Whenever I look into IP cameras I close the tabs because it feels like I walked into a store brand cereal aisle where all the boxes are exclaiming “Now with fewer razor blades!” or “Only half the reported cases of salmonella than similar store brands!”
What’s a good brand for IP cameras? What’s the best, in terms of open source support and reliability?
I need a mix of PoE indoor and outdoor cameras. 15 outdoor/10 indoor. Cost isn't a factor, I need something reliable.
I have 5 outdoor and 6 indoor cameras. They all support PoE power; for some of the internal ones I'm using PoE, others I got an injector & wifi dongle.
They'll talk to basically anything, the outdoor ones have handled several years of every possible kind of weather. I had one camera that died a week after it arrived; the RMA process w/ Axis was smooth and easy.
Their support windows are what you'd expect from a company whose primary customer base is commercial rather than consumer: IIRC they emailed me a year or two ago to warn me that they'll no longer be shipping software updates for my outdoor cams starting in 2030.
There's no reason to re-invent the wheel - ipcamtalk has a comprehensive set of explanatory posts. Don't buy Reolink, avoid Amcrest - Loryta (rebranded Dahua) and Hikvision are the strongest, but there are other strong options, especially on the refurbished commercial camera front.
I have a whole bunch of brands. I wrote ONVIF stuff, some years back. I gave up on it, as the spec sucks.
Hikvision has probably been the best "all-around" camera, but they may be subject to import restrictions.
Axis is very good (but un-cheap). Bosch is crappy (and also un-cheap).
I have a Dahua, which is quite good. I also have a pretty good Panasonic.
Funnily enough, probably the most reliable camera that I have, is also the cheapest. It's a $40 FLIR "eyeball" camera (not an IR camera -it's an OEM Chinese camera that several manufacturers rebrand).
A bunch of my cameras are obviously just rebrands of the same cheap crap. The software is abominable.
amcrest and reolink are some of the only large Chinese resellers that actually ensure onvif is implemented.
yeah they have a login wall without a reflash, but most of them do -- but the hardware isn't bad and you can keep it local after setup.
That said -- yes : hikvision is the de-facto generic IPcam without issues. Most CCTV softwares are built around hikvision cameras and firmwares as generics.
Why not buy Reolink? I bought one for my parents and it just works for them as well as can be expected. Local storage, local vision recognition of people/pets/vehicles, an app with push notifications. Maybe a little rough around the edges but for a non-cloud device it's pretty darn good.
What is the requirement for open source FW? As long as you get a camera that is ONVIF certified then there is no risk of lock in as it is an open standard that is compatible with most VMS software.
Don't forget that it is still an IP connected device, which will realistically never receive a security update.
Best-case scenario it'll call back to the mothership, worst-case scenario it'll turn into a backdoor for your entire network and you'll start receiving ransomware threats with awkward photos/videos attached to them.
It is best practice to put your cameras on a VLAN or otherwise restrict access to the internet. If you must expose it to the internet expose the VMS software and properly access not your cameras.
> worst-case scenario [...] you'll start receiving ransomware threats with awkward photos/videos attached to them
Honestly, I can kinda understand having outdoor cameras, if you're in a high crime area - but I just can't empathise with folks who feel more secure after putting indoor cameras in their own home.
I think it's for the case of if you have a nice house and you have a party and people come over, and they bring people that you don't know over, and something goes missing, they want to be able to see who took it.
The ones they sell aren’t great, but you can - with a bit of perseverance as it’s non-trivial - connect CSI-2 MIPI to a Raspberry Pi, and use any image sensor that supports that. Which includes a ton of great Sony CMOS sensors.
Are you sure? My info might be out-of-date, but a few years ago the MIPI support was in some propriety Broadcom firmware. So your choice was basically the ~3 sensors on official RPi camera boards (although people would sell you things like different lens mounts etc)
Also very interested in PoE cameras with open source firmware. Most of these seem to be wifi + power cable; I figure if I'm running a cable anyway it might as well be a data cable. Maybe wifi is easier to set up a couple devices, but once you get to 5+ cameras PoE is worth.
Hard wire your cameras and have a blinking red "recording" light that actually only responds to wifi jammers which cause it to stop blinking. They think they got the cams down, and stroll on unaware.
Then they don't even realize the real camera isn't visible. It's next to that big obvious one.
Some Reolink PoE cameras are OK, though a lot of people don't like them. Otherwise I would be looking for Axis (probably one of the best choices) or Dahua gear. Depending on how crazy you want to get, there are some vendors that make really excellent cameras like Costar/CohuHD, but be prepared to probably pay big dollars (and a lot of their stuff like my PTZ are huge cameras).
I have a friend with quite a large Reolink set up and he swears by them. I’ve been looking at them to replace my aging Ring outdoor cameras. Big downside for me is having to run a bridge for Home Kit integration.
I have used MindVision gigabit cameras, I believe they have some POE models (but they are mostly indoor-industrial-machine-vision. They do have a Linux SDK (basically a .so and a Python wrapper for the .so).
I'm going to look at all the links in the comments in this post to see if I can find things which are: better documented, more affordable, and easier to integrate.
Haven’t seen it yet so I’ll mention Hanwha, they were part of Samsung before the unit was spun out. They are probably the best competition to Axis and sit differently in the geopolitics, coming from Korea
Don't consider at all: All non-OEM Chinese stuff (1 trillion brands, way too many to list, including the usual consumer garbage that you might find in a store like Reolink etc.)
Consider if cost turns out to be a factor: The two major Chinese OEMs, Hikvision and Dahua.
Note: All Chinese OEMs are obviously implicated in the Chinese surveillance state. Obviously. A lot of "major" brands are OEMed by these two, even ones you might not expect. For example, much of Panasonic stuff is rebadged Dahua. Basically 90% of any CCTV camera Made in China comes from either Dahua or Hik, the lesser brands just mostly get (or rather, choose) the bargain-bin hardware with monkey-model firmware and of course no FW updates ever.
If cost really isn't a factor: Bosch, Axis, Dallmeier, Mobotix
Note: Most of these you cannot buy directly, and the vendor won't talk to you.
> What’s the best, in terms of open source support and reliability?
These are found at completely opposite ends of the spectrum. All good CCTVs cameras use signed and more-or-less well encrypted firmware, even cross-flashing isn't much of a thing.
