; I figure if I'm running a cable anyway it might as well be a data cable. Maybe wifi is easier to set up a couple devices, but once you get to 5+ cameras PoE is worth.
There's no reason to re-invent the wheel - ipcamtalk has a comprehensive set of explanatory posts. Don't buy Reolink, avoid Amcrest - Loryta (rebranded Dahua) and Hikvision are the strongest, but there are other strong options, especially on the refurbished commercial camera front.
Don't consider at all: All non-OEM Chinese stuff (1 trillion brands, way too many to list, including the usual consumer garbage that you might find in a store like Reolink etc.)
Consider if cost turns out to be a factor: The two major Chinese OEMs, Hikvision and Dahua.
Note: All Chinese OEMs are obviously implicated in the Chinese surveillance state. Obviously. A lot of "major" brands are OEMed by these two, even ones you might not expect. For example, much of Panasonic stuff is rebadged Dahua. Basically 90% of any CCTV camera Made in China comes from either Dahua or Hik, the lesser brands just mostly get (or rather, choose) the bargain-bin hardware with monkey-model firmware and of course no FW updates ever.
If cost really isn't a factor: Bosch, Axis, Dallmeier, Mobotix
Note: Most of these you cannot buy directly, and the vendor won't talk to you.
> What’s the best, in terms of open source support and reliability?
These are found at completely opposite ends of the spectrum. All good CCTVs cameras use signed and more-or-less well encrypted firmware, even cross-flashing isn't much of a thing.
Some Reolink PoE cameras are OK, though a lot of people don't like them. Otherwise I would be looking for Axis (probably one of the best choices) or Dahua gear. Depending on how crazy you want to get, there are some vendors that make really excellent cameras like Costar/CohuHD, but be prepared to probably pay big dollars (and a lot of their stuff like my PTZ are huge cameras).
I have used MindVision gigabit cameras, I believe they have some POE models (but they are mostly indoor-industrial-machine-vision. They do have a Linux SDK (basically a .so and a Python wrapper for the .so).
I'm going to look at all the links in the comments in this post to see if I can find things which are: better documented, more affordable, and easier to integrate.
Haven’t seen it yet so I’ll mention Hanwha, they were part of Samsung before the unit was spun out. They are probably the best competition to Axis and sit differently in the geopolitics, coming from Korea
Despite the name, openipc isn't fully open - the main recorder/encoder app (majestic) is closed source. Many openipc developers have moved to an alternative project named "thingino" which has a fully open source recorder/encoder/streamer.
Nice, it actually supports several popular Amazon US "no-name" brands, including Imou and Wansview! (Plus, several mainstream Eufy, TP-Link and Wyze cameras are supported by thingino as well.) Seems to be more user-friendly than OpenIPC, too.
I love how the front page doesn't scream SOCs/SOMs to you and is just straight up here's the compatible cameras with pictures (with some SOM info below).
Sorry, you are slightly mistaken and mislead the colleagues present here.
The OpenIPC project is completely open wherever possible, but it allows the use of various streamers Divinus/Majestic/Mini/Venc/other and various binary drivers and libraries if the chip manufacturer does not provide open source code.
The Divinus streamer is a great alternative to Majestic and it is open and also part of the OpenIPC ecosystem - https://github.com/openipc/divinus
I guess encoder app is separate from encoder proper, because I have to assume the bulk of the encoder is done in hardware. I mean, those things can do realtime h265 in 4k without a beefy CPU or getting hot.
I looked at the list on https://thingino.com/ , and one of the cheapest cameras supported by thingino is Wansview Q5.
I'm NOT exactly sure on the exact version, because 2 different versions exist on Amazon, 3MP/2019 and 5MP/2024, in 2 colors each, but the older 3MP version is available for under $20.00 USD with FBA:
A number of years back I got bored during covid and decided to reverse engineer as much of the Wyze Cam V2 camera I could and make some custom firmware for it. Right now that lives at https://github.com/openmiko/openmiko
That said it's really hard to make long term supportable open source camera software/firmware. And when picking cameras it is even harder because the market as it stands now does not let you have it all. You need to pick what facets you really care about.
Also keep in mind even the above code is not really opensource all the way: I still had to load the driver binaries. Not sure that source will ever be released. The kernel is also old as heck.
What I do feel good about though is saving these old cameras from the dumpster if Wyze ever stops supporting them. The firmware works for simple cases: just load it up and you can start curl'ing frames. I used it in scripts to put together timelapse videos with ffmpeg. No need to screw around with authentication, phones apps, email, etc.
