bro, are you me? I swear to god every time I just about finished with a project, you put out a video the next day showing me how I could have done it better! Thanks man! :)

Security tips - 1. Vlan your CCTV. Dont let it access the rest of your network. Treat it like a guest network. 2. Whitelist the mac addresses allowed on each vlan. 3. Dont use the SD card and disable the function if possible. Waaay to easy to be removed and also, SD cards are known to not have the best lifespan... You want to avoid a threat actor connecting a laptop/switch/SBC to your CCTv cam PoE cable, which is usually on the outside of your home/property and can easily allow someone access to your core network if it's not properly setup. Also make sure to enable HTTPS/SSLv2 or 3/TLSv1.2 so that if someone is on your network, they cant sniff your NVR (etc) username and password.

13:07 nothing more permanent than "it's fine I'll fix it later."

Bro lives next to the neighbor running the StarLink refurb depot 😂

13:07 "I'll fix it later" Sure, bud... I'll just hold my breath in anticipation.

"I'll fix it later" 8 Years later when you are selling the house the buyer asks "why is the camera box like that?"

“If you’re thinking I thought this out really well beforehand you must be new here.” 😂😂😂 Thank you for leaving in your bloopers (like dropping the bracket) it makes your videos very relatable.

you are like my wife exactly @5:10 - "79.95 - it costs SEVENTY dollars!"

curl | sudo bash: Every cell in my linux-user body just quaked.

You're killing it! Great job man Just a tip from a cable guy, never assume that you'll never go past 100Mbps. The last thing you want to do is pull back a bunch of cable or run another because you need gigabit. Ask me how I know lol.

Nice, I'm getting ready to do this. Waiting for a better PoE switch from TP-Link.

Thanks man! I showed my wife your video and she approved the funding for my home security project :)

Funnily enough I had a run in with a neighbour recently and have been thinking about adding a camera or two just in case something happens again. This is great. You rock!

Love the way you setup the config to be sharable without risking the exposure of the password

I've been using Reolink cameras for about 10 years, some of those original cameras are still running rock solid. They work just just about anything that I have tried to use them with.

I did surveillance system for my home and home office ( a two room hut 120 meters away from my home), in total 17 POE cameras (very similar to reolink cameras) with a 24-port POE switch... it has been working nice though a few times i had to make some adjustments. I am already thinking of upgrading it because it has saved me quite a lot of trouble in these two years.

Another good job of making a sponsored video that shows how do do something and not just be hawking the sponsor. There was a lot of useful info here about the topic and you included the sponsor's product without making us feel like we're watching an ad 👍

Ive been wanting to do a decent camera system around the house. Now, you've given me the inspiration to do it. Thanks

I like the way how you show the configuration of all the Linux part, I'm gonna have to watch the video again and take notes

Thankyou so much for this. I'm a total amature but thanks to your clear guidance I whipped up a Debian 12 VM on my TrueNAS Scale "NAS" and installed Casa OS. Casa is great. Like Docker for dummies (me). Cheers!

Feedthrough modular connectors are soo nice and with > 1Gb connections becoming common, the feedthrough modular plugs have too! I don't even think they cost more now depending on where you buy them and how many. You have no idea how many issues we used to have when network speeds upgraded and we found out how bad some "looks good" crimps reflected signals. With the feedthrough plugs, there is no question the wire's gonna make a solid cold weld with the crimp pins. Just feeding the beast.

32:12 "Framerate is a little bit laggy" You are getting precisely 1 fps. The same 1 fps you configured in camera settings, once the substream is configured with 10 fps, you get 10 fps of motion

Thank you! This is the exact project I've been planning to tackle.

Incredible project and very nice delivery. Love it! If only I has a house...

Thanks for putting out another quality content video. I've been using Blue Iris for over a year now, and while there are a lot of settings that you can adjust it's not that difficult to setup. The software interface for viewing cameras does feel a little archaic, however the web portal is very good. One item I was hoping for you to cover more is the retention schedule. When selecting a camera system, many people do not think about how long they will have the video or whether to record continuously/motion only. For most residential camera systems, you will only get 2-14 days of continuous recording and a lot of that depends on how many cameras are connected to it. If you record on motion only, there is a high tendency of missing critical incidents. The commercial systems have the ability to adjust recording in different frame rates, utilizing a lower and higher bit rate sub streams (continuous recording in SD and motion only in HD), and recording in H.264 or H.265 compression. For this reason, Blue Iris is a great option to use because it gives you a lot of things that are in commercial systems, but for a low cost. For example, I have a 10 TB hard drive with six 4k cameras and I am continuously recording 24/7 in a lower bit rate and it increases to the highest bit rate on motion. With this system, I have one-years worth of recordings. I am using Blue Iris for this. If I spent a little bit more time, I could gained even more retention by readjusting the motion triggers.

