My girlfriend is be very interested in putting Blink (Amazon) cameras up around our property. I am not interested in paying Amazon to keep our security footage.
What I’d like to do is have motion activated internet connected cameras around the property that somehow send footage to a server (I don’t know if that’s the correct term, I’m kind of an idiot) that I keep on the property.
So I have three questions:
- is this the right forum to be asking about self hosting security footage?
- does anyone here have experience doing this and would they be willing to send some pointers my way?
- is this a feasible DIY project or am I better served paying for a service?
I’ve done a little digging into self hosting and it’s not cheap, but I think it will be cheaper than paying a subscription. And safer too, which is rad.
Thank you all!
Unfortunately, even if you’re okay with accepting the sunk cost of purchasing a cloud camera with the foreknowledge that it might stop working in the future, there are still huge privacy and security concerns. Just recently, SwitchBot announced people were accidentally accessing each other’s cameras. Whoops.
If you’re looking for something that doesn’t need the cloud to work, I would recommend IP cameras. That’s the term you would look for. There’s open source software to manage them too. Of course, you need to be decent at security yourself. Unfortunately. So perhaps those cloud companies still have a little bit of a leg up on the average person.