I think it's worth mentioning that, if you can, set these IP cameras up on a separate VLAN that doesn't have internet access (or access to the rest of your network), run an open source PVR, and use firewall rules to allow the PVR to access the local streams on the IP camera VLAN. I think this mitigates much of the risk of using Chinese OEM cameras.
> I think this mitigates much of the risk of using Chinese OEM cameras.
I see two major problems buying from these companies.
The first is the practical risk that they will deliberately spy on you or just (through poor software quality) make it possible for others to do so. And yeah, putting them in a (V)LAN that can't access the Internet seems more or less sufficient. In theory they could exploit your browser in some way but I don't worry about this too much.
The second is the moral injury from buying from a company that actively participates in the Uyghur genocide. Not just "making cameras that the Chinese government buys through a retailer" but "writing software specifically to identify Uyghur ethnic features" [1] and/or "contracting with the Chinese government to install cameras at internment camps". [2] And there's no simply VLAN configuration that will wipe the blood off your hands.
They're nice cameras especially for the price, and I still use some I bought before I knew about this, but I can't bring myself to buy more or recommend others do so.
fwiw, I'm not aware of any evidence Reolink has participated in this, despite being a Chinese company. I try to stay away from Dahua, Hikvision, and Uniview, which is harder to do than it sounds because they make cameras sold under many brand names.
Hikvision and Dahua make a lot of cameras but I wouldn't call them the major OEMs, that would probably Ingenic, Goke, HiSilicon, uhhh Sigmastar, probably others I can't recall. If you're looking for one outside the PRC, Novatek is based in Taiwan.
I looked at the list on https://thingino.com/ , and one of the cheapest cameras supported by thingino is Wansview Q5.
I'm NOT exactly sure on the exact version, because 2 different versions exist on Amazon, 3MP/2019 and 5MP/2024, in 2 colors each, but the older 3MP version is available for under $20.00 USD with FBA:
The 5MP version is not yet supported! it's identical to the Cinnado D1 5MP, and in addition to the better sensor (and dual band wifi!) they use the next generation Ingenic processors. Work in progress!
Generally the cheapest fro Amazom is by Cinnado. I have a video on installing it my channel as well. I've bought this model for as low as $9.50 shipped. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phqR49t75Ak
Cool! It looks like the Wansview Q5 has a similar SoC/camera/wireless setup as the Wansview W7, which as an installer guide on the Thingino wiki [1]. I wonder if that same installation process (but with the q5 firmware) would work. For $16 I'm inclined to try it out.
wyze doorbell v1 is very cheap refurb on ebay and has an actual 4 megapixel selsor they run at 1080p for no particular reason in their firmware. It's 4 megapixel when you run Thingino!
Thingino is a full replacement firmware for Ingenic-based ip cameras. While we have some overlap with OpenIPC it's fair to say that our missions are quite different. I don't consider us competing projects, they even use some of our code (and possibly vice-versa) in their firmware.
Despite the name, openipc isn't fully open - the main recorder/encoder app (majestic) is closed source. Many openipc developers have moved to an alternative project named "thingino" which has a fully open source recorder/encoder/streamer.
Nice, it actually supports several popular Amazon US "no-name" brands, including Imou and Wansview! (Plus, several mainstream Eufy, TP-Link and Wyze cameras are supported by thingino as well.) Seems to be more user-friendly than OpenIPC, too.
I'm generally the guy making "easy installers" for Thingino cams. The default way to install on a cam is to use a flash programmer, some devices you can use a uart adapter.. I try to find opportunities in the factory firmware that allow you to flash using just a SD card when possible, and publish walkthrough videos on my channel. Some other devices you can flash with a flash glitch trick at boot, which I have several devices documented for that method as well. I'm a huge proponent of privacy and security being available to everyone and not just the technically minded user, and being able to get a commodity priced camera to faithfully serve a non-technical user is my goal!
I wonder if there is business in buying those cameras in bulk, flash them with thingio and resell them as "open" camera. Not sure if it's even legal. I guess flashing the camera probably void the warranty and the margin would be razor thin anyway.
I have the impression that most security cameras on Amazon are subsidized with their subscription services.
Also, because many of these brands are no-name, you get the inverse volume discounts — you can get 1 camera for less per-unit cost compared to buying 2 or more.
Starting a business may make more sense if you're willing to go directly to the manufacturer, and have the manufacturer flash the firmware directly at the factory. Even then, why would people buy from you at $30 when they can buy an encumbered version for $15 and follow a few instructions?
There are people using Thingino to provide security camera services. Just selling the cam pre-flashed probably isn't a great plan as I go out of my way to make it as easy as possible for people to flash our firmware themselves!
Do you know if Wansview Q5 can be installed easily or not? I think it's one of the only cams on the thingino list that's available in the US with super-fast Amazon FBA shipping for under $20 USD and with lots of stock.
The Q5 is on our supported list. I have a user who YOLOd and tried the Cinnado D1 (t23) installer and claimed success. Cinnado and Wasnview (and galayou and a few others!) are owned by the same company so a lot of things are shared.
That’s a great project, thanks for your work. I even have a couple of cameras around the house that look like they should work with this. Do you have any suggestions for an open NVR to pair with cameras running this firmware?
There are easily 50 different NVR applications out there. They differentiate themselves based on processing and analysis versus supported platforms.
Frigate is a reasonably immature project but it is getting better with each release. Blue Iris is adored but it does have a Windows requirement so that might disqualify it for you.
Yes I’m aware. But the whole point of this open firmware afaiu is that is enables use of the existing on-chip AI features for these particular cameras. Which means that something like Frigate - which focuses on running such AI features separately on, e.g., a coral accelerator - might not be a good fit. That’s why I sought the maintainer’s opinion.
I love how the front page doesn't scream SOCs/SOMs to you and is just straight up here's the compatible cameras with pictures (with some SOM info below).
The ING in Thingino stands for Ingenic. The Ingenic chips are MIPS, all the other cams are ARM. Focusing on these chips allows us to produce a firmware that actually works (not my experience with openipc) and is already configured for a specific product so you don't have to spend hours figuring out specifics for your camera to enable the hardware features!
POE hasn't really made it to the commodity level you'll find on Amazon. There are some Vanhua models available on Aliexpress.. we also have some users successfully using various POE to USB adapters. I don't use one myself so i can't personally vouch for one... note that not all cams have data available on their USB ports, if you have questions about a specific choice, come visit us on Discord!
I guess encoder app is separate from encoder proper, because I have to assume the bulk of the encoder is done in hardware. I mean, those things can do realtime h265 in 4k without a beefy CPU or getting hot.