Tysm for validating the catchphrase I use at work lol, whenever I install something and say, "That's not going anywhere," people get sketched out for some reason

I've been really interested in setting something like this up. Awesome video!

8:56 I don't know about how much space you have under your roof, but it would've made more sense to have the cable inside the roof only coming out with enough slack in case you want to remove the camera to inspect it. With it being exposed like that, you run the risk of it being damaged. 9:37 A better way of doing that IMO would be having excess cable that went down to the ground, crimped the connector there, then you pull the excess cable from the server side.

Another interesting and practical home lab / home security / DIY video. Nice job Colton.

vaapi is both intel and amd , Frigate looks better to me. You are right the higher res cameras are using h265 and not h264 , h265 will not work in most browsers so you need to transcode your clips . I don't know why you can't control it via home assistant , I can switch on the siren / light , etc .

nice! I'm using Shinobi as nvr and it works flawlessly

Super great timing, I was literally just giving recommendations to a friend on what kind of components she should look into for a home surveillance system build, definitely going to have to send her this video...was considering using some of these Wyze brand cameras that I have had experience working with before as they are cheap and functional enough, but the wide viewing angle on that Reolink camera might be a better option given the space constraints she is working with.

A note on crimping the outdoor stuff. The good stuff is gel filled, not fun to crimp. Requires lots of alcohol wipes

8:11 the overhang is called the soffet

Very handful, I was planning to setup cameras. Thanks !

For the Debian install, you can leave the root password blank at install and that auto grants sudo permissions to the user you set later.

Very nice video. Thanks for the ideas. I would suggest moving that cable you ran along the top of your exterior wall to inside attic. Even though is is a lot easier to do it this way, exposed wires/cables can easily be snipped and then you lose that camera.

one reccomendation from someone who does this as a job, get a system that will allow you to add more cameras to it down the road, without replacing all of your hardware

Nice video. Im also half way of upgrading my home surveillance camera and saw you posted this video. Mine i went the other way around as its rather difficult for me to run CAT5 cable from the cameras back to where my router will be. Hence PoE cameras are out of my radar. Existing cameras are TP-Link Tapo (C320 and C320WS) where it used AC-DC adaptor. My upgrade was to run new conduit above ceiling and DIY a AC to DC power supply (the metal and perforated type) hidden somewhere above ceiling with all cameras connect to one power supply. Hence when I wanted to add backup power to my cameras system, i can just buy a UPS and put it to this PSU i made and all will be running on batteries. Additionally TP Link Tapo series camera does support Onvif hence its not only able to store on SD cards, but also can purchase their Vigi linup NVR and connect it in. HA also supports Onvif hence can be linked and view inside of HA as well.

It's worth mentioning that the mounting hardware that comes with reolink mostly the screws and anchors are trash. The cameras are great. I went to the hardware shop for other screws and anchors.

Thanks a lot for this very instructive video.

Thank you! I needed this

I like this approach more along with using actual portable hard drives and thumb drives as opposed to cloud services.

Pretty much did this with Frigate and Wyze cameras with rtsp firmware installed on the cameras. It isn’t a camera frigate suggest but they work. Great video

That duo 3 is a great idea if you can use it esp where it can eliminate a cable run, where the additional cable can easily exceed the incremental cost of the duo. One less terminal is also one less point of failure due to corrosion, which is a serious consideration if you plan on operating it more than 5 years.

Great video but from my standpoint much more complicated than needed for the typical homeowner. I love the Reolink cameras and have been using them for several years so far. I use only cordless and have 5 exterior and 5 interior cameras and all record 24/7. I can check my premises from anywhere that has cell service. My front camera provided the police with video and audio of a crime on a property across the road from my home. Video and audio so clear, at night, that the police knew what, when, how and why. Suspect arrested the following day.

excellent video, one suggestion on those clips as you are printing them. If you make them so the slightly grip the cable when screwing down you can keep that run as tight as the sheets on a bed in bootcamp.

dude knows his stuff. great video

The haven must be secured!

Just did this with a wired NVR some advice, use white wire! drill holes in boxes before mounting them and if you have enough flexible rod, you could drill the holes next to the camera and just push alot of rod into the attic then go into the attic and use an extendable rod to hook it and pull it back to you. If you used 4 x4 boxes drill a 3/4 " hole in the lids center, then you could mount the camera to the lid of the box with the camera wire going through the lid.

i think you should try also the iSpy, also pretty easy to deploy with docker and have a tons of settings

It looks a lot like frigate to me! 🤣But seriously, this was a really nice video. You always provide me with projects to tackle. Keep up the great work.

