Ask Slashdot: Budget-Friendly Webcam Without a Cloud Service? 118
simpz writes: Does anyone know of a fairly inexpensive webcam that doesn't depend on a cloud service? A few years ago, you could buy a cheap webcam (with the usual pan/tilt and IR) for about $50 that was fully manageable from a web browser. Nowadays the web interfaces are limited in functionality (or non-existent), or you need a phone app that doesn't work well (maybe only working through a cloud service). I've even seen a few cheap ones that still need ActiveX to view the video in a web browser, really people!
I'd like to avoid a cloud service for privacy and to allow this to operate on the LAN with no internet connection present. Even a webcam where you can disable the cloud connection outbound would be fine and allow you to use it fully locally. I guess the issue is this has become a niche thing that the ease of a cloud service connection probably wins for most people, and other considerations don't really matter to them.
I had a brief look at a Raspberry Pi solution, but didn't see anything like a small webcam form factor (with pan/tilt etc). Alternatively, are there any third-party firmwares for commercial webcams (sort of a OpenWRT-, DD-WRT-, or LineageOS-style project for webcams) that could provide direct local access only via a web browser (and things like RTSP)?
I'd like to avoid a cloud service for privacy and to allow this to operate on the LAN with no internet connection present. Even a webcam where you can disable the cloud connection outbound would be fine and allow you to use it fully locally. I guess the issue is this has become a niche thing that the ease of a cloud service connection probably wins for most people, and other considerations don't really matter to them.
I had a brief look at a Raspberry Pi solution, but didn't see anything like a small webcam form factor (with pan/tilt etc). Alternatively, are there any third-party firmwares for commercial webcams (sort of a OpenWRT-, DD-WRT-, or LineageOS-style project for webcams) that could provide direct local access only via a web browser (and things like RTSP)?
Finally! (Score:4, Informative)
An "Ask Slashdot" that I find meaningful. I look forward to answers, because I find this problem too. Damn near every cheap webcam needs to connect to servers in China for absolutely no reason other than surveillance by nation states.
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I do a search for this every six months or so. There really is no perfect camera for this anymore. That said, I am currently using a Reo Link C1/C2 Pro. You do not need a cloud service for it, and it does A LOT without one. I also sometimes use a Wyze Cam. Not sure where their servers are, but you do not pay a monthly fee, and the update has added rtsp abilities. And that cam is very cheap.
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Yeah, count me in on this question as well. I also have a need for this.
Great question.
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Wait, so you want a webcam that ... doesn't use the web? Just maybe there's a different word for a device like that.
Ubiquiti (Score:5, Informative)
Ubiquiti (Check spelling) make great cameras. You don't have to use their proprietary protocol and app: you can manage everything through your browser and put them in manual mode which publishes an RTSP stream. They have IR and I'm pretty sure they make ones with pan/tilt.
Ubiquiti is one of the last great networking hardware companies.
Re: Ubiquiti (Score:2)
Probably a good choice. It seems like Axis also still is an option on web cameras.
Re: Ubiquiti (Score:2, Informative)
Amcrest makes 1080p, 2k, and 4K cameras with pan and tilt and IRand RTSP and all those bells and whistles. It does not phone home (according to my 3yr old logs) and allows streaming from any platform. Am I the only one who finds their cameras actually useful that I put three of them in my car for security and dashcam purposes (powered by an rpi that auto uploads to my smb server upon WiFi)
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also, ubiquiti makes a router you can re-flash to Linux which uses a big endian MIPS CPU. It is so goddamn hard to find a big-endian POSIX system these days for portability testing.
pretty much the only other choice is an IBM Power Systems server where you're looking at around $10,000 (can't get AIX for the Raptor workstations ... which are still thousands ... Power Linux is now goddamn little endian). fuckin' ridiculous
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Foscam and Raspberry PIs (Score:5, Informative)
Foscam's - Cloud is optional service and can be disabled on this camera.
https://www.amazon.com/Foscam-... [amazon.com]
You can detect motion and send images/alerts to local SD Card, an FTP server, or email.