Most of the image/video related stuff is done in the hardware, as well as a bunch of other functionality that would be hard to do on a 1 watt cpu. Check out the block diagram of the T31 processor: https://en.ingenic.com.cn/products-detail/id-21.html
Our streamer (prudynt-t) communicates with those blocks to handle settings, overlays, etc and receives the pre-processed image/video/audio data, packages it up for rtsp//mjpeg/etc, and handles client connections, motion sending, day/night vision, etc.
This is the status quo for ip cameras regardless of vendor!
These processors range between 32 and 128 megabytes of ram, and a chunk of that is reserved at bootup for the hardware feature blocks.
We have a couple devices that support 5ghz, but I don't think any of them are on my favorites list. I picked up a Wansview G6 which is a light bulb format cam, my least favorite, but it was our first dual band device. More to follow!
That seems very little RAM, do they even support ssh?
Is there a comparison table which devices have how much RAM etc?
BTW, do you know if Amcrest ASH21 are supported? They look identical to Imou Ranger 2 from the front, although Amcrest does have an RJ45 in the back, whereas Ranger 2 possible doesn't?
A number of years back I got bored during covid and decided to reverse engineer as much of the Wyze Cam V2 camera I could and make some custom firmware for it. Right now that lives at https://github.com/openmiko/openmiko
That said it's really hard to make long term supportable open source camera software/firmware. And when picking cameras it is even harder because the market as it stands now does not let you have it all. You need to pick what facets you really care about.
Also keep in mind even the above code is not really opensource all the way: I still had to load the driver binaries. Not sure that source will ever be released. The kernel is also old as heck.
What I do feel good about though is saving these old cameras from the dumpster if Wyze ever stops supporting them. The firmware works for simple cases: just load it up and you can start curl'ing frames. I used it in scripts to put together timelapse videos with ffmpeg. No need to screw around with authentication, phones apps, email, etc.
Hey, Openmiko is a nice project. With your baggage of knowledge, I would love to see you contributing to Thingino as well. While we still depend on binary blobs from the manufacturer SDK, there is a work on alternatives to replace what is replaceable with open stack. Join the team, have fun.
I actually tried this before and it led nowhere. The list of supported hardware is specifically referring to the SoC, not a brand or anything. It can be very hard determining which physical cameras have which chips. On top of that, despite the name, most of the supported devices seem to be for webcams, and not chips used in modern off-the-shelf IP cameras. I really wish there was a ground up guide that used an obtainable, normal camera.
When I last looked into a PTZ capable outdoor camera, the best advice was that I can probably get a supported camera module but I would have to source my own enclosure, lenses and everything else. There are standard dimensions for lenses and mount points ...etc but it was not going to be a straightforward thing that I could bang out in a weekend.
looking at the russian sponsors linked on the russian site I suppose this is mostly for the people putting these things on drones or in trenches... I suppose they obtain their cameras somewhere...
This seems nice. But if I am looking correctly, it does not support the devices from the mainstream brands like Hikvision.
I am unaware of how good those typical $20 cameras are. Maybe they are decent. But for instance some of the Hikvision ones with 8MP sensors support 4K@25 fps.
I think that it would be great if there would be an open source firmware for higher-end cameras like those.
Thingino doesn't support cams with ARM processors, we only support the chips made by Ingenic (which are a MIPS superset they call Xburst). We have a number of 4 megapixel (not 4k) devices we support, and are in the process of adding support for the next generation of Ingenic chips (Xburst2) which will bring up support for 8 megapixel (4k) devices.
We're also focused mostly on the less expensive models, because they're obviously within reach for a lot more folks but also they're almost always subsidized by the expectation that a discounted purchase price is made up for by the vendor's cloud subscription. You can get a LOT of great camera models for a low price.
I will say that there is a story about Hikvision that would likely steer most folks away from their brand.. it's bad enough that Google won't index it... With that said, I don't believe anyone should be trusting any third party with their video data in the first place...
> I don't believe anyone should be trusting any third party with their video data in the first place
Of course. No one is suggesting that storing video data from cameras in a cloud system over which the owner has no oversight and no control is reasonable.
I was mostly interested in what kind of image quality can an end user expect to get from a camera with open source firmware.
The mainstream brands like Hikvision had cameras with 4K@25 fps capabilities several years ago. And if I understand what you have written in your message correctly, the Thingino may possibly, start supporting similar cameras sometimes in the future. Which is great. But it does not support them now.
I fully understand that the focus is on the mass market where the devices are cheap. It makes sense. It is reasonable.
But it is also necessary, in my opinion, to fully openly acknowledge that there indeed is a fairly broad gap in capabilities of what you can get with this kind of firmware when compared to the mainstream offerings.
Indeed we don't have that 4k yet but we've got a lot of 3k options and 4k coming soon. We're 100 transparent about which devices we support, the full list including photos and specs is on our homepage, there's not much room for confusion there.
I have two Tapo units at home, they seem to be working fine without an internet connection.
I created a new subnet and an associated WiFi SSID for it, connected the Tapo cameras, and set them up to act as RTSP cams. I then firewalled the subnet off from anything other than my Frigate NVR server and gateway. They still work fine, they are streaming video to Frigate without complaint. Maybe because they have DNS from my gateway still? (I should probably block that off, it's a common data exfil vector).
Very annoying that internet connectivity is required for initial setup, I'll agree there. They could have just had a bare bones web interface.
It's hard to say for sure if this firmware will work on a specific Tapo camera, but the Tapo TC60 uses the Ingenic T31 SOC, which is supported. If there's a strong chance that their cameras use any of the Ingenic SOCs on this list, it would be worthwhile trying.
Yup, requiring permanent internet connection is such BS.
I had one of these "no-brand" cameras that had an integrated MicroSD card, which would make you think that it'd work just fine even without the internet.
We had no power in Austin for several days, but I kept my camera on a portable battery, because, why not?
After the power and the internet were restored and I checked the app, turns out, nothing was recorded! Even though it was online the whole time.
I'm happy for anyone who can make a use out of it, and it's nice to see one of the only examples where non-US users are ahead of the US, but…
Do you have any Amazon ASIN for any of these products, available for sale in the US?
There's a whole bunch of random no-name IP cameras available on Amazon US, often costing as low as $15 USD, possibly because some of them are subsidised by their cloud offerings, but I've never seen any of these brands listed on OpenIPC. I'm sure some of the brands we see, are simply whitelabels, but, how do you figure these things out, without a disassembly to look at the boards?