I hate crimping RJ45s so I usually go for terminating in a socket or a patch panel with punchdown connectors. I mount the socket indoors or under cover if wiring an outdoor device. Much easier, often neater, and you can do the last jump to the device with a patch cable (outdoor rated if required).

Finally!!!!!!!!!! Been waiting this foss diy🥶🥶

Neat project. Gives me some ideas. 6:25 soffit vent 8:11 soffit

I've had a QNAP NAS for many years, they of course deprecated survelience station licenses on the older models. So now it requires an update, the new survelience station and of course you get less cameras for free so must buy licenses. Been looking for a linux alternative, this one looks promising, great video!

The reason you can't see some Reolink cameras on software based NVRs is there is an incompatibility in the H264 stream and variable frame rates that are in the RTSP stream. I believe it affects all the 4K cameras but not the lower res cameras like the 5MP models. Reolink have tried to implement a firmware fix but it hasn't solved the issue. See the Hookup for more info.

@ 3:01 I'm glad you used a WP box for the connection, I'm surprised to see you using a metal cover on a plastic box, but it does fit nicely, and I'm glad you mounted the box facing down to it can drain. A lot of people mount them vertically with no drain hole at the bottom and are surprised to see the reason the camera stopped working is because the box was FULL to the top with water. Naturally, they ask "if it's a WP Box, how'd all that water get in it?", I tell them "Water, being the strongest element on the planet, is going to go wherever it was and you ain't sopping it, being WP just slows it down a little, kind of like a lock on your front door only slows down the burglar, but he will still get in. The best thing you can do is put a drain hole in the bottom so the 2nd most powerful force in nature, Gravity, can help the water find its way out. All automotive tail light and headlight fixtures have weep holes in them for the same reason."

The backyard camera is awesome. It records after you have left 😂😂

That project box is sweet! I think that may be the impetus I need to get a 3d printer!

Definitely loving that debian, I've got q4os linux on my levono laptop.

Dell Optiplex PCs are good options for a surveillance PC, often times you can find them inexpensive online, or at an auction.

Fun fact: Reolink cameras also have an easy to use Integration in Home Assistant. Can use it's motion detector in dashboards and even show screenshots to quickview

You could use Frigate, which is difficult, or you could do this other thing that uses the exact same YAML config method.

OBSERVATION great vid and not so daunting. The underneath where u drilled is called a soffit. The square hole with the screen is a soffit vent. The board that is perpendicular on the outside is a fascia board. Dont ever block the soffit vents its for air flow but definitely make sure they dont come off or are broke. This is one way how birds, insects and other critters can enter. It looks like you haven't blocked them. Nice vid

Thank you so much for making this video,

Great video! I'm doing something similar but piece by piece and over time. The great thing about Reolink is they've created a system where camera can work alone OR you can piecemeal the project piece by piece with minimal issues or problems. They also have a wide variety of cameras to incorporate. But best of all, a the software is full of features and there's NO subscription fees. 2 quick tips for anyone doing this... - Leave some slack inside the attack where the camera is stored. This will help if you ever need to replace a connector or physically work on the camera while it's still connected. - Consider using a longer raceway on exposed outdoor runs. I've seen pressure washers mistakenly damage cable. Lastly, I will say Reolink's customer service is pretty good. I had to replace a camera 2 weeks ago. After a few emails, they agreed that the camera was the problem and agreed to replace it. Shipping to them was on my dime and I was without a camera for almost a week.

Seems rock solid

Best practice is to setup the cameras on a dedicated vlan that can talk t9 your main netowkr. or a totally separate physical network with a second nic.

I'm sold. I'm buying a security camera kit from Amazon. Thanks for pushing me off the ledge...lol

Thank you for this tutorial because in my country NVRs are very expensive.

Thanks for the Viseron NVR as the XPENology that I use, would still need the Synology camera licences which are expensive

I love the HD-Zero goggles for use viewing my DJI Mavic-3 video streaming via the RC-Pro HDMI output. I am experiencing very annoying problems with “jittering” or “stuttering” when footage looks excellent on the RC-Pro display and on Orqa goggles connected to the HDMI output. I asked Hd-Zero and have received “update your firmware” messages back. I love the open source concept and they look (appearance) gorgeous. I just can’t view drone video. LOL I’m guessing I’m one of the few using the goggles in this fashion, but would love to be able to use these HD-Zero goggles. I moved back to the Orqa, but would rather use the HD-Zero. Thanks for the video.

