Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Hardware

Ask Slashdot: Is There a Battery-Powered Wi-Fi Security Camera That Supports FTP/SMB? 180

Posted by EditorDavid from the think-local-storage dept.
After their house was vandalized, long-time Slashdot reader lsllll needs some help finding a battery-powered, wifi-enabled camera that can dump motion-detected videos to a local server: There are some nice cameras out there that'll work for nearly 5 months off a rechargeable battery. You can even pair them with a solar panel which would keep them constantly topped off. But none of them offer anything other than local storage (free on SD card) or in the cloud (subscription).

Obviously, being a programmer and a sysadmin, I realize that the effort to dump a video to a cloud service and opening a connection to a local FTP/SMB server require the same bandwidth, battery usage. So this decision to not support local FTP/SMB servers must be intentional and the way everything is going nowadays: juice the customers for as much money as you can after they've purchased your product.

The question is, are the any cameras out there that run on rechargeable batteries, support WiFi, and dump videos to a local server?
Share your suggestions in the comments!
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Ask Slashdot: Is There a Battery-Powered Wi-Fi Security Camera That Supports FTP/SMB? More

Ask Slashdot: Is There a Battery-Powered Wi-Fi Security Camera That Supports FTP/SMB?

Comments Filter:

  • WyzeCam + Custom firmware (Score:5, Informative)

    by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @01:43PM (#60985996)

    There's custom firmware available for Wyze Cams and other XaoMi-based cams. Feel free to change it.

    https://github.com/EliasKotlya... [github.com]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )
      Thanks for the link. The reason why the camera would need to be battery operated and wireless is because it'll be mounted up high on a tree about 100 feet from my house. Looking through the supported cameras for the alternate firmware, I haven't found one that'll match what I need.

      • ...is because it'll be mounted up high on a tree about 100 feet from my house. Looking through the supported cameras for the alternate firmware, I haven't found one that'll match what I need.

        That's an awful lot of tree-climbing to change batteries; do you work on a banana plantation??

        Seriously, have you considered Power-over-Ethernet? Should be good for a 328' run without a repeater; run the wire up the tree and paint it if you need to (the wire, not the tree).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tragedy ( 27079 )

        This made me wonder if you could power the camera from the tree itself. Like a potato battery that would naturally replenish itself. Then I realized that the electrodes would probably poison the tree and kill it, so that was a no go. Did a web search on it though and there is a bunch of stuff out there on experiments with producing power from trees and plants. Doesn't look like there's anything really ready to use though.

        Logistically though, it seems like you're going to end up, one way or another, with a m

  • RTSP and Zoneminder (Score:5, Informative)

    by Cassini2 ( 956052 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @01:45PM (#60985998)

    Most of the security cameras support RTSP. Also, zoneminder sets up a security server and supports many protocols, including RTSP.

    P.S. Some cameras support RTSP but want you to use an internet based application for initial setup. This can often be bypassed. Either way, keep the security network isolated from the internet, and ideally from the home or office network also. Security products are known for the security holes.

    With Zoneminder, put the server on the internet, not the cameras.

    • Re:RTSP and Zoneminder (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dargaud ( 518470 ) <slashdot2@@@gdargaud...net> on Sunday January 24, 2021 @01:56PM (#60986044) Homepage

      Security products are known for the security holes.

      That is so ironic...

    • You can't really use that in a battery environment.

      You use up power to encode the RTSP stream. Then you use power to decode it.

      You really need to do all of the processing on-the camera and dump only pictures of interest to the server. Unfortunately, things here do not look rosy. The newest model A RasPi or something similar will use a few hundred milliwatt running motion and reading off a camera. You can get slightly better results if you couple this to a PiR sensor. In that case, you can probably idle

    • Re:RTSP and Zoneminder (Score:4, Informative)

      by n0ano ( 148272 ) <n0ano@arrl.net> on Sunday January 24, 2021 @02:16PM (#60986130) Homepage

      Unfortunately, my experience is that battery powered Wifi cameras do not support RTSP. I bought (and returned) 2 different models and neither one supported RTSP. Looking around, I didn't find any that advertised that support. I'm guessing that, since the battery powered cameras are so concerned about power usage they don't want to stream anything (the question of why they don't just pause the streaming and pick up again when motion is detected is left as an exercise for the reader).

      Ultimately, I had to punch a hole through the wall and use a Power over Ethernet camera (lots of those models available). Using rtsp-simple-server [github.com] to multiplex the camera stream (don't try and attach multiple RTSP clients to a camera, my experience is that the CPU in the camera can only support about 2 clients - if you're lucky) it's easy to set up your cameras on your local LAN and then use any RTSP client (like MPV) to view the streams. I even have a background process running FFMPEG to save a weeks worth of streams on my local file server.