I've looked into it a few years ago when I was shopping and setting up my security cams. Super cool!
But, unfortunately, I wasn't able to translate any supported devices into an Amazon ASIN in the US.
Normally, many services on the internet only work in America. With OSS security cams, it seems to be the exact opposite. Eastern Europe and China are way ahead here.
I recently got a FOSCAM 3k wifi camera. It supports the RTSP stream standard and CGIProxy commands over http. After the initial setup (mostly just providing it with your network details), you never need to use the official app or cloud anything and it can be restricted to only your LAN with router firewall rules. This is, at least for me, a "good enough" solution that is not dependent on any cloud infrastructure and can be integrated, completely locally, with whatever services you want.
Somewhat related… I have an old dead Wi-Fi camera, it was always buggy but was useful when it worked initially.
With a spare raspberry pi kicking around, I’ve put together a better solution using Motion, a Webcam, iNotify and a Dropbox uploader script.
It works like a charm, after a powerloss etc the pi boots up, starts Motion and then starts watching for events, motion triggers and saves video clips to a folder, iNotify watches for new files saved and then uploads to Dropbox.
This may be a good place to introduce my HomeKit based Wyze v3 camera reflashing side project. If you're already in the apple ecosystem and want cheap, secure cameras, Wyrecam is an open source, vanilla HomeKit Secure Video (HKSV) firmware: https://github.com/radredgreen/wyrecam.
tangentially, does anyone know of any open-source and reliable implementations of the "AI" algorithms used in those expensive cameras? I'm looking to use features like face recognition, people counting, and similar capabilities, but with my own hardware and regular cameras. someone said to "avoid at all costs yolo" so i'm looking for alternatives
Fun fact: none of the cheap IP camera SoC vendors implement v4l2.
They all have their own off-spec kernel drivers, compatible with absolutely nothing. You even have to rewrite camera sensor drivers from scratch for every vendor's middleware.
The licensing on this project is wonky. They have an MIT license, but then they say you can't use the software for commercial purposes without contacting them. That's in contradiction to an MIT license. An MIT license is basically "use it for anything". If you don't want that, then use some kind of "copyleft" license for non-commercial users, and specify separate commercial terms for users who want to keep closed source with their modifications.
Whenever I look into IP cameras I close the tabs because it feels like I walked into a store brand cereal aisle where all the boxes are exclaiming “Now with fewer razor blades!” or “Only half the reported cases of salmonella than similar store brands!”
What’s a good brand for IP cameras? What’s the best, in terms of open source support and reliability?
I need a mix of PoE indoor and outdoor cameras. 15 outdoor/10 indoor. Cost isn't a factor, I need something reliable.
Axis.
I have 5 outdoor and 6 indoor cameras. They all support PoE power; for some of the internal ones I'm using PoE, others I got an injector & wifi dongle.
They'll talk to basically anything, the outdoor ones have handled several years of every possible kind of weather. I had one camera that died a week after it arrived; the RMA process w/ Axis was smooth and easy.
Their support windows are what you'd expect from a company whose primary customer base is commercial rather than consumer: IIRC they emailed me a year or two ago to warn me that they'll no longer be shipping software updates for my outdoor cams starting in 2030.
I'll second Axis. If you have the budget they are the best general IP cameras you can get. You also get root access on the OS (which is Linux-based).
Thanks, Axis looks promising.
Axis, Hanwha - not cheap but good and reliable
If Chinese brands don’t scare you: Hikvision is very good allarounder, Milesight, Uniview (UNV), Vivotek - good too
Dahua cheap but still usable
All other - don’t even bother
There's no reason to re-invent the wheel - ipcamtalk has a comprehensive set of explanatory posts. Don't buy Reolink, avoid Amcrest - Loryta (rebranded Dahua) and Hikvision are the strongest, but there are other strong options, especially on the refurbished commercial camera front.
I have a whole bunch of brands. I wrote ONVIF stuff, some years back. I gave up on it, as the spec sucks.
Hikvision has probably been the best "all-around" camera, but they may be subject to import restrictions.
Axis is very good (but un-cheap). Bosch is crappy (and also un-cheap).
I have a Dahua, which is quite good. I also have a pretty good Panasonic.
Funnily enough, probably the most reliable camera that I have, is also the cheapest. It's a $40 FLIR "eyeball" camera (not an IR camera -it's an OEM Chinese camera that several manufacturers rebrand).
A bunch of my cameras are obviously just rebrands of the same cheap crap. The software is abominable.
ipcamtalk feels completely captured by resellers and affiliates. I'd suggest taking any advice you see there with a grain of salt.
amcrest and reolink are some of the only large Chinese resellers that actually ensure onvif is implemented.
yeah they have a login wall without a reflash, but most of them do -- but the hardware isn't bad and you can keep it local after setup.
That said -- yes : hikvision is the de-facto generic IPcam without issues. Most CCTV softwares are built around hikvision cameras and firmwares as generics.
What's wrong with Amcrest IP cameras?
Here's what IPCam says about Reolink. Mostly bad night time performance: https://ipcamtalk.com/threads/convince-me-reolink-is-bad-to-...
hikvision are great, not sure why annke aren't mentioned more also, thats what i run and they're also really good.
Why not buy Reolink? I bought one for my parents and it just works for them as well as can be expected. Local storage, local vision recognition of people/pets/vehicles, an app with push notifications. Maybe a little rough around the edges but for a non-cloud device it's pretty darn good.
We got the Duo Floodlight PoE for reference.
I have Reolink Duo Floodlight connected to frigate and it work great.
Excellent in Lowlight and has a configurable floodlight.
Also mega-wide field of view
While not open source, I have had good experiences with Reolink. They integrate well into Home Assistant and Frigate.
Yeah, I need open source firmware.
What is the requirement for open source FW? As long as you get a camera that is ONVIF certified then there is no risk of lock in as it is an open standard that is compatible with most VMS software.
Don't forget that it is still an IP connected device, which will realistically never receive a security update.
Best-case scenario it'll call back to the mothership, worst-case scenario it'll turn into a backdoor for your entire network and you'll start receiving ransomware threats with awkward photos/videos attached to them.
It is best practice to put your cameras on a VLAN or otherwise restrict access to the internet. If you must expose it to the internet expose the VMS software and properly access not your cameras.
