Building a Security Monitor with a Raspberry PI and a RasPad 3

[irvshapiro]

Since this project is quite complex I created a blog post with all the details before filming a video. Here is a link to the post:

https://makewithtech.com/building-a-...urity-monitor/

Enjoy.

[Ender5r]

Just skimmed the article/tutorial: will go in deeper at a later time. My 1st thing of note was how you emphasized the "no Internet" aspect of the system. I was very glad to see that. To be sucure, I believe a security system needs to be air-gapped.

[Geit]

It is a nice "case" for having a security system for sure.

As mentioned before there is MotionEyeOS. It has NONE of the install hassle, when setting up. It is also the most native, available. I have it running on a Raspberry Pi1 (!!!). You can connect cameras using the Pi´s camera port, USB or network.

MotionEyeOS acts as surveillance center, where you connect the display, you open a HTML session to or which just acts as a remote camera.

It supports recording to NAS or locally, timed schedule, with or without motion detection, text and time stamping inside the image and so much more. It basically supports all non proprietary formats and just connects automatically when given an IP.

Installing is just writing an Image file to SD Card and done. Log in remotely via browser and set it up, by pressing "add" and add the cameras IP or select a local one. Thats basically all. The web interface is amazingly simple and well structured for the shear mass of features.

Here are my cameras: My door cam and three printer images (connected to OctoPrint camera). The number of cameras is unlimited and the layout can be done as you wish. Note I added the TronXY X5 camera twice to get a fourth camera with a little different setup.



Again. This is a browser full screen view. The computer the software is running on is a Pi1, which also is a camera (top left). The other three images are streamed from Pi2/Pi3 on my printers towards the Pi1. There is no cloud shit involved. It is all locally in private network.

If you click on the images you can download locally stored stills or videos, make the camera view big and enter the camera specific settings. The part on the left is the settings panel I left open to show some of the stuff.

To be fair the frame rate on the Pi1 is very low and I won´t recommend it for security use. I use it to identify the mail man and to see if there is a massive printer fail. I would recommend a Pi4 with a LAN connection as a base, when you want FPS. This is what you get for 20 Euro (Pi1+PiCAM) and IMHO it is quite impressive.



This is the crappy Pi1 case I use and which has MotionEyeOS on it. I really should print a proper one. The camera got screwed into a hole I drilled into it. The white tape is just a lazy way to dark out the bright board LEDs.

[irvshapiro]

I looked at this but as a teaching opportunity, I wanted to walk people through installing software. Thanks for sharing. I also could not tell if MotionEyes was actively maintained. Thanks again for mentioning it.

[Ender5r]

Thx Geit, very good info. The biggest weakness I see in the RasPad system is the use of WiFi, because it's so easily disrupted/blocked. That said, I presume the RasPad terminal could be hardwire connected, so that would mitigate the issue. It would just mean the terminal is not portable, not something I consider important anyway.

Of course, WiFi cameras are, IMHO, a terrible option. If you think burglers won't use WiFi disrupters to nullify wireless cameras, think again. Sure, low level burglers will avoid houses with cameras and move on to easier targets, but higher level criminals look on cameras as an indication that there are better-than-average valuables inside. And WiFi disrupters are simple and cheap. Heck, even a microware oven weakens WiFi signals. This is a case where standards work against us. Many people I've talked to seem to think criminals have to hack into WiFi cameras to defeat them. They don't realize that all the criminals have to do is overpower the cameras. Criminals simply ignore the power limits imposed on standards-compliant devices. They pump out way more WiFi power and overwhelm any signals in the area.

I think MotionEyeOS, combined with ReoLink E1 Pro cameras, could be a good option for an inexpensive security system.

I think I will look into getting a better security system in place, but I will wait until Pi prices come down. Right now, they're more than double what they were pre-pandemic.

[irvshapiro]

Yes, you could do the whole thing over hard-wired Ethernet. The Reolink cameras and the Raspberry Pi (in the RasPad case) provide Ethernet (CAT-5) connections.

[Ender5r]

Yes, you could do the whole thing over hard-wired Ethernet. The Reolink cameras and the Raspberry Pi (in the RasPad case) provide Ethernet (CAT-5) connections.

I forgot to mention: in your article you talk about the lag in video feed using RTSP. I'm assuming this is when using wireless. I have noted in years past that hardwire connections can have significantly less lag than wireless. If you haven't tried hardwire, you might want to give it a go, just for comparison purposes.

[irvshapiro]

Good idea.