I tried Viseron. Wasn't happy. Went with Zoneminder instead. BTW it also integrates with Home Assistant. I have Surveillance Station as well but only use it for 2 cameras due to both the cost of licenses for additional cameras and the fact that my Synology is quite old.

I use the Reolink cameras as part of my security system in Home Assistant. If a person is detected in my back yard at night the sprinklers will turn on to soak them down. There is also a siren and some lights.

This is pretty cool, and timely because my dad is looking into a security system for my parent's new house. This video convinced me that I will be recommending him a system that has its own NVR device 🤣 Like no offense to the work that went into this video, but I haven't had good luck with my own forays into Linux and this is a LOT of steps compared to just spending a couple hundred dollars on an all-in-one system that just takes care of it all. This is a level of complexity that invites too many mistakes and I don't want to troubleshoot it in my own home, and definitely not my parent's home.

Omg this is amazing timing! Can you help us get alerts 🤪

to me blue iris and the code project AI integration is worth the small once off cost (if you don't need forever updates) if you already have an old windows PC to reuse - been rock solid for me and integrates really well with home assistance for notifications

I am going to move to another warehouse to work at, and we will need some security cameras. In my country there's a security company that sells you a complete package with cameras, monitoring, alert and so on, but you are limited to only monitor the cameras and you have to pay maybe a fee/subs... this video is interesting indeed ;)

im thinking about doing the same twin lens camera for the rear of my caravan using teltonika tws101 to power it. would love to see a video of you using frigate with an ai accelerator on your setup

This is legit what i wanna do. Locall hone survelance system. Ty man

I just installed 2 Reolink Duo 3 and I'm quite satisfied. They work well with Frigate even though I found several discussions that they probably won't work. My NUC i3 without a Coral AI board is too slow though. I'll buy a new work PC and repurpose the current one with an Intel ARC GPU and OpenVino. I can't wait to see how this will work out.

If you leave root without password sudo is assigned to user and root is disabled.See time 17:51 the line starting the root user a lot of people don't assign a password to root as it's safer not to.

I really want to do a set up like this but also want to figure out if I want to do a door bell camera or the over door camera

I love the LTT screwdriver!

Hey man love your video, very educational. I wanted to know if you could help with an issue I am having. I wanted to know, if I just want to install one camera that is a IP/POE 5MP, do I need a NVR and a POE switch as well? Also, is there an NVR with a POE switch installed, like a combo? Any suggestions?

Very very cool however I use a unify system so my G3 and g5s are working just fine! However for my in-laws house this actually makes sense

14:31 i haven’t bought the double view wide angle camera because the area i needed to record my dlink camera covers the area fine but my reolink camera does not have wide angle at all and is missing a lot of near field view that my dlink gets. wish this was something that camera listed of how well the field of view is.

currently setup zm on my optiplex 3020 micro i5-4950t, m.2 has 2 sata ports for x2 hdd 3.5

lol i love the spider.. *ATTACK!!!* :D And yeah frigate takes a little longer to setup but well worth it with the nice stuff you can do with it, also integrates very well with HA and let's me connect everything to alarms, pushes pictures to phone etc etc. What's a few hours of setup in the long run? :)

You could have tried motion eye or shinobi or both. I have ESPCAMs with motion Eye and shinobi. I use motion EYE for viewing only and shinobi for recording. This is a bit much as both the options offer viewing and recording. But I have seen, for my setup, shinobi's viewer is not that good, and motion eye doesn't have much granular options for recording.

same i have also had to submit my footage a good few times

14:10 the irony of this was that when you said the neighbors yard has many satellite dishes, the recommended video for me to watch was "Free Internet - Hacking Foreign Satellites" lol.

Could you also use Home assistant for these cameras or you would loose features like motion detection and stuff?

Instead of using dedicated hardware, would it work in a VM on a homelab server?

I've played with most of the free DIY CCTV softwares. Never heard of this one but I'll probably chuck it on a VM to try it out. I'm running motion eye now which is easy to set up. Before that I was running I-Spy the original version but can recommend the new version called agent too.

Hey! I love your videos can you make a video how to make a diy alarm system with wireless motion detectors?

Being in networking as long as I have, no, it is not easier and less expensive to terminate them yourself unless you already have need of those tools. If you are doing that only a handful of cameras, get 25ft-50ft cables for $5-8 each, and save the time on wondering why your cameras aren't coming online because you miss-wired them.

Gotta love the curl | sudo bash ... Oh. And then dd to drive too! Fdisk or parted will prevent a user shooting their foot right off... At least you let the inexperienced user reboot right after to see their drive is now dead 🎉

Regarding 21:53, Debian 12 should have Avahi installed by default (I think) so the host can be looked up by name, no IP address or router changes required.