I would love to find a "zero to hello world, from scratch" type tutorial for putting custom firmware on a camera not supported by one of the existing projects (or a similar writeup detailing how one of these projects got started in the first place).
Hey, Openmiko is a nice project. With your baggage of knowledge, I would love to see you contributing to Thingino as well. While we still depend on binary blobs from the manufacturer SDK, there is a work on alternatives to replace what is replaceable with open stack. Join the team, have fun.
I actually tried this before and it led nowhere. The list of supported hardware is specifically referring to the SoC, not a brand or anything. It can be very hard determining which physical cameras have which chips. On top of that, despite the name, most of the supported devices seem to be for webcams, and not chips used in modern off-the-shelf IP cameras. I really wish there was a ground up guide that used an obtainable, normal camera.
looking at the russian sponsors linked on the russian site I suppose this is mostly for the people putting these things on drones or in trenches... I suppose they obtain their cameras somewhere...
This seems nice. But if I am looking correctly, it does not support the devices from the mainstream brands like Hikvision.
I am unaware of how good those typical $20 cameras are. Maybe they are decent. But for instance some of the Hikvision ones with 8MP sensors support 4K@25 fps.
I think that it would be great if there would be an open source firmware for higher-end cameras like those.
I have two Tapo units at home, they seem to be working fine without an internet connection.
I created a new subnet and an associated WiFi SSID for it, connected the Tapo cameras, and set them up to act as RTSP cams. I then firewalled the subnet off from anything other than my Frigate NVR server and gateway. They still work fine, they are streaming video to Frigate without complaint. Maybe because they have DNS from my gateway still? (I should probably block that off, it's a common data exfil vector).
Very annoying that internet connectivity is required for initial setup, I'll agree there. They could have just had a bare bones web interface.
It's hard to say for sure if this firmware will work on a specific Tapo camera, but the Tapo TC60 uses the Ingenic T31 SOC, which is supported. If there's a strong chance that their cameras use any of the Ingenic SOCs on this list, it would be worthwhile trying.
Yup, requiring permanent internet connection is such BS.
I had one of these "no-brand" cameras that had an integrated MicroSD card, which would make you think that it'd work just fine even without the internet.
We had no power in Austin for several days, but I kept my camera on a portable battery, because, why not?
After the power and the internet were restored and I checked the app, turns out, nothing was recorded! Even though it was online the whole time.
The licensing on this project is wonky. They have an MIT license, but then they say you can't use the software for commercial purposes without contacting them. That's in contradiction to an MIT license. An MIT license is basically "use it for anything". If you don't want that, then use some kind of "copyleft" license for non-commercial users, and specify separate commercial terms for users who want to keep closed source with their modifications.
Are you a representative of a camera installation company or do you sell services? Please do not distort the information that is written on the site. And it says there that the project ASKS everyone who uses the firmware for commercial purposes to contact. You are simply confusing MIT with real life realities.
I've looked into it a few years ago when I was shopping and setting up my security cams. Super cool!
But, unfortunately, I wasn't able to translate any supported devices into an Amazon ASIN in the US.
Normally, many services on the internet only work in America. With OSS security cams, it seems to be the exact opposite. Eastern Europe and China are way ahead here.
I recently got a FOSCAM 3k wifi camera. It supports the RTSP stream standard and CGIProxy commands over http. After the initial setup (mostly just providing it with your network details), you never need to use the official app or cloud anything and it can be restricted to only your LAN with router firewall rules. This is, at least for me, a "good enough" solution that is not dependent on any cloud infrastructure and can be integrated, completely locally, with whatever services you want.
Somewhat related… I have an old dead Wi-Fi camera, it was always buggy but was useful when it worked initially.
With a spare raspberry pi kicking around, I’ve put together a better solution using Motion, a Webcam, iNotify and a Dropbox uploader script.
It works like a charm, after a powerloss etc the pi boots up, starts Motion and then starts watching for events, motion triggers and saves video clips to a folder, iNotify watches for new files saved and then uploads to Dropbox.
This may be a good place to introduce my HomeKit based Wyze v3 camera reflashing side project. If you're already in the apple ecosystem and want cheap, secure cameras, Wyrecam is an open source, vanilla HomeKit Secure Video (HKSV) firmware: https://github.com/radredgreen/wyrecam.
tangentially, does anyone know of any open-source and reliable implementations of the "AI" algorithms used in those expensive cameras? I'm looking to use features like face recognition, people counting, and similar capabilities, but with my own hardware and regular cameras. someone said to "avoid at all costs yolo" so i'm looking for alternatives
I'll admit I use reolink, however isolated on vlans with zero connectivity allowed other than caddy's L4 module encrypting and encapsulating it's stream which then is restricted to only my frigate setup.
