Hello there.
I will start by saying that I really didn't want to go down this road. I'm not obsessive about watching cam feeds, or really worrying about security at my place. That said, I'm away from home quite a bit, and having some record of what's going on, and being able to check conditions is handy.
When I inherited my place a few years ago, I decided to put up the cams. I had virtually no infrastructure to support this. The property has 4 building on it scattered around a few acres (old farm setting). Power was only on to 2 of 4 all the time, and there was no network.
I went with an Arlo Pro 4 system. I was able to jump building to building with Eero mesh Wifi. Bandwidth isn't great at the far buildings, but it works. The batteries would hold up for the few days/week I was away, and recharge when I turned on the power when I got back. Software was ok. My relitives across the street also had Arlo, and I could get on their cams as well.
Fast forward to today. Arlo changed their software a year or so ago. They dropped support for the older cams my relitives have, and I could no longer see theirs after I "upgraded" the software. (thankfully they didn't, so their system still runs just fine) Then the bugs started running free. Huge lag, lots of missing videos, and now they've managed to break it even more in the last month so I'm not getting probably 80-90% of the motion triggers I was getting a couple months ago. They say they've rolled the change back, but clearly they haven't. They're also ramping up to change the subscription plans, and while I'd be grandfathered in, it's clear they aren't going to maintain the software to support that.
I'm done. I have zero confidence in the system. If I'm going to have a system, it has to work. All the time. I'm not looking to watch the odd cat video, or the deer that roam around (those are nice, but not the point). I would have much preferd to have the video of the kid that drove off the road on to my place at 12:20am Tuesday, took out 3 steel posts, grazed the stairs on one building before hitting a tree. That happend right in front of an Arlo. It didn't trigger for that, or the 1.5 hours the ensuing response took before everything was cleand up. If the system can't pick that up, it's garbage. Two hours later that bloody camera triggerd for a deer walking by. (and yes, the system is set to capture on everything, not just animals)
So, now I'm going to trench in wire in the spring between buildings. It will be wired IP cams, running back to a PC running BI. I know I could just go to an NVR. I've been tangentally connected to 3 different NVR installs, and I have not been overly impressed with the interface. Before you jump all over me to defend that, I don't recall the specific details (other than 2 of them were Laview), however, there were far too many functions that sounded good, but the software simply didn't work for whatever the reason. They all recorded ok, but the surrounding software was kinda wonky. I would expect that there are NVR's out there that are just fine, but I don't feel like experimenting, being disappointed, and then ending up with BI on a PC anyway. Probably 8 cams. Either 2k or possibly 4k. (the Arlo's are 2k, and they're generally good enough, but more detail is always better if you really need it) It is possible I'd expand across the road at some point with a few more, but that isn't today, tomorrow, or next year.
While I'm not a big Linux guy, I have one headless box running to handle an application out there that is fabulous as it doesn't force updates... I'd probably go that way for the cams, but from reading some, that doesn't seem like the way to go here. I'm thinking it will be a Win 11 machine cut off from the internet. That's going to take a little more research in how exactly to handle that since I'm sure Microsoft will have a tantrum... I really don't want to deal with the MS update BS that manages to hang some of my machines periodically. I don't mind having to bring it back online if there's something specific I need to upgrade that I can't sneakernet in on a USB drive. I know I could go Win 10, but I want this system to be as future proof as possible.
So I'm here to do the research... If that leads me in a different direction, I'm ok with that. Trenching would be in the spring at the earliest (too late to get grass started over the trenchs now). I could plausibly get the PC, and some cams running around the main building over the winter, and then just expand once I get the wire in to the other buildings. Until then, I'll just be over here at the brick wall of Arlo...
I will start by saying that I really didn't want to go down this road. I'm not obsessive about watching cam feeds, or really worrying about security at my place. That said, I'm away from home quite a bit, and having some record of what's going on, and being able to check conditions is handy.
When I inherited my place a few years ago, I decided to put up the cams. I had virtually no infrastructure to support this. The property has 4 building on it scattered around a few acres (old farm setting). Power was only on to 2 of 4 all the time, and there was no network.
I went with an Arlo Pro 4 system. I was able to jump building to building with Eero mesh Wifi. Bandwidth isn't great at the far buildings, but it works. The batteries would hold up for the few days/week I was away, and recharge when I turned on the power when I got back. Software was ok. My relitives across the street also had Arlo, and I could get on their cams as well.
Fast forward to today. Arlo changed their software a year or so ago. They dropped support for the older cams my relitives have, and I could no longer see theirs after I "upgraded" the software. (thankfully they didn't, so their system still runs just fine) Then the bugs started running free. Huge lag, lots of missing videos, and now they've managed to break it even more in the last month so I'm not getting probably 80-90% of the motion triggers I was getting a couple months ago. They say they've rolled the change back, but clearly they haven't. They're also ramping up to change the subscription plans, and while I'd be grandfathered in, it's clear they aren't going to maintain the software to support that.
I'm done. I have zero confidence in the system. If I'm going to have a system, it has to work. All the time. I'm not looking to watch the odd cat video, or the deer that roam around (those are nice, but not the point). I would have much preferd to have the video of the kid that drove off the road on to my place at 12:20am Tuesday, took out 3 steel posts, grazed the stairs on one building before hitting a tree. That happend right in front of an Arlo. It didn't trigger for that, or the 1.5 hours the ensuing response took before everything was cleand up. If the system can't pick that up, it's garbage. Two hours later that bloody camera triggerd for a deer walking by. (and yes, the system is set to capture on everything, not just animals)
So, now I'm going to trench in wire in the spring between buildings. It will be wired IP cams, running back to a PC running BI. I know I could just go to an NVR. I've been tangentally connected to 3 different NVR installs, and I have not been overly impressed with the interface. Before you jump all over me to defend that, I don't recall the specific details (other than 2 of them were Laview), however, there were far too many functions that sounded good, but the software simply didn't work for whatever the reason. They all recorded ok, but the surrounding software was kinda wonky. I would expect that there are NVR's out there that are just fine, but I don't feel like experimenting, being disappointed, and then ending up with BI on a PC anyway. Probably 8 cams. Either 2k or possibly 4k. (the Arlo's are 2k, and they're generally good enough, but more detail is always better if you really need it) It is possible I'd expand across the road at some point with a few more, but that isn't today, tomorrow, or next year.
While I'm not a big Linux guy, I have one headless box running to handle an application out there that is fabulous as it doesn't force updates... I'd probably go that way for the cams, but from reading some, that doesn't seem like the way to go here. I'm thinking it will be a Win 11 machine cut off from the internet. That's going to take a little more research in how exactly to handle that since I'm sure Microsoft will have a tantrum... I really don't want to deal with the MS update BS that manages to hang some of my machines periodically. I don't mind having to bring it back online if there's something specific I need to upgrade that I can't sneakernet in on a USB drive. I know I could go Win 10, but I want this system to be as future proof as possible.
So I'm here to do the research... If that leads me in a different direction, I'm ok with that. Trenching would be in the spring at the earliest (too late to get grass started over the trenchs now). I could plausibly get the PC, and some cams running around the main building over the winter, and then just expand once I get the wire in to the other buildings. Until then, I'll just be over here at the brick wall of Arlo...
