I was an early backer of canary.is. But it turned out to be a disappointment, mostly because they require cloud storage and the security setup is seriously lacking. I've looked at the different offerings and I can't find anything similar to Canary that offers a good secure design. So I'm open to other non-connected devices as well. My goal is to be able to surveil the front room in my apartment when I am away. I would prefer something that alerts me if their is movement and sends the alert to a smartphone. But I want a secure setup. If no service offers this feature with a secure setup, what are some other options available, even if it only alerts me to an intruder after the fact (when I get home). Would a hunting game camera be an option? Anything else you guys recommend?
Take an old computer and install Blue Iris on it, then attach your own cheap D-Link 932 cameras. Then you control everything, down to the last detail. Your cameras can send you SMS, Email you pictures of people in your place, etc.. Very advanced, and easy to use. Granular, you can set exact parameters of when to record based on sound, size, color, contrast, masking.. ANYTHING. http://blueirissoftware.com/ It will work with any camera in the world.. High or low end, or whatever.
I have some of these. They work very well and I highly recommend them. You can hook them up to ZoneMinder too if you want to run a server that supports many more features (and is open-source). I personally use these only when I travel, in order to connect to them I have to go through my VPN, thus ensuring that they are not accessible from the WAN side.
932's are the defacto 'best' low end cameras. I use Trivision 1080P's outside the home, but 932's are great inside. I don't need to worry about VPN's as these cameras are secured on an isolated wireless device, behind double UTM devices w/IPS, and port forwards. Then once the camera server is reached it requires specific authentications. I do not have any WAN facing cameras exclusively for security reasons. ZoneMinder looks interesting. Not as powerful as Blue Iris, but pretty nice looking! Also keep in mind, Blue Iris offers 'apps' that integrate with it on ALL of your devices. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blue-iris/id585350145?mt=8 One of my tricks is to buy Blue Iris on the Amazon App Store. Then you can use it on all of your devices at the same time for one price. Then buy cheap $30-$50 tablets, and install the Blue Iris software from the appstore on each one, and mount them around your home as security monitors!
Not the best option, but the cheapest one is probably using an old laptop/webcam (I got a free netbook from craigslist) and installing motion on it. Then make it upload to Dropbox or something and you're set.
Agreed! I love these cams for indoor. I use mine in my garage as well. They are also often on sale at amazon if you watch for it. I got 4 of them for less than $50 a piece around Christmas time. Zoneminder is great, it is easily as powerful as blueiris if not more (using plugins/shell scripts). The main issue is that it is much harder to use for most people. For example with Zoneminder I can integrate with openCV and get full facial recognition or License Plate recognition. You can also connect to Zoneminder using mobile, there are a few alternative apps, VLC works, and even just using the built in browser. That said Blueiris is better for those that want some that works well, has native apps (that aren't third party), and doesn't require dedicating a server to it (You can continue to use windows with BlueIris as a background service). If blueiris worked on linux I would probably run it as it has far less upkeep needed. Sadly I don't have anything I can run it on it.
A good cheap refurb from Microcenter will run Blue Iris. I run my security server, which contains Blue Iris, and some license plate and facial recognition technologies, and parameter sensors all on a Dual Core 2.66Ghz system from Microcenter that cost me less than $150.. Not bad! As I said you can create an amazingly advanced security system quite cheap, with those tablets functioning as security centers, etc. I have pretty good experience with Linux, but I rarely use it. I'm a Windows guy these days. Although I can get around linux when I need to, the only customers we have running anything linux are Asterick based PBX systems, and I can work in those quite handily. But I much prefer Windows, and Windows based applications. Nice to see someone else appreciates the low cost, and quality function of the 932 series of cameras.. I disable all of the D-Link cloud rubbish, I don't want my cams WAN facing AT ALL unless it's through my controls, and server.
Thanks! From the looks of it, Blue Iris requires Windows? I use Linux. I want to make sure I HAVE to go buy Windows OS to use it. I noticed Blue Iris recommends i7 processor with 8GB ram. I'd have to buy a semi high-end laptop to get that as opposed to one of those Windows Tablet/Notebook hybrids. Is this what you recommend or would a "2-in-1" work fine?
Please don't confuse simple camera software and apps with 'real' security like Blue Iris. The difference is far beyond comparison in this thread.
I posted this above, but ZoneMinder is a linux alternative. You need a dedicated server though. You could also look into motion, I believe it can use Wireless cameras.
Yeah, I did see your post above. But thanks for mentioning it again. I don't really have the means to run a server though, so I figured it easier to just buy an OS and use the Blue Iris if it came to that. I'm not as technically skilled as I would like.