> worst-case scenario [...] you'll start receiving ransomware threats with awkward photos/videos attached to them
Honestly, I can kinda understand having outdoor cameras, if you're in a high crime area - but I just can't empathise with folks who feel more secure after putting indoor cameras in their own home.
I think it's for the case of if you have a nice house and you have a party and people come over, and they bring people that you don't know over, and something goes missing, they want to be able to see who took it.
> I think it's for the case of if you have a nice house and you have a party and people come over
thought this was going down a P Diddy route there for a second
You can avoid this by preventing any traffic to or from the device except from Frigate.
Yeah, you have to choose. Either a decent camera, or open source. Can't have both.
You could rig up some rPi's, but then you gotta maintain everything yourself. Weatherproofing is probably a PITA too.
3d printer plexiglass and silicone caulk ez pz
rPi don't have an open source firmware either.
And no decent image sensors.
The ones they sell aren’t great, but you can - with a bit of perseverance as it’s non-trivial - connect CSI-2 MIPI to a Raspberry Pi, and use any image sensor that supports that. Which includes a ton of great Sony CMOS sensors.
Are you sure? My info might be out-of-date, but a few years ago the MIPI support was in some propriety Broadcom firmware. So your choice was basically the ~3 sensors on official RPi camera boards (although people would sell you things like different lens mounts etc)
https://www.tindie.com/products/will123321/fourthirdeye-v10/ and a few other third party options have been available.
Also very interested in PoE cameras with open source firmware. Most of these seem to be wifi + power cable; I figure if I'm running a cable anyway it might as well be a data cable. Maybe wifi is easier to set up a couple devices, but once you get to 5+ cameras PoE is worth.
Criminals are using wifi jammers, so you really want a wired camera if you're setting up a system.
Hard wire your cameras and have a blinking red "recording" light that actually only responds to wifi jammers which cause it to stop blinking. They think they got the cams down, and stroll on unaware.
Then they don't even realize the real camera isn't visible. It's next to that big obvious one.
Maybe we don’t need to overcomplicate things? Cameras won’t stop theft, heck even police sometimes doesn’t stop theft (lookup California)
The goal isn't to trick burglars into burglarizing you.
I really like Ubiquiti but they're pricey and to get the full value you really need to be running their network gear too.
Some Reolink PoE cameras are OK, though a lot of people don't like them. Otherwise I would be looking for Axis (probably one of the best choices) or Dahua gear. Depending on how crazy you want to get, there are some vendors that make really excellent cameras like Costar/CohuHD, but be prepared to probably pay big dollars (and a lot of their stuff like my PTZ are huge cameras).
I have a friend with quite a large Reolink set up and he swears by them. I’ve been looking at them to replace my aging Ring outdoor cameras. Big downside for me is having to run a bridge for Home Kit integration.
I have used MindVision gigabit cameras, I believe they have some POE models (but they are mostly indoor-industrial-machine-vision. They do have a Linux SDK (basically a .so and a Python wrapper for the .so).
I'm going to look at all the links in the comments in this post to see if I can find things which are: better documented, more affordable, and easier to integrate.
Haven’t seen it yet so I’ll mention Hanwha, they were part of Samsung before the unit was spun out. They are probably the best competition to Axis and sit differently in the geopolitics, coming from Korea
Seems this comment thread is now its own cereal aisle
> Cost isn't a factor, I need something reliable.
Don't consider at all: All non-OEM Chinese stuff (1 trillion brands, way too many to list, including the usual consumer garbage that you might find in a store like Reolink etc.)
Consider if cost turns out to be a factor: The two major Chinese OEMs, Hikvision and Dahua.
Note: All Chinese OEMs are obviously implicated in the Chinese surveillance state. Obviously. A lot of "major" brands are OEMed by these two, even ones you might not expect. For example, much of Panasonic stuff is rebadged Dahua. Basically 90% of any CCTV camera Made in China comes from either Dahua or Hik, the lesser brands just mostly get (or rather, choose) the bargain-bin hardware with monkey-model firmware and of course no FW updates ever.
If cost really isn't a factor: Bosch, Axis, Dallmeier, Mobotix
Note: Most of these you cannot buy directly, and the vendor won't talk to you.
> What’s the best, in terms of open source support and reliability?
These are found at completely opposite ends of the spectrum. All good CCTVs cameras use signed and more-or-less well encrypted firmware, even cross-flashing isn't much of a thing.
I think it's worth mentioning that, if you can, set these IP cameras up on a separate VLAN that doesn't have internet access (or access to the rest of your network), run an open source PVR, and use firewall rules to allow the PVR to access the local streams on the IP camera VLAN. I think this mitigates much of the risk of using Chinese OEM cameras.
> I think this mitigates much of the risk of using Chinese OEM cameras.
I see two major problems buying from these companies.
The first is the practical risk that they will deliberately spy on you or just (through poor software quality) make it possible for others to do so. And yeah, putting them in a (V)LAN that can't access the Internet seems more or less sufficient. In theory they could exploit your browser in some way but I don't worry about this too much.
The second is the moral injury from buying from a company that actively participates in the Uyghur genocide. Not just "making cameras that the Chinese government buys through a retailer" but "writing software specifically to identify Uyghur ethnic features" [1] and/or "contracting with the Chinese government to install cameras at internment camps". [2] And there's no simply VLAN configuration that will wipe the blood off your hands.
They're nice cameras especially for the price, and I still use some I bought before I knew about this, but I can't bring myself to buy more or recommend others do so.
fwiw, I'm not aware of any evidence Reolink has participated in this, despite being a Chinese company. I try to stay away from Dahua, Hikvision, and Uniview, which is harder to do than it sounds because they make cameras sold under many brand names.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/world/chinese-tech-patents-t...
[2] https://ipvm.com/reports/hikvision-targeted
Hikvision and Dahua make a lot of cameras but I wouldn't call them the major OEMs, that would probably Ingenic, Goke, HiSilicon, uhhh Sigmastar, probably others I can't recall. If you're looking for one outside the PRC, Novatek is based in Taiwan.
This is pretty much exactly wrong. Dahua and Hikvision are by far the largest OEMs in the industry. The other companies you list are SoC vendors only.
Doesn't Ingenic just make the SoC? For example, Wyze cams use an Ingenic T20, as do a lot of no-name cameras.
I feel like a few of those are SoC and not actual cameras
I've worked with Mobotix cameras before and they are fantastic... also about $3500.
