Some older Wansview, TP-Link, Wyze and Imou are also supported.
Part of the reason these cams are sold so cheap, and are directly imported into the US by the brand owners, is because they're making all of their money from the subscriptions. It's also the reason why buying a single camera is actually cheaper than buying a pack.
The cheapest supported camera, aside from a given you as a gift, is Jooan A2R from Temu. It is like $3 per piece, brand new. It is a nice little pan/tilt model with a low-end 720p sensor. But it is fast, nice looking, snappy and dirt cheap.
I think the biggest difference I could see is that OpenIPC targets Europe as its main market, whereas thingino is US/Canada and is easier to get started with.
Honestly, I couldn't find a single Amazon ASIN for anything listed on OpenIPC.
It's not much help for them to support more devices if none of those are being imported into the US.
Compare to thingino, which has support for Wyze, Eufy, Wansview, Cinnado, Imou, TP-Link and lots of other brands which are officially imported into the US and are best-sellers in their respective categories on Amazon, with the free Fulfilled-by-Amazon shipping.
I've looked at the OpenIPC sponsors. It looks like there's a huge market in Eastern Europe to install a camera at the entrance to your apartment building, and then charge your neighbours for camera access as a value-added service, e.g., a shared intercom. Also, to keep an eye on the shared courtyard (dvor24). Pretty ingenious, if you ask me!
I just installed this on my Wyse cam 2 after using the defang hacks for years. This works all the same but it is much better. Having working night vision where it isn't just randomly enabling the IR filter is great.
Upgrade from dafang was easy if you follow the guide on the github wiki. Getting RTSP working was strange as it wouldn't work over IP but did over local DNS entry, but that's the only issue I've found so far.
It's still a pretty hard question to answer, given how specific model numbers are sometimes missing on sales listings, and silent revisions to hardware.
What does the firmware do, practically? Can I use the firmware on my Wyze cameras as a drop-in replacement? Will the cameras still talk to the Wyze app?
I guess my question is: from a practical viewpoint, what do I get with this firmware (other than that it is open and all that, which I totally appreciate).
Thingino is a replacement of the stock firmware. But you obviously lose the ability to use vendor's cloud. Because if you still want to use the subscription service, why would you need to replace the stock firmware?
Frigate has been ok for me when paired with a gpu or tpu for to speed up the object recognition features. It's the closest I've found to the usual IP camera cloud sold by the IP camera manufacturers.
That said, it's installation method uses containers, which I could do without. Configuring it can feel a bit fiddly depending on the hardware you have, but that's likely to be the case with most NVR systems that support a wide variety of setups.
This is really great and an underrated project. I speculate that this idea will trigger other innovations in this field as it brings developers access. As the surveillance state expands its reach, projects like this deserve recognition.
The prior OpenIPC thread from earlier today is literally 75% about thingino:
OpenIPC: Open IP Camera Firmware — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44758463 — Aug 2025 (106 comments)
The cheapest camera that you can install this onto, is Cinnado D1, which retails at under $14.99 USD FBA on Amazon Prime in the US:
https://github.com/wltechblog/thingino-installers/tree/main/...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CBBT5RMP — ≤ $14.99 FBA for Cinnado D1, #3 best-seller in "Dome Surveillance Cameras"
Some older Wansview, TP-Link, Wyze and Imou are also supported.
Part of the reason these cams are sold so cheap, and are directly imported into the US by the brand owners, is because they're making all of their money from the subscriptions. It's also the reason why buying a single camera is actually cheaper than buying a pack.
The cheapest supported camera, aside from a given you as a gift, is Jooan A2R from Temu. It is like $3 per piece, brand new. It is a nice little pan/tilt model with a low-end 720p sensor. But it is fast, nice looking, snappy and dirt cheap.
That does seem to be Ingenic SoC based (which is what Thingino supports).
One neat thing about openipc is that it supports a huge range of SoC. Example link. https://openipc.org/cameras/vendors/hisilicon
I think the biggest difference I could see is that OpenIPC targets Europe as its main market, whereas thingino is US/Canada and is easier to get started with.
Honestly, I couldn't find a single Amazon ASIN for anything listed on OpenIPC.
It's not much help for them to support more devices if none of those are being imported into the US.
Compare to thingino, which has support for Wyze, Eufy, Wansview, Cinnado, Imou, TP-Link and lots of other brands which are officially imported into the US and are best-sellers in their respective categories on Amazon, with the free Fulfilled-by-Amazon shipping.
OpenIPC notably doesn't list products & things you can buy.
Their "supported hardware" is what chipsets they support! It's up to you to go "do the research" or whatever to find out what cameras that might be!
I've bounced hard off OpenIPC in the past for this reason. That said I think the hikvision I bought a couple years ago is supported.
I've looked at the OpenIPC sponsors. It looks like there's a huge market in Eastern Europe to install a camera at the entrance to your apartment building, and then charge your neighbours for camera access as a value-added service, e.g., a shared intercom. Also, to keep an eye on the shared courtyard (dvor24). Pretty ingenious, if you ask me!
OpenIPC lists SoCs, and it lists SoCs used by the Wyze cameras. I just looked mine up.
I just installed this on my Wyse cam 2 after using the defang hacks for years. This works all the same but it is much better. Having working night vision where it isn't just randomly enabling the IR filter is great.
Upgrade from dafang was easy if you follow the guide on the github wiki. Getting RTSP working was strange as it wouldn't work over IP but did over local DNS entry, but that's the only issue I've found so far.
Oh nice. I have one of those somewhere in a box, as the 'Dafang hacks' was flaky to me. I should try it!
Fascinating comparison of the main page here versus the OpenIPC camera firmware also on the front page.
First thing I want to know is "do I have this hardware".
These guys do it right.
It's still a pretty hard question to answer, given how specific model numbers are sometimes missing on sales listings, and silent revisions to hardware.
What does the firmware do, practically? Can I use the firmware on my Wyze cameras as a drop-in replacement? Will the cameras still talk to the Wyze app?
I guess my question is: from a practical viewpoint, what do I get with this firmware (other than that it is open and all that, which I totally appreciate).
Thingino is a replacement of the stock firmware. But you obviously lose the ability to use vendor's cloud. Because if you still want to use the subscription service, why would you need to replace the stock firmware?
Open-source Firmware for Ingenic SoC IP Cameras. Unlike OpenIPC, the encoder, recorder and streamer in thingino are open source.
I just bricked a wyze2 camera. I was excited to finally be able to use the units again. Followed the process but unfortunately, the camera dead.
You cannot brick these that easily. Come to the support channel on Discord and we'll teach you how to revive it.
This looks really nice, but I can’t see HomeKit support listed. I had a few ESP32 cameras that mostly worked, so it can be done…
Come to our Discord for support, we have people using Thingino with HomeKit.
Here's a good YouTube overview from the developer
https://youtu.be/QQV6vjzhylg
This looks like a great project!
Anyone has recommendations for open source self host video recorder and processor?
Frigate has been ok for me when paired with a gpu or tpu for to speed up the object recognition features. It's the closest I've found to the usual IP camera cloud sold by the IP camera manufacturers.
That said, it's installation method uses containers, which I could do without. Configuring it can feel a bit fiddly depending on the hardware you have, but that's likely to be the case with most NVR systems that support a wide variety of setups.
https://frigate.video/
I'll probably just connect this into home assistant
SentryShot OVR
I wish something existed for the Amazon Cloudcams I still have around …
This is really great and an underrated project. I speculate that this idea will trigger other innovations in this field as it brings developers access. As the surveillance state expands its reach, projects like this deserve recognition.