    • You can even build your own;

      https://randomnerdtutorials.com/power-esp32-esp8266-solar-panels-battery-level-monitoring/

      While I didn't setup a solar solution. I do use these in places where no electrical power is available. you can even overkill with a 1500KVA APC UPS with a USB connector. No soldering required. You may have to cut some wires. Zoneminder is a godsend running on an Odroid H2 on the same UPS.

  • Use third party software. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Kernel Kurtz ( 182424 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @01:45PM (#60986000)

    I don't know about battery powered, but a great many IP (wired or wireless) cameras can interface with programs like iSpy, Blue Iris, Milestone etc to save video locally.

    Of course if your video is stored locally and you have a break in, your footage is vulnerable. I sync my video folder to my Google Drive using Backup and Sync. It is near real time so if someone breaks in and steals the PC running the cameras, the footage of them doing so is already in the cloud.

    OP may not want to pay for a cloud account, and many of the ones from Chinese camera vendors are sketchy in their own right, but don't discount the value of real time off site storage.

    • My old D-Link DCS933L is a bit junky but it does support automatically uploading videos over FTP, even to local servers. It's plug-in, but you could probably make it battery-powered. I think it only takes 5V, so a standard phone powerbank could potentially do it.

  • They all support local servers. (Score:3)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @01:48PM (#60986016)

    As long as they aren't particularly verifying any non-changeable server certificates, just fake the server with your own. I'm sure you're already running a home server with DNS, a name server, etc.
    I'm faking Google to my phone that way right now.

  • Raspberry Pi (Score:3, Informative)

    by SilverNerfer ( 2562803 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @01:48PM (#60986018)
    Raspberry Pi Zero W + Camera + MotioneyeOS https://www.arrow.com/en/resea... [arrow.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The problem is the battery part. There are efforts to produce a decent battery system for the Pi but nothing really good yet, especially if you want solar charging too.

    • I was also thinking Raspberry Pi with battery. Its surprising if there is no rechargeable battery pack that could be connected to an RPi. Other alternative is a long DC power cable to connect to RPis power pins.

  • Not out of the box. But, with basic Linux skills you can cobble together a Rasberry PI with WIFI , full Linux and iIts easy to use camera peripheral, and available battery packs for well under $100. All FOSS so feel free to bring your project to market when you have what you want.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by karvec ( 1235860 )
      MotionEyeOS for Raspberry Pi. Problem solved.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )
      The reason why it has to be battery-powered is because it'll be about 100 feet from my house, mounted up high on a tree. There's no way I'll be able to power a rig like that via a battery/solar panel which would hardly get any light during summer because of taller trees around it. The cameras out there that work on battery alone for 5 months would have sustained the spring/summer months with minimal charging via a solar panel, but alas they don't dump to a local server.

      • An even lower powered solution is an ESP32 + camera module. You have to program it yourself but you can do anythign you want with it, I had mine upload to AWS S3.

        But no matter what you do, WiFi is going to be the limiting factor for your battery life since it requires a relatively high amount of power to connect and upload the images. There's some optimization you can do on the low level to cut down on connection time for exampel but there's only so much that can be done.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • So next time the vandals can take the server too?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )
      Actually, it was outside that was vandalized, thus the need for wireless, battery-powered. If they break into the house, there are more valuable things to take than a 3U server that weighs 70 lbs.

      • My cameras use PoE because wifi devices tend to crap out after a while. The router can be fine for months and then one day need a reboot. I bought a 4k camera from Lorex that does color in low light levels. It does x265 encoding so the video files aren't too big. The files during the dead of night are like 60mb for an hour of video!

    • Vandals won't know to look for properly hidden small hardware like any of the many microPCs or a NUC. If you can't "disappear" one of those in any home you're not trying.

  • SMB??? (Score:3)

    by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @01:58PM (#60986054) Journal
    I don't think I've ever come across a camera that supports pushing footage to an SMB drive. It does seem that every device manufacturer wants to suck you into their cloud service... for the larger firms it's probably just a way to get our data. For the startups you'd expect they wouldn't want the bother of running a cloud service, but these days your best bet for being snapped up by Google / FB / Amazon is to bring lots of subscribers to the table.

    Anyway, maybe there are cameras that support RTSP or HLS, and can be set to stream only when motion is detected, to save the battery. You'll need a CCTV server that can deal with cameras which go up and down all the time, but those do exist.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SETY ( 46845 )

      Axis camera all do SMB for at least the last decade. $50 for used ones on eBay.