Usually we go for Geovision (still around $300 - $800) or Axis (little higher).
I looked at the list on https://thingino.com/ , and one of the cheapest cameras supported by thingino is Wansview Q5.
I'm NOT exactly sure on the exact version, because 2 different versions exist on Amazon, 3MP/2019 and 5MP/2024, in 2 colors each, but the older 3MP version is available for under $20.00 USD with FBA:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Wansview/page/1E1F86AB-C01A-45...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QKXM2D3 — $16.14 FBA for black 3MP Q5 Wansview
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QKWPT8J — $19.78 FBA for white 3MP Q5 Wansview
It's also been on sale at $9.99 on Woot a few months ago, but sold out.
https://electronics.woot.com/offers/wansview-2k-ip-security-...
EDIT: looks like the cheapest one in the US is actually Cinnado D1 2k, it's under $14.99 on Amazon.
https://github.com/wltechblog/thingino-installers/tree/main/...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CBBT5RMP — ≤$14.99 FBA for Cinnado D1
The 5MP version is not yet supported! it's identical to the Cinnado D1 5MP, and in addition to the better sensor (and dual band wifi!) they use the next generation Ingenic processors. Work in progress!
Generally the cheapest fro Amazom is by Cinnado. I have a video on installing it my channel as well. I've bought this model for as low as $9.50 shipped. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phqR49t75Ak
Does the two way audio work on this or any of these devices? I assume the PTZ does? That'd be such a crazy awesome package of stuff to have work!!
2-way audio works via ONVIF with clients as long as they support rtsp backchannel!
PTZ works great although none of these devices actually HAVE a zoom apability.
Wow, under $14.99 for Cinnado D1 2k is nice! Thanks!
It looks like right now it's available for 14.99 less the 25% promo code, that's $11.25 USD shipped, for OSS hardware? Niiice!
Cool! It looks like the Wansview Q5 has a similar SoC/camera/wireless setup as the Wansview W7, which as an installer guide on the Thingino wiki [1]. I wonder if that same installation process (but with the q5 firmware) would work. For $16 I'm inclined to try it out.
[1] - https://github.com/wltechblog/thingino-installers/tree/main/...
Last time I bought cameras refurbished Wyze cams were available stupid cheap, $5-$10 or something.
wyze doorbell v1 is very cheap refurb on ebay and has an actual 4 megapixel selsor they run at 1080p for no particular reason in their firmware. It's 4 megapixel when you run Thingino!
is thingino an alternative to open ipc? A newbie question
update seems like it's software for a camera module. Now I have to figure how to match that with cameras or how to connect it to my raspberry pi
Thingino is a full replacement firmware for Ingenic-based ip cameras. While we have some overlap with OpenIPC it's fair to say that our missions are quite different. I don't consider us competing projects, they even use some of our code (and possibly vice-versa) in their firmware.
Despite the name, openipc isn't fully open - the main recorder/encoder app (majestic) is closed source. Many openipc developers have moved to an alternative project named "thingino" which has a fully open source recorder/encoder/streamer.
> https://thingino.com/
> https://github.com/themactep/thingino-firmware
Nice, it actually supports several popular Amazon US "no-name" brands, including Imou and Wansview! (Plus, several mainstream Eufy, TP-Link and Wyze cameras are supported by thingino as well.) Seems to be more user-friendly than OpenIPC, too.
I'm generally the guy making "easy installers" for Thingino cams. The default way to install on a cam is to use a flash programmer, some devices you can use a uart adapter.. I try to find opportunities in the factory firmware that allow you to flash using just a SD card when possible, and publish walkthrough videos on my channel. Some other devices you can flash with a flash glitch trick at boot, which I have several devices documented for that method as well. I'm a huge proponent of privacy and security being available to everyone and not just the technically minded user, and being able to get a commodity priced camera to faithfully serve a non-technical user is my goal!
More info is at my installers repo https://github.com/wltechblog/thingino-installers or my YT channel (WLTechBlog)
I wonder if there is business in buying those cameras in bulk, flash them with thingio and resell them as "open" camera. Not sure if it's even legal. I guess flashing the camera probably void the warranty and the margin would be razor thin anyway.
I have the impression that most security cameras on Amazon are subsidized with their subscription services.
Also, because many of these brands are no-name, you get the inverse volume discounts — you can get 1 camera for less per-unit cost compared to buying 2 or more.
Starting a business may make more sense if you're willing to go directly to the manufacturer, and have the manufacturer flash the firmware directly at the factory. Even then, why would people buy from you at $30 when they can buy an encumbered version for $15 and follow a few instructions?
There are people using Thingino to provide security camera services. Just selling the cam pre-flashed probably isn't a great plan as I go out of my way to make it as easy as possible for people to flash our firmware themselves!
It should be sold at a higher price. You perform a service by “unlocking” the camera.
Our firmware is open source, if you think you can provide an upsell on pre-installed cams, go for it!
Thanks for doing that! And welcome to HN!
Do you know if Wansview Q5 can be installed easily or not? I think it's one of the only cams on the thingino list that's available in the US with super-fast Amazon FBA shipping for under $20 USD and with lots of stock.
The Q5 is on our supported list. I have a user who YOLOd and tried the Cinnado D1 (t23) installer and claimed success. Cinnado and Wasnview (and galayou and a few others!) are owned by the same company so a lot of things are shared.
> I have a user who YOLOd and tried the Cinnado D1 (t23) installer and claimed success.
Oh, wait, Cinnado D1 is only $14.99! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CBBT5RMP
That's cheaper than Wansview Q5! (Unless the Woot deal returns.)
yep I've got a video on the installation on my channel too!
That’s a great project, thanks for your work. I even have a couple of cameras around the house that look like they should work with this. Do you have any suggestions for an open NVR to pair with cameras running this firmware?
There are easily 50 different NVR applications out there. They differentiate themselves based on processing and analysis versus supported platforms.
Frigate is a reasonably immature project but it is getting better with each release. Blue Iris is adored but it does have a Windows requirement so that might disqualify it for you.
Yes I’m aware. But the whole point of this open firmware afaiu is that is enables use of the existing on-chip AI features for these particular cameras. Which means that something like Frigate - which focuses on running such AI features separately on, e.g., a coral accelerator - might not be a good fit. That’s why I sought the maintainer’s opinion.
https://thingino.com/
I love how the front page doesn't scream SOCs/SOMs to you and is just straight up here's the compatible cameras with pictures (with some SOM info below).