Even if I had a higher level of trust on the hardware and firmware, principle of least privilege.
[+] [-] miiiiiike|7 months ago|reply
What’s a good brand for IP cameras? What’s the best, in terms of open source support and reliability?
I need a mix of PoE indoor and outdoor cameras. 15 outdoor/10 indoor. Cost isn't a factor, I need something reliable.
[+] [-] akerl_|7 months ago|reply
I have 5 outdoor and 6 indoor cameras. They all support PoE power; for some of the internal ones I'm using PoE, others I got an injector & wifi dongle.
They'll talk to basically anything, the outdoor ones have handled several years of every possible kind of weather. I had one camera that died a week after it arrived; the RMA process w/ Axis was smooth and easy.
Their support windows are what you'd expect from a company whose primary customer base is commercial rather than consumer: IIRC they emailed me a year or two ago to warn me that they'll no longer be shipping software updates for my outdoor cams starting in 2030.
[+] [-] fullstop|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] infogulch|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] some_random|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ejstronge|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] formerly_proven|7 months ago|reply
Don't consider at all: All non-OEM Chinese stuff (1 trillion brands, way too many to list, including the usual consumer garbage that you might find in a store like Reolink etc.)
Consider if cost turns out to be a factor: The two major Chinese OEMs, Hikvision and Dahua.
Note: All Chinese OEMs are obviously implicated in the Chinese surveillance state. Obviously. A lot of "major" brands are OEMed by these two, even ones you might not expect. For example, much of Panasonic stuff is rebadged Dahua. Basically 90% of any CCTV camera Made in China comes from either Dahua or Hik, the lesser brands just mostly get (or rather, choose) the bargain-bin hardware with monkey-model firmware and of course no FW updates ever.
If cost really isn't a factor: Bosch, Axis, Dallmeier, Mobotix
Note: Most of these you cannot buy directly, and the vendor won't talk to you.
> What’s the best, in terms of open source support and reliability?
These are found at completely opposite ends of the spectrum. All good CCTVs cameras use signed and more-or-less well encrypted firmware, even cross-flashing isn't much of a thing.
[+] [-] rpcope1|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] dekhn|7 months ago|reply
I'm going to look at all the links in the comments in this post to see if I can find things which are: better documented, more affordable, and easier to integrate.
[+] [-] unknown|7 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cameron_b|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] nokeya|7 months ago|reply
If Chinese brands don’t scare you: Hikvision is very good allarounder, Milesight, Uniview (UNV), Vivotek - good too
Dahua cheap but still usable
All other - don’t even bother
[+] [-] geophph|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] roacato|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] cnst|7 months ago|reply
> https://github.com/themactep/thingino-firmware
Nice, it actually supports several popular Amazon US "no-name" brands, including Imou and Wansview! (Plus, several mainstream Eufy, TP-Link and Wyze cameras are supported by thingino as well.) Seems to be more user-friendly than OpenIPC, too.
[+] [-] crazysim|7 months ago|reply
I love how the front page doesn't scream SOCs/SOMs to you and is just straight up here's the compatible cameras with pictures (with some SOM info below).
[+] [-] stragies|7 months ago|reply
Edit: But they have a list of product names, where they support installation of Thingino: https://github.com/themactep/thingino-firmware/blob/master/d...
[+] [-] ZigFisher|7 months ago|reply
The OpenIPC project is completely open wherever possible, but it allows the use of various streamers Divinus/Majestic/Mini/Venc/other and various binary drivers and libraries if the chip manufacturer does not provide open source code.
The Divinus streamer is a great alternative to Majestic and it is open and also part of the OpenIPC ecosystem - https://github.com/openipc/divinus
[+] [-] asveikau|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] cnst|7 months ago|reply
I'm NOT exactly sure on the exact version, because 2 different versions exist on Amazon, 3MP/2019 and 5MP/2024, in 2 colors each, but the older 3MP version is available for under $20.00 USD with FBA:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Wansview/page/1E1F86AB-C01A-45...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QKXM2D3 — $16.14 FBA for black 3MP Q5 Wansview
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QKWPT8J — $19.78 FBA for white 3MP Q5 Wansview
It's also been on sale at $9.99 on Woot a few months ago, but sold out.
https://electronics.woot.com/offers/wansview-2k-ip-security-...