  • I assume this is a fixed installation.
    What you are asking for is like asking for a battery-powered ceiling lamp with wifi control, and then wondering why nobody does that.

    Get a cam supporting the ONVIF standard and PoE, and run an ethernet cable to your home server. Which can do the rest.

    If you really need to, you can let a RPi do the home server job, and install it next to the cam and a battery pack, and you got a fine solution. (If you think batteries and wifi are even remotely fine for a fixed installati

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )
      The summary cut off my submission, but they need to be battery powered and wireless due to distance from my house. If I could do any sort of wires or PoE there are a ton of solutions that'll suffice.

      • Your problem is that any WiFi camera will need a lot of battery power. You'll be out there every single day changing the batteries, there's no way in hell you'll be able to just put in a 9V battery every six months (or whatever).

        That's probably the reason you can't find one - no market for something so troublesome to use.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by lsllll ( 830002 )
          The cameras that are out there and are battery operated (lasting up to 5 months per charge) do just fine being on WiFi, because they don't keep most of their circuitry on except when the PIR has detected motion. So it is completely doable and not troublesome. They've just chosen to not offer an option to dump the videos to a local server instead of dumping the videos to the cloud.
      • I'd verify the wifi will go that far. I've got a number of things outside on AC juice that will periodically go off wifi under high humidity(fog), weird sun angles, etc. If the right bad combination happens, and it does a dozen or so times a year, then I lose contact with those devices temporarily. It is rare for me, but I'd test on a rainy day to make sure the assumption you can get wifi is a good one. My house is stucco, so the wire meshing in the stucco may make my case worse than most.

    • Your landlord might not like you drilling holes and pulling cable.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lsllll ( 830002 )
        In my specific case, I own the home, so that's not a problem. The issue is that the camera would be about 100 feet away from the house, with no access to a cat5 or power.

        • One hundred feet for PoE is fine.

          As others have said, hardwired is the right answer here. I understand why you are reluctant but it really is the right answer. You can cable it up once and it will work as long as the switch is powered, no battery hassles, no signal hassles, etc. and it wonâ(TM)t matter what services or processes you want to run on the camera.

          Even if it were a longer distance, there are solutions available to deal with it.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by dskoll ( 99328 )

            In general, I agree that wired is better, but if your camera is up in a tree and you live in a place that's prone to thunderstorms, wired may have some other downsides...

            • Many years ago my former company in Germany had two buildings around 50 m apart, with 10BASE5 (thick yellow coaxial cable) within each building and connecting the two. A heavy thunderstorm took out quite a lot of the connected equipment with permanent damage.

              Consider also electric field versus elevation in a storm. Many years ago on a visit to public areas of the United States Naval Academy, there was a display relic (possibly an old training fixture): a submarine sail with some ladders and deck plate, a

  • Wyse cam (Score:4, Informative)

    by WillRobinson ( 159226 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @01:59PM (#60986060) Journal

    Since I have a hunch your looking for something you can have remote storage in case they steal your remote cameras and have separate storage you might look at wise cam. The Wyse cam outdoors I have gone for over 60 days before recharging. There is a base that has local storage and has it own wifi to talk to 4 remote cameras and store it in the base station that could be hidden.

    On your other idea they do have a software to flash the unit to do exactly what your was thinking. Dont know if the Outdoor model does that. But a quick search shows this. Good luck.

    https://github.com/HclX/WyzeHa... [github.com]

  • Smartphone (Score:3)

    by DeBaas ( 470886 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @02:04PM (#60986086) Homepage

    How about an old or cheap smartphone? There is software available specifically for this. Battery is included....

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )
      Interesting. Never thought about that. I suppose, paired with a solar panel and a mount to a tree up high, this might actually be a solution, as long as the phone has an IP65 rating. Thanks!

      • I use iPhones with iCam software.

        The combination stores photos local to the iPhone and overwrite when memory is full.

        I don't use solar to power them.

        It's cheap.

    • Yep, that's about the only solution. Even so; keeping the battery charged will be a big problem.

    • Alfred Camera - used old smartphone & free (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anon42Answer ( 6662006 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @03:18PM (#60986360)

      Alfred Camera https://alfred.camera/ [alfred.camera]

      Free, uses old smartphones, no cell service required - wifi only works, relatively reliable, events not stored locally, free version has max 30 second recordings, paid version pretty cheap with more capability.