Yup. And these cameras supported by thingino are also available on Amazon for under $30, too, some as low as $20 or below!
This project only seems to support Ingenic SOCs (as per https://github.com/themactep/thingino-firmware). A far cry from the list supported by openipcam.
Edit: But they have a list of product names, where they support installation of Thingino: https://github.com/themactep/thingino-firmware/blob/master/d...
> https://github.com/themactep/thingino-firmware/blob/master/d...
Good list. Happy to see Imou and Wansview on the list, these "unknown" brands have been selling directly on Amazon US for a while now:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Wansview/page/1E1F86AB-C01A-45...
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Imou/page/73EC8A3D-1E78-42C5-8...
The ING in Thingino stands for Ingenic. The Ingenic chips are MIPS, all the other cams are ARM. Focusing on these chips allows us to produce a firmware that actually works (not my experience with openipc) and is already configured for a specific product so you don't have to spend hours figuring out specifics for your camera to enable the hardware features!
Thank you for your work! Can you recommend a compatible LAN POE camera available on Amazon(.de?)
POE hasn't really made it to the commodity level you'll find on Amazon. There are some Vanhua models available on Aliexpress.. we also have some users successfully using various POE to USB adapters. I don't use one myself so i can't personally vouch for one... note that not all cams have data available on their USB ports, if you have questions about a specific choice, come visit us on Discord!
I guess encoder app is separate from encoder proper, because I have to assume the bulk of the encoder is done in hardware. I mean, those things can do realtime h265 in 4k without a beefy CPU or getting hot.
Most of the image/video related stuff is done in the hardware, as well as a bunch of other functionality that would be hard to do on a 1 watt cpu. Check out the block diagram of the T31 processor: https://en.ingenic.com.cn/products-detail/id-21.html
Our streamer (prudynt-t) communicates with those blocks to handle settings, overlays, etc and receives the pre-processed image/video/audio data, packages it up for rtsp//mjpeg/etc, and handles client connections, motion sending, day/night vision, etc.
This is the status quo for ip cameras regardless of vendor!
How much memory do these cams have? What's the beefiest camera that's still a good value, e.g., cheap? Any support 5GHz yet?
These processors range between 32 and 128 megabytes of ram, and a chunk of that is reserved at bootup for the hardware feature blocks.
We have a couple devices that support 5ghz, but I don't think any of them are on my favorites list. I picked up a Wansview G6 which is a light bulb format cam, my least favorite, but it was our first dual band device. More to follow!
That seems very little RAM, do they even support ssh?
Is there a comparison table which devices have how much RAM etc?
BTW, do you know if Amcrest ASH21 are supported? They look identical to Imou Ranger 2 from the front, although Amcrest does have an RJ45 in the back, whereas Ranger 2 possible doesn't?
A number of years back I got bored during covid and decided to reverse engineer as much of the Wyze Cam V2 camera I could and make some custom firmware for it. Right now that lives at https://github.com/openmiko/openmiko
That said it's really hard to make long term supportable open source camera software/firmware. And when picking cameras it is even harder because the market as it stands now does not let you have it all. You need to pick what facets you really care about.
Also keep in mind even the above code is not really opensource all the way: I still had to load the driver binaries. Not sure that source will ever be released. The kernel is also old as heck.
What I do feel good about though is saving these old cameras from the dumpster if Wyze ever stops supporting them. The firmware works for simple cases: just load it up and you can start curl'ing frames. I used it in scripts to put together timelapse videos with ffmpeg. No need to screw around with authentication, phones apps, email, etc.
Hey, Openmiko is a nice project. With your baggage of knowledge, I would love to see you contributing to Thingino as well. While we still depend on binary blobs from the manufacturer SDK, there is a work on alternatives to replace what is replaceable with open stack. Join the team, have fun.
I actually tried this before and it led nowhere. The list of supported hardware is specifically referring to the SoC, not a brand or anything. It can be very hard determining which physical cameras have which chips. On top of that, despite the name, most of the supported devices seem to be for webcams, and not chips used in modern off-the-shelf IP cameras. I really wish there was a ground up guide that used an obtainable, normal camera.
You might have better luck with the Thingino project, we target specific devices.
This looks great! Do a PoE outdoor camera! I'll keep an eye on your project, maybe I will find some time to contribute.
When I last looked into a PTZ capable outdoor camera, the best advice was that I can probably get a supported camera module but I would have to source my own enclosure, lenses and everything else. There are standard dimensions for lenses and mount points ...etc but it was not going to be a straightforward thing that I could bang out in a weekend.
looking at the russian sponsors linked on the russian site I suppose this is mostly for the people putting these things on drones or in trenches... I suppose they obtain their cameras somewhere...
This seems nice. But if I am looking correctly, it does not support the devices from the mainstream brands like Hikvision.
I am unaware of how good those typical $20 cameras are. Maybe they are decent. But for instance some of the Hikvision ones with 8MP sensors support 4K@25 fps.
I think that it would be great if there would be an open source firmware for higher-end cameras like those.
Thingino doesn't support cams with ARM processors, we only support the chips made by Ingenic (which are a MIPS superset they call Xburst). We have a number of 4 megapixel (not 4k) devices we support, and are in the process of adding support for the next generation of Ingenic chips (Xburst2) which will bring up support for 8 megapixel (4k) devices.
We're also focused mostly on the less expensive models, because they're obviously within reach for a lot more folks but also they're almost always subsidized by the expectation that a discounted purchase price is made up for by the vendor's cloud subscription. You can get a LOT of great camera models for a low price.
I will say that there is a story about Hikvision that would likely steer most folks away from their brand.. it's bad enough that Google won't index it... With that said, I don't believe anyone should be trusting any third party with their video data in the first place...
> I don't believe anyone should be trusting any third party with their video data in the first place
Of course. No one is suggesting that storing video data from cameras in a cloud system over which the owner has no oversight and no control is reasonable.
I was mostly interested in what kind of image quality can an end user expect to get from a camera with open source firmware.
The mainstream brands like Hikvision had cameras with 4K@25 fps capabilities several years ago. And if I understand what you have written in your message correctly, the Thingino may possibly, start supporting similar cameras sometimes in the future. Which is great. But it does not support them now.
I fully understand that the focus is on the mass market where the devices are cheap. It makes sense. It is reasonable.
