CCTV system using IP camera modules and Raspberry Pi?

Thread Starter

seanspotatobusiness

Joined Sep 17, 2016
210
Can anyone suggest whether I could use a Raspberry Pi to connect to two 4K IP surveillance cameras and record the footage to HDD? Would the Pi be able to keep up with that? I think it's like 10 Mbit/s per camera.

Incidentally, the camera I was thinking of using is this. Would that be hard to set up? It doesn't seem like it would be too hard - it's just an ethernet and power connector and I plan to have the Pi connected to the same local network via a network switch but the listing warns it's not for beginners; I'm not sure whether that's directed at me or total technophobes.
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,086
I use Zoneminder. I would think the RPi 3 could handle the task if the system (database, web server and disk storage) was optimized correctly. but ZM requires a lot of computer power/memory and disk storage to run smoothly. Many of the low-cost Chinese cams have spyware embedded in the firmware so it's necessary to use a firewall to block IP access to their cloud server.
 

Ya’akov

Joined Jan 27, 2019
9,078
I use Zoneminder. I would think the RPi 3 could handle the task if the system (database, web server and disk storage) was optimized correctly. but ZM requires a lot of computer power/memory and disk storage to run smoothly. Many of the low-cost Chinese cams have spyware embedded in the firmware so it's necessary to use a firewall to block IP access to their cloud server.
Can Zoneminder be distributed across multiple boards? RPis being so cheap, that would be a nice solution.
 

Ya’akov

Joined Jan 27, 2019
9,078
Yes, you can multi-host frontends into a central network.
I plan to replace my existing cameras with a wired system. I wonder if it would be a nice project to do something like that. I’ll probably be using about 12 cameras.

I’ll have to make a note and do some research.
 

Thread Starter

seanspotatobusiness

Joined Sep 17, 2016
210
I use Zoneminder. I would think the RPi 3 could handle the task if the system (database, web server and disk storage) was optimized correctly. but ZM requires a lot of computer power/memory and disk storage to run smoothly. Many of the low-cost Chinese cams have spyware embedded in the firmware so it's necessary to use a firewall to block IP access to their cloud server.
Thanks for the heads up on the spying. I don't imagine that there could be much use to China spying on the car parking situation outside of my house so maybe it's better to leave it unblocked in order to waste a little of their spying resources?
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,086
I plan to replace my existing cameras with a wired system. I wonder if it would be a nice project to do something like that. I’ll probably be using about 12 cameras.

I’ll have to make a note and do some research.
Saying it works doesn't mean it will work well. One of the surplus servers as one central hosting hub would work better and be much more reliable at the full camera load.
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,086

Ya’akov

Joined Jan 27, 2019
9,078
Debian is my distribution of choice. I have an older Supermicro multicore server I could use, but it doesn't have a desktop fan control program so I'd have to set up accommodations in the basement, and even then, I am not sure I would want the noise.

I have a couple of Mac Minis I could possibly use. I have one running Debian right now for general purpose stuff in the house. For storage we use a Synology D810+ which has been brilliant, and it can do surveillance cameras but there is a license cost and it caters to things like Axis that are very pricey, so I've not really considered that route.
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,086
Debian is my distribution of choice. I have an older Supermicro multicore server I could use, but it doesn't have a desktop fan control program so I'd have to set up accommodations in the basement, and even then, I am not sure I would want the noise.

I have a couple of Mac Minis I could possibly use. I have one running Debian right now for general purpose stuff in the house. For storage we use a Synology D810+ which has been brilliant, and it can do surveillance cameras but there is a license cost and it caters to things like Axis that are very pricey, so I've not really considered that route.
Debian is mine too but the systemd init system is crap for old school Unix users. You can still run the classic sysvinit but they make it harder with every new release.

http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Arguments_against_systemd
 

Ya’akov

Joined Jan 27, 2019
9,078
Debian is mine too but the systemd init system is crap for old school Unix users. You can still run the classic sysvinit but they make it harder with every new release.

http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Arguments_against_systemd
I was just thinking, this morning, about how I miss the log structure of UNIX (Solaris, FreeBSD) and dislike how Debian's default logs are organized. I probably need to spend some time reconfiguring it, but... ugh.

There are some real advantages to modern init replacements, but if you are not all in, they are just annoying. For my limited purposes, init.d is completely usable, but if I was doing something rigorous, I'd want something more modern.
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,086
I was just thinking, this morning, about how I miss the log structure of UNIX (Solaris, FreeBSD) and dislike how Debian's default logs are organized. I probably need to spend some time reconfiguring it, but... ugh.

There are some real advantages to modern init replacements, but if you are not all in, they are just annoying. For my limited purposes, init.d is completely usable, but if I was doing something rigorous, I'd want something more modern.
I'm waiting for this to mature a bit before moving a few projects to it.
https://devuan.org/
 

dendad

Joined Feb 20, 2016
4,452
That's a pity it has been discontinued. I have a couple and should have purchased more when I had the chance. That said, I have not tried them yet. They are in the "box of lots of fun things to play with some day".
 

Ya’akov

Joined Jan 27, 2019
9,078
I do see they are still listed on many Ebay shops...
Search for "ESP32-CAM"
The trouble is, there are so many boards now and I want them all but couldn't possibly use them. I am using the ESP boards, but all these edge computing Linux boards, they are amazing.
 
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