You can also VPN into your home network and use the FOSCAM iPhone/iPad/Android app for realtime viewing.
Alternately, you could build a PI Webcam server
https://www.instructables.com/... [instructables.com]
Used XiCams? (Score:1)
What happened to all those cameras US gov't agencies had to remove from their buildings because they were suspected of having spying firmware?
Did they shred them, or did they go back on the discount market?
Mr. Xi doesn't care how many cats poo in your yard; his spies won't bother a lone house.
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Sorry, I'm not following.
What am I missing? (Score:2, Informative)
Logitech's C270 HD webcam is plug-and-play. No cloud service. It works out of the box. Price shows as $40.
For $50 you can go with the C310 version.
Is this really a question, or a very bad attempt at being stupid?
Re:What am I missing? (Score:5, Insightful)
OP isn't asking for a "webcam", OP is asking for a "security camera". OP wants a networked camera (with Pan-Tilt-Zoom, apparently) that doesn't require using a cloud service to configure and run it.
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The questioner shouldn't use webcam in the title and webcam five times in the question. Pan-tilt-zoom excepted, what he wants could be done with a standard webcam and software rather than a dedicated network camera.
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You want an ONVIF camera (Score:5, Informative)
What you want is called an ONVIF [onvif.org] camera.
Then you'll need something that can manage ONVIF cameras (ZoneMinder is what I use, but there are others) like Foscam's (They still offer a cloud-based solution, but it's not required). Most of the cheap Chinese cameras I've seen do ONVIF to some extent. You can block internet access to the cameras (I use static DHCP reservations and that whole range is blocked at the firewall) but the NVR (Network Video Recorder) can still talk to them and record, do motion capture, etc. If you have an NVR you trust, you can possibly even open up Internet access to that (Using appropriate security of course) and still have remote access.
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I share the recommendation for Zoneminder. It's open source and absolutely free. You can get download a Fedora version for a Raspberry Pi 3. It supports a list of ONVIF cameras as long as your arm. Local storage is supported, and it supports viewing the images on your phone.
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In Zoneminder it helps to do the motion detection analysis on the low def stream from the camera.
You do no analysis on the high def stream, you just use the 'Linked Camera' option to trigger recording from the low def stream.
Works great, I cut down CPU enough to add more high def cameras once I found out this use of the 'Linked Camera' option.
==
And wow, AC whines about the look of FREE software that AC can modify to look any way they want, just wow. I used to work near the the terminally inept like that..
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You don't need high res or color to "catch a criminal". A quality 720 or 480p b&w is generally more than enough and what the industry uses. You should also select MJPG streams for analysis and save as such. We used to run 16 cameras on a quad core 10 years ago (a Core2Quad)
Synology Surveillance Station (Score:5, Informative)
The reason you can't find many cameras with built-in web interfaces is that the intelligence is now being centralised. Cameras are now dumb sensors connected to Ethernet and all the storage and management is done by a central device.
Get something like a cheap Synology NAS and install Surveillance Station.
https://www.synology.com/en-au... [synology.com]
Then take your pick from any one of over 6000 IP cameras on the market today.
https://www.synology.com/en-au... [synology.com]
Centralise the recording and management interface in the NAS and just use the cameras as remote sensors. Synology make it easy to access your NAS remotely, and you don't need to use any of their cloud services.
A lot of Synology devices come with (from memory) two camera licences and adding more is pretty inexpensive.
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This is really great software on a nice piece of hardware.
I recommend buying the models with Intel processors because you will find yourself limited with the compute power and low memory in the ARM processor models.