But it is also necessary, in my opinion, to fully openly acknowledge that there indeed is a fairly broad gap in capabilities of what you can get with this kind of firmware when compared to the mainstream offerings.
Indeed we don't have that 4k yet but we've got a lot of 3k options and 4k coming soon. We're 100 transparent about which devices we support, the full list including photos and specs is on our homepage, there's not much room for confusion there.
We need more projects like this. I have a tp-link "tapo" home "security" camera.
Setup is made online. Then try to use that without a permanent internet connection... it turns itself off.
It needs a permament connection to tp-link. Now you imagine why.
I have two Tapo units at home, they seem to be working fine without an internet connection.
I created a new subnet and an associated WiFi SSID for it, connected the Tapo cameras, and set them up to act as RTSP cams. I then firewalled the subnet off from anything other than my Frigate NVR server and gateway. They still work fine, they are streaming video to Frigate without complaint. Maybe because they have DNS from my gateway still? (I should probably block that off, it's a common data exfil vector).
Very annoying that internet connectivity is required for initial setup, I'll agree there. They could have just had a bare bones web interface.
It's hard to say for sure if this firmware will work on a specific Tapo camera, but the Tapo TC60 uses the Ingenic T31 SOC, which is supported. If there's a strong chance that their cameras use any of the Ingenic SOCs on this list, it would be worthwhile trying.
Yup, requiring permanent internet connection is such BS.
I had one of these "no-brand" cameras that had an integrated MicroSD card, which would make you think that it'd work just fine even without the internet.
We had no power in Austin for several days, but I kept my camera on a portable battery, because, why not?
After the power and the internet were restored and I checked the app, turns out, nothing was recorded! Even though it was online the whole time.
Such a major disappointment.
Related:
Show HN: WFB-ng – long range high speed link for drones and robotics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41293934 - Aug 2024 (3 comments)
Thingino: Camera firmware derived from OpenIPC focused on the Ingenic SoC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40261046 - May 2024 (2 comments)
OpenIPC is an alternative open firmware for your IP camera - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39571025 - March 2024 (70 comments)
OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37812217 - Oct 2023 (59 comments)
OpenIPC: Alternative open firmware for your IP camera - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35975383 - May 2023 (1 comment)
Is there a list of camera models that are known compatible? I took a quick glance, this looks really cool!
There seem to be a few camera manufacturers listed under "Supporters" on the introduction page, namely Goodcam and RunCam.
It'd be really nice if any of the $15 cams on Amazon were supported.
Link from the homepage: https://openipc.org/supported-hardware/featured
This is a list of SOCs, not a list of devices containing these SOCs.
And for most cameras sold, you'll have a hard time figuring out pre-buy, what SOC it contains.
I'm happy for anyone who can make a use out of it, and it's nice to see one of the only examples where non-US users are ahead of the US, but…
Do you have any Amazon ASIN for any of these products, available for sale in the US?
There's a whole bunch of random no-name IP cameras available on Amazon US, often costing as low as $15 USD, possibly because some of them are subsidised by their cloud offerings, but I've never seen any of these brands listed on OpenIPC. I'm sure some of the brands we see, are simply whitelabels, but, how do you figure these things out, without a disassembly to look at the boards?
Does this firmware work with open source camera recorders ("NVR") like Shinobi [1], Frigate [2], ZoneMinder [3], etc?
[1]: https://shinobi.video/ [2]: https://frigate.video/ [3]: https://zoneminder.com/
Yes. I have a few of these cameras all pointed to a frigate instance.
This firmware offers a variety of protocols so basically anything designed for viewing streaming video should just work
I've looked into it a few years ago when I was shopping and setting up my security cams. Super cool!
But, unfortunately, I wasn't able to translate any supported devices into an Amazon ASIN in the US.
Normally, many services on the internet only work in America. With OSS security cams, it seems to be the exact opposite. Eastern Europe and China are way ahead here.
I recently got a FOSCAM 3k wifi camera. It supports the RTSP stream standard and CGIProxy commands over http. After the initial setup (mostly just providing it with your network details), you never need to use the official app or cloud anything and it can be restricted to only your LAN with router firewall rules. This is, at least for me, a "good enough" solution that is not dependent on any cloud infrastructure and can be integrated, completely locally, with whatever services you want.
Somewhat related… I have an old dead Wi-Fi camera, it was always buggy but was useful when it worked initially.
With a spare raspberry pi kicking around, I’ve put together a better solution using Motion, a Webcam, iNotify and a Dropbox uploader script. It works like a charm, after a powerloss etc the pi boots up, starts Motion and then starts watching for events, motion triggers and saves video clips to a folder, iNotify watches for new files saved and then uploads to Dropbox.
This may be a good place to introduce my HomeKit based Wyze v3 camera reflashing side project. If you're already in the apple ecosystem and want cheap, secure cameras, Wyrecam is an open source, vanilla HomeKit Secure Video (HKSV) firmware: https://github.com/radredgreen/wyrecam.
Sounds promising but soldering electronics is pretty far outside of my comfort zone, think I'm going to let this marinate for a while.
tangentially, does anyone know of any open-source and reliable implementations of the "AI" algorithms used in those expensive cameras? I'm looking to use features like face recognition, people counting, and similar capabilities, but with my own hardware and regular cameras. someone said to "avoid at all costs yolo" so i'm looking for alternatives
I would post this if to IPVM ( IPvm.com ) if I had not been kicked out, because I did not have a company email address ...
Is this a spam comment or what is the relation of this service to the topic at hand?
Fun fact: none of the cheap IP camera SoC vendors implement v4l2.
They all have their own off-spec kernel drivers, compatible with absolutely nothing. You even have to rewrite camera sensor drivers from scratch for every vendor's middleware.
I'm confused why such a device needs to run Linux instead of an RTOS
Because using an RTOS for anything complex sucks, and Linux is nice and easy to work with.
Same reason why routers run Linux.
The licensing on this project is wonky. They have an MIT license, but then they say you can't use the software for commercial purposes without contacting them. That's in contradiction to an MIT license. An MIT license is basically "use it for anything". If you don't want that, then use some kind of "copyleft" license for non-commercial users, and specify separate commercial terms for users who want to keep closed source with their modifications.
Most of their code is MIT, but there's a proprietary streamer engine at the heart of it.
would love to see something like this for ycam homemonitor products
This is great
Seems like figuring out the SoC is the hard part.
this is neat too as it can control some of my cameras
https://team.openipc.org/ipcam_dms/
(note the english translated link)