      No IR on phones for night usage if needed.
      Can view remotely via phone & app

  • You're looking in the wrong place. (Score:3)

    by CaptainLugnuts ( 2594663 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @02:35PM (#60986182)
    Look for hunting/game cameras.
  • I am using the RPi4 4G to develop for the ESP32-Cam. I install ESP-IDF and Arduino IDE on the RPi. I print the cases using a 3D printer.
    Install ESP-IDF and/or Arduino IDE ona a RPi. (The Arduino IDE requires a extension for ESP32 boards)
    Enable serial port but disable Linux console. (raspi-config)
    Connect ground, Rx and Tx from Rpi to GND,Tx,Rx of ESP32-cam

    Connect RPi GPIO pin to GPIO0 on cam, (flash or run)
    Connect RPi GPIO pin to reset on cam ( reset for run or program)

    Find an example that is close

    • The RPi4 4G needs 600mA when it's doing nothing and up to 3A when it's processing. The ESP32 needs another 0.5A or so.

      Good luck trying to keep that running 24/7 on batteries.

  • ...but was this running on Windows XP?

  • ... the solution.

    I have ten of them scattered about. They work pretty well.

    I know they have an LTE solution as well.

    • There are some harddrive which allow you to connect over both the USB and network at the same time.
      Arlo's can dump all their recordings to both the cloud and an external harddrive at the same time.
      They worked flawlessly so far, catching burglars and other unwanted guests like a raccoon and my mother-in-law at my frontdoor.
        With Arlo you get a decent cloud integration so all your data is in 2 places and can be viewed with a simple app at all times.

  • Instead of looking for a camera that can push to an FTP/SMB server, look at setting up software that can pull RTSP feeds from the cameras. Almost any IP security camera made in the last 10 years supports RTSP. Any software package that supports RTSP feeds would let you pull the video feeds from the cameras and store the files locally.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )
      The problem is that in order to pull a feed off the camera the wifi on the camera would have to be up all the time and thus disqualifies it, since I need it to be battery operated for remote (100 feet from my house) installation.
  • You can go ahead and remove the "Battery-powered" from the requirements list as with a little ingenuity and resourcefulness one can turn a plug-in camera into a battery-powered one relatively easily.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )
      Not so fast. I am well-versed in electronics and can easily put something together with solar panels and rechargeable batteries, but not a rig that'll support a camera that'll have all its circuitry (including a wifi connection) up 24 hours/day.
      • I suppose that depends on the power draw/demands of the camera you are using. For instance, I used to get a cheap USB-powered WiFi camera going off a cheap rechargable Li-On Battery pack. I'd get about 1.5-2 hours with a full battery. For longer times or a higher-powered camera, use a better battery all the way up to UPS (pure sine wave) size, these can get up to 20 KVA and still provide a 110V plug. It just depends on your budget and size restrictions.

  • Get a PoE camera, and you'll be much better off (Score:5, Informative)

    by timholman ( 71886 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @03:51PM (#60986466)

    I don't know what your home setup looks like, but I would strongly advise against trying to do this with a battery-powered WiFi camera. Take it from someone who once considered going down the same path you did, and soon realized what he was up against.

    While I do not doubt that you could get it to work in some fashion after considerable effort, what you'll quickly realize is that the power budget of a battery powered camera severely limits what you can accomplish, even with a solar panel and battery backup. Battery-powered cameras lack the features, the resolution, or the optics of wired PoE (power over Ethernet) cameras.

    You will be a hundred times better off running Ethernet cable to one or more PoE cameras. Waterproof jacketed CAT6 cable (solid copper) costs less than $0.25 per foot. All you need is a good lawn spade, and you can cut a six inch trench into the ground and push the cable into it, allowing you to mount a cable to a tree hundreds of feet away from your home. With a PoE+ switch or injector, you can power the camera as far away as 200 meters.

    You can also buy flat CAT6 and run it under a window sill, connect it to an outdoor camera with waterproof connectors, then close the window. No drilling of holes through the house siding will be needed.

    With a PoE camera, you'll be able to record video 24/7 to a local disk, and configure the camera (or your security software) to provide alerts when motion is detected. You'll also have the option of mounting cameras with optical zoom, allowing you to capture license plates or human figures close up. It is also trivial to add UPS battery backups to keep the system going in case of power failure.

    Save yourself hours and hours of effort and frustration; install wired cameras if you possibly can.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )

      I hear you. If I could do wired, I absolutely would, because that'll open millions of options for me since I don't have to worry about wifi/power. I don't mind trenching a cat6 cable, either, but at some point, I'll have to come out of the ground and then be susceptible to the cable being cut.

