Hello, I’m wondering what the consensus is (if there is one) on the best hardware and software (open source very much preferred, runs in Docker is a must) to use for privacy-respecting, self-hosted security cameras. I have always wanted to avoid feeding the surveillance state and have never had a security camera but unfortunately I recently saw evidence of someone trying to break into my home. I searched Lemmy for posts on this topic and only found one from two years ago: https://lemmy.world/post/12726787. I assume things are a bit different now so I’m basically making the same post again as OP. Thanks in advance for any tips anyone may have for me.
PS. My experience level is that I currently run several self-hosted solutions via Docker and have been doing so for a few years. I am not a networking guru but I do understand the basics, and I’ve setup pihole in the past (but deactivated it due to some false-positive issues). If there’s a reason to stand that back up in order to prevent otherwise private cameras from “phoning home”, I can do that.
I use Reolink cameras and recently got a Reolink NVR. I do block all Reolink devices from the internet in my OpenWRT firewall. I didn’t want to host a NVR on my server that’s already hosting a bunch of other stuff and further increase the blast radius of my server as a single point of failure. Reolink is all proprietary, but at least it’s local and works without internet access.
Thank you. What kind of server and storage do you use for the NVR and is it on a vlan or something? I’m trying to wrap my head around how much hardware I’ll need to buy. I’m not that great with networking also so I’ve considered buying a cheap router for the system that isn’t connected to the internet, instead of doing the vlan route.
I use a Reolink NVR instead of my own server, along with SD cards in the cameras themselves as a backup. My switch has VLAN capabilities, but I haven’t configured my cameras to use it, mainly because I have Wi-Fi cameras outdoors (2 solar-powered and 1 doorbell camera connected to doorbell power). It’s a proprietary local setup that “just works”. I understand not trusting proprietary and wanting self-hosted open source all the way because I certainly don’t trust them to not collect my data and don’t allow Reolink devices to have internet access.