EDIT: looks like the cheapest one in the US is actually Cinnado D1 2k, it's under $14.99 on Amazon.
https://github.com/wltechblog/thingino-installers/tree/main/...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CBBT5RMP — ≤$14.99 FBA for Cinnado D1
[+] [-] jtchang|7 months ago|reply
That said it's really hard to make long term supportable open source camera software/firmware. And when picking cameras it is even harder because the market as it stands now does not let you have it all. You need to pick what facets you really care about.
Also keep in mind even the above code is not really opensource all the way: I still had to load the driver binaries. Not sure that source will ever be released. The kernel is also old as heck.
What I do feel good about though is saving these old cameras from the dumpster if Wyze ever stops supporting them. The firmware works for simple cases: just load it up and you can start curl'ing frames. I used it in scripts to put together timelapse videos with ffmpeg. No need to screw around with authentication, phones apps, email, etc.
[+] [-] n8henrie|7 months ago|reply
Having read https://github.com/openmiko/openmiko/blob/master/doc/develop... -- is there anywhere that you document how you learned to do this / how you got started with this project?
I would love to find a "zero to hello world, from scratch" type tutorial for putting custom firmware on a camera not supported by one of the existing projects (or a similar writeup detailing how one of these projects got started in the first place).
[+] [-] themactep|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] KyleBerezin|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] wltechblog|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] fock|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] pbasista|7 months ago|reply
I am unaware of how good those typical $20 cameras are. Maybe they are decent. But for instance some of the Hikvision ones with 8MP sensors support 4K@25 fps.
I think that it would be great if there would be an open source firmware for higher-end cameras like those.
[+] [-] roscas|7 months ago|reply
Setup is made online. Then try to use that without a permanent internet connection... it turns itself off.
It needs a permament connection to tp-link. Now you imagine why.
[+] [-] Sanzig|7 months ago|reply
I created a new subnet and an associated WiFi SSID for it, connected the Tapo cameras, and set them up to act as RTSP cams. I then firewalled the subnet off from anything other than my Frigate NVR server and gateway. They still work fine, they are streaming video to Frigate without complaint. Maybe because they have DNS from my gateway still? (I should probably block that off, it's a common data exfil vector).
Very annoying that internet connectivity is required for initial setup, I'll agree there. They could have just had a bare bones web interface.
[+] [-] raffraffraff|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] cnst|7 months ago|reply
I had one of these "no-brand" cameras that had an integrated MicroSD card, which would make you think that it'd work just fine even without the internet.
We had no power in Austin for several days, but I kept my camera on a portable battery, because, why not?
After the power and the internet were restored and I checked the app, turns out, nothing was recorded! Even though it was online the whole time.
Such a major disappointment.
[+] [-] Klaster_1|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|7 months ago|reply
Show HN: WFB-ng – long range high speed link for drones and robotics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41293934 - Aug 2024 (3 comments)
Thingino: Camera firmware derived from OpenIPC focused on the Ingenic SoC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40261046 - May 2024 (2 comments)
OpenIPC is an alternative open firmware for your IP camera - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39571025 - March 2024 (70 comments)
OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37812217 - Oct 2023 (59 comments)
OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35975383 - May 2023 (1 comment)
[+] [-] happyPersonR|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] efrecon|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] cure|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] TheMagicHorsey|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ZigFisher|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ACCount36|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] infogulch|7 months ago|reply
[1]: https://shinobi.video/ [2]: https://frigate.video/ [3]: https://zoneminder.com/
[+] [-] cnst|7 months ago|reply
But, unfortunately, I wasn't able to translate any supported devices into an Amazon ASIN in the US.
Normally, many services on the internet only work in America. With OSS security cams, it seems to be the exact opposite. Eastern Europe and China are way ahead here.
[+] [-] MostlyStable|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] TheCondor|7 months ago|reply
It would be awesome if there was an openfirmware option for this hardware.
[+] [-] illwrks|7 months ago|reply
With a spare raspberry pi kicking around, I’ve put together a better solution using Motion, a Webcam, iNotify and a Dropbox uploader script. It works like a charm, after a powerloss etc the pi boots up, starts Motion and then starts watching for events, motion triggers and saves video clips to a folder, iNotify watches for new files saved and then uploads to Dropbox.
[+] [-] radredgreen2|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ck2|7 months ago|reply
https://team.openipc.org/ipcam_dms/
(note the english translated link)
[+] [-] boredemployee|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] codr7|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] asdefghyk|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] miladyincontrol|7 months ago|reply
Even if I had a higher level of trust on the hardware and firmware, principle of least privilege.