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best not cheapest (Score:3)
if your actually monitoring something worthwhile and need legal then axis :
https://www.axis.com/
if you monitoring outside/inside a house and want alerts without a "cloud" :
https://www.netatmo.com/en-us/security/cam-outdoor
https://www.netatmo.com/en-us/security/cam-indoor
(they work with homekit for apple people)
or you can buy cheap swan/IP cameras with bad glass and swear about the NTP client giving your IP address to the PLA
May not be what you're looking for... (Score:1)
This may not be what you're looking for, but I've used this camera [amazon.com] for surveillance. It's a USB camera that works in Linux with some simple setup work. It works well and has IR functionality for low light conditions. It doesn't come with any software, let alone being associated with any cloud-based service, so you'll need to take care of the streaming yourself. If you look at the related items, there are a number of other options for similar cameras, which might have the functionality you're looking for
Surveillance cams are not webcams (Score:4, Informative)
Many commenters seem to be confusing the two.
A webcam typically hangs off of the top edge of your monitor and plugs into the PC with a USB cable. Webcams are typically for indoor use only and used for carrying on a conversation with another webcam user. They also typically only operate when someone is actively using them. Someone mentioned Logitech -- probably the best value for the money in terms of webcam image and sound quality. No special driver / software installation or cloud use is required.
Surveillance cams are typically used for one-way recording, not to carry on a conversation with who is being surveilled (though some can do that via a built-in mic and speakers). They can be mounted indoors and outdoors depending on the model, and are made to operate 24 hours / day, recording either all the time or when they sense motion or a change to the scene. Surveillance cams require storage to record what they see -- either internally to an SD card, or across the network to a server. So recording "to the cloud" is an option which eliminates one from having to buy and set up a server for this purpose.
For surveillance cams -- check out OEM'd English-version, upgradeable versions of Hikvision's cams. Yeah, I know all about the Chinese spyware stuff, but you don't have to use their cloud service, and you can block all of their other privacy-invading stuff by not letting them access the internet at the firewall. Instead, connect to them by running an instance of Blue Iris [blueirissoftware.com] which, for about $70 USD (cheaper if you shop around), works with up to 64 cams simultaneously and lets you perform unlimited recording to your own server. Check it out.
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Webcam or ip camera? (Score:2)
Unifi (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to record video, Unifi has a great surveillance line:
https://store.ui.com/collectio... [ui.com]
They are a little out of your price range with the low-end camera costing $79 (at bit less online), but they are very high quality and the $149 G3 cameras have been fantastic, I've been running them for almost 3 years without a problem.
No pan/tilt though. But the cameras are cheap enough that I just ran 3 cameras for full coverage of my front yard/driveway.
Unifi offers their DVR software for free (you supply the server... or you can buy a DVR from them), and I've been happy with the software, you can set up motion zones and alerting as well as flexible retention/quality settings per camera.
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Remember the Quickcam? Hooked up via a parallel port. A bit of Linux bash scripting and you had an image refresh every X minutes to a webserver.
Check it out... The Linux Quickcam Page:
https://everythinglinux.org/qu... [everythinglinux.org]
Man I remember that. I also had some quirky Mac webcam ~'99 that I'm pretty sure plugged into a GeoPort that did something similar. Every 10 seconds it would make a new, updated badly-dithered GIF(!) available via local HTTP. Fun times.
Plenty of cameras (Score:2)
Most of them are copies of the Foscam and another handful of systems. Axis systems are great too. I've also had good luck with Netgear. Look at the Zoneminder forums for compatibility, if it's on there it's probably possible to set it up without an app.
PiKrellCam /w Raspberry Pi (Score:1)
Nothing, and I mean Nothing, beats Pikrellcam on the Raspberry Pi.
It supports ptz with servos, motion tracking, multiple detection zones, programmable thresholds per zone, audio, video, rtsp, mjpeg, can stream to a remote server, etc.
It's 100% web based, and you can set it up on your private lan and have full control.
It does however, need the raspberry pi camera, but you do get real 1080P,30fps video, and you can even have 3-4 seconds of video "pre trigger" that most commercial solutions seem to cut out.
Ser
Here's what I use ... (Score:2)
iCam [skjm.com].
I bought four (4) iPhone 5c from Amazon ($55 ea.) and loaded iCamSource on them. They take photos, one after the other. On playback they make a movie.
