[PLUG] Open Source - Home Security Cameras

[Michael Ewan]

On 04/06/14 09:00, Chuck Hast wrote:
> I am new to the list, have been living here in Kalama WA
> now for two years, I have been using ZoneMinder for over
> 10 years. I use it here in the glass plant, and also I have
> a server (not installed) which I brought from my home in
> Tampa when we moved here.
>
> I use all IP cameras on it and it works great. When I lived
> in Tampa one of my amateur radio friends who is a com-
> mericial security systems guy told me that ZoneMinder
> had things that only very expensive DVR products have,
> and I have used it to do all sort of detection things.
>
> Take a look at it:
> www.zoneminder.com
>
> It is VERY flexible and of course ALL open source. There
> is a large community. I am running it on a very BIG box
> her (8 xeon 24G memory server because I had it and I
> expect to expand the thing) but you can run it on most
> anything that you can get your hands on in this day and
> age. It likes a lot of memory and a 500G Hd will keep 8
> cameras with 6 months of history easy.
>
> I run all IP cameras though it can do both IP and analogue
> cams. I usually set the cameras up on a 1gb island lan
> so i am not routing video over a shared resource, but if
> you are only sending a few images every once and a while
> you can try your hand at sharing your lan. the only part
> that needs to be a gb link is between the DVR and the
> switch, most cameras are 100mb, Make sure that the
> switch has enough space so it does not block if you get
> several cameras being hit at the same time.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 11:18 AM, Tyrell Jentink <tyrell at jentink.net> wrote:
>
>> I won't speak to the subject of hardware or recording software, because I
>> have no experience with either... But for cloud storage, just about
>> anything can store encrypted files. You can encrypt the video archives and
>> sync them to Dropbox, and there ain't no one watching them without your
>> decryption key.
>>
>> And if you set it to auto delete at a sane interval, you should be able to
>> keep the total storage size on the cloud pretty reasonable (and in turn,
>> cheap) as well.
>>
>> I would personally be tempted to NOT have a streaming server with
>> associated holes in my firewall, and instead rely souly on whatever cloud
>> service I ended up using to access the recordings. That way, IF you trust
>> the encryption on the files, the only security risk is equivalent to basic
>> web browsing.
>>
>> NEW QUESTION:
>>
>> Home security cameras and Linux:
>>
>> I often wonder about networked home security cameras with an ability to
>> stream to internet or cloud storage in to preserve evidence out of reach
>> of the miscreants harming one's property.
>>
>> The advantage of open source (in that it is inspectable by many
>> disinterested persons) is that users can be more confident that there
>> are either no software backdoors built in and possibly that if any
>> hardware backdoors are discovered, that there maybe software patches
>> which available to them.
>>
>> Otherwise you might get THIS:
>>
>>
>> http://www.latinospost.com/articles/25613/20130815/video-baby-monitor-hacked-texas-foreign-man-who-called-toddler.htm
>>> So - is anyone playing around with home security using remote storage of
>>> surveillance video which is secure from unauthorized access?
>>> (Including where a lawful private citizen wishes to resist access by the
>>> data hosting company, or by lower levels of government?)
>>>
>>> - G
>>>
>>>

Thanks for the great information and welcome to the community. Although 
I do not have a current need for this kind of security is nice to know 
that it exists in open source.