      In my situation, I have a very long, curvy driveway that's surrounded by trees. Someone came and ripped out my low-voltage (powered) LED lights that light the driveway at night. They left the ones closest to the ho

      • I hear you. If I could do wired, I absolutely would, because that'll open millions of options for me since I don't have to worry about wifi/power. I don't mind trenching a cat6 cable, either, but at some point, I'll have to come out of the ground and then be susceptible to the cable being cut.

        Any camera system, WiFi or wired, can be vandalized. But with a wired camera, you'll still record him on video. In that respect it's far more reliable than a WiFi camera.

        Here's a recommendation that you'll hear from

    • He already wrote further up in a reply wanting to install the camera in a tree. A cable would be too exposed or you'll have to run a steel pipe up the tree. That might make it obvious and makes for an ugly sight. Battery, solar panel and wifi is a good choice. Otherwise, you're right. PoE with hidden or well protected cables is less hassle.

  • I do embedded dev on the side and this would be a fairly easy, inexpensive project. Go look at pjrc.com and you will find a couple of recipes to do this, batteries and all. pjrc boards are like an Arduino on steroids and the processor board is around $15. Every device has a vendor provided library that works with Arduino studio to make it easy to interact with. If you have never programmed before, you could have a Teensyduino talking to a camera in a day following online examples. There are some cool cases
  • I saw your question more as you wanting a wifi camera that supported some connection protocol you prefer.
    Fine, by your favorite wifi cam and take a look at wether it needs for instance 5v or 12v.
    I am assuming DC, almost every camera I have used in the last 20 years and ALL wifi cameras have been dc powered.
    Now get yourself a 12 volt battery (see where I'm going) and base the size of that battery on how many amp/hrs of life you desire.
    Don't get a 5 or 6 volt battery, get a 12 because they are cheap as he

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )

      You missed the point. If I wanted a wired solution, I'd just do PoE and be done. There are a ton of cameras out there that'll happily dump to their videos to a local server over IP.

      The requirement is that it'll have to be battery operated and wireless. You can't simply rig a battery and solar panel to a camera that's not designed to draw little power to begin with. Every camera that's designed to be powered by an external source is designed to keep its circuitry and wifi connectivity up 100% of the time

  • Use Home Assistant ... (Score:3)

    by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @05:43PM (#60986844) Homepage

    Save yourself time and effort and use Home Assistant [home-assistant.io].

    It has many camera integrations [home-assistant.io], and therefore will save you time setting up a basic home monitoring system, that can later be evolved into a home alarm/security and/or home automation platform.

    Since it has lots of integrations with devices, it gives you a lot of options to choose from, and you don't have to write any code (it is all done for you).

    And it can be configured to be purely local, with no cloud component, as long as you select the right devices.

    I run it on a Raspberry Pi 3+ with Raspian using a Python venv. However, because they now mandate a newer Python version (3.8) than what is in Raspbian, I need to wait until the next version of Raspian is released with a newer version of Python.

    You can use Docker or a Home Assistant image if you are so inclined, and not be constrained by the above. For me, I like to control my operating system.

  • The PineCube camera does support WiFi & battery operation, though the software is generally up to 3rd party developers. Pine64 designs, makes and sells the hardware, leaving it up to the buyer to choose what software to use. Some of their products have dozens of software images for them, (like the Pinebook Pro ARM laptop...). But, I don't know about PineCube. However, one goal of Pine64 is to have as much open source hardware and software as they can.

    If you are not willing to modify the software, then

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )
      Interesting. I don't mind programming and starting with a base and customizing it to what I need, and this seems like a good start. It appears the wifi module will use only 4ma and the camera microamps in standby, so, paired with a PIR, I may be able to get the power usage down enough, but I can't find any information as to PineCube's power usage, by at $30 it's something I can start with and if it doesn't fit the bill, oh well.

  • DIY with RasPi zero

    Use a commercial cam with SD storage, and an Eye-fi (name?) SD card with built in wifi.

  • Run AC power or give in to the dark side (Score:3)

    by LostMyAccount ( 5587552 ) on Monday January 25, 2021 @09:04AM (#60988676)

    I'd say give in to the dark side and just use battery powered cams the way they were meant to be used, with their cloud services.

    If the cost seems too high, figure out what it would cost to run AC power to your camera location. I figure $2000 in materials and services, maybe less or much less if you're willing to skip permits and hand trench your own direct burial cable with maybe some friendly electrician to verify you're not gonna electrify the yard.

    An Arlo subscription is $100 year, so even for $1000 you're looking at a 10 year payback vs. a cloud service, and of course this omit what you're gonna spend on equipment updates with either solution, although obviously your home-rolled battery system will involve battery replacements over time.

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close