I also have three (3) C310 tethered cams on two desktops and a laptop and use iCam.
On my iPhone and Android tablets, I use iCam to view. I can check on the house from anywhere.
My wife and I have iCamSource loaded on our iPhones and can turn those on at any time, as well.
Unifi Video and Grandstream (Score:2)
Ubiquity has been mentioned already; I've had good experience with the cameras as well as the management software. You don't need their appliance, you can run the recorder on a Debian-based Linux install easily, and the software is free of charge. However, the cameras only work with their software and vice versa.
I've also had good experience with Grandstream cameras, esp. the GVX3610v2 FHD [grandstream.com]. Very good image quality, OK web interface, and ONVIF compatible, so you can use ZoneMinder.
One concern with many of th
PINE64 wants to make one (Score:1)
Pine64 makes small ARM boards and you may know them for the Pinebook low end laptop, Pinebook Pro and yet to be released Pinephone.
They must have identified this concern and oppportunity about webcams!
so here it is
https://www.pine64.org/cube/
Being a FOSS device means that the CUBE remains under your, and only your, control at all times. This is a rather important factor for a device that has a camera and a microphone installed, wouldn’t you say?
Again, Ubiquity was mentioned, that's interesting since a networking company that makes routers has incentives to make your data secure and/or safe.
Perhaps the NAS companies can help for a similar reason (in the same way a NAS whose job is to store your data and serve i
Build Your Own Software (Score:2)
Hacked Xiaomi Dafang (Score:2)
The $30 Xiaomi Dafang is initially limited to their app/cloud, but there's custom firmware that lets you do a lot more. I looked into it a while back, but never got around to actually trying it out personally. https://hackernoon.com/hacking-a-25-iot-camera-to-do-more-than-its-worth-41a8d4dc805c [hackernoon.com] -> https://github.com/EliasKotlyar/Xiaomi-Dafang-Hacks [github.com]
This is the hardware used for Wyze. https://www.wyze.com/ [wyze.com]
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oh for fucks sake (Score:1)
go to the store, done
Reolink has some great modern cams (Score:1)
I have struggled with this same issue, and landed on Reolink.
You can block them at the firewall for telemetry to Reolink, and simply connect to them directly. They store clips on SD cards, offer modern image quality and features, and appear to be committed to a non-cloud option moving forward.
Most of them can be accessed through a browser (check their site for which models) but you can connect directly using their client apps as well.
Amcrest 841 (Score:2)
1) The Amcrest 841, while not without flaws, has a built-in web interface. I'm not 100% sure but I don't think it requires any plugin like ActiveX.
2) Reolink also offers some models that aren't cloud-based.
3) I think any camera that has RTSP built in should work without a cloud connection.
4) Wyze makes some cameras that can use a cloud connection or operate directly over RTSP. The V2 model has a third-party project on GitHub that allows you to wipe the stock firmware and run it with a custom setup: https:// [github.com]
My response (Score:1)
I want to use my old Android phone camera (Score:3)
to monitor my 3D printer. I'd like an android app that simply takes a picture every minute or so and saves it in google drive. It seems like it ought to be a simple thing but I haven't found any apps that allow that sort of functionality and I'm not capable of writing it myself (maybe time to learn App Inventor). Anyone know anything that might work? It's hard to believe it doesn't already exist...
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Thanks!
VStarcams are probably the best budget PTZ (Score:1)
Change network settings to help with security... (Score:1)
ESP32 Cam (Score:2)
If you're fairly tech savvy, Google ESP32-cam. It's a tiny programmable wifi board with a camera for under $5 (depending on where you buy it). Bad thing about it is you need a usb to serial adapter, some jumper wires, and a bit of fiddling to figure out how to load a program on it. Then a bit of twiddling to power it in the place you want it. Fortunatley there are lots of tutorials on the web and Youtube to make it fairly painless.
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I've never heard of that brand. Sounds German.
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I love cloud cameras. They're so easy to set up, you can add thousands of users with literally no action required on your part!
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Double dumbass on you!