New NVR Startup I'm Beta Testing (Camect)

[Jer-Bear]

All,

I wanted to tall you about this NVR I am beta testing. Its quite small and powerful for what it is.

It was designed by a guy at google and another guy who is an expert in AI.

My home has a very diverse group of cameras, and it found all of them within 40 seconds! (My house is a testbed for future projects)

Even in its beta stage, it has been more reliable than my main Blue Iris setup. (Not as many options as blue iris)

It was designed for the entry-level end-user, but has 20 AI features built into it.

Click here if you want to learn more about it. I believe the second batch will be shipped sometime in Feb.

Indegogo
Webpage

 

[mat200]

All,

I wanted to tall you about this NVR I am beta testing. Its quite small and powerful for what it is.

It was designed by a guy at google and another guy who is an expert in AI.

My home has a very diverse group of cameras, and it found all of them within 40 seconds! (My house is a testbed for future projects)

Even in its beta stage, it has been more reliable than my main Blue Iris setup. (Not as many options as blue iris)

It was designed for the entry-level end-user, but has 20 AI features built into it.

Click here if you want to learn more about it. I believe the second batch will be shipped sometime in Feb.

..

Hi @Jer-Bear

So they claim it works with Arlo cameras - so how is it getting the video feed from the Arlo camera?

 

[aristobrat]

Welcome to the forum!

There's a pretty good thread about Camect below where one of the authors (spectator) had added some good info:

Camect - New “do all” box

Any thoughts on this new box? Allegedly allows local storage for all the big cloud cameras (arlo, dropcam, etc) as well as most other IP came. Includes 1tb expandable storage as well as event detection (by type). Looks promising. The one reason I got rid of my cloud cams and went to a closed...

ipcamtalk.com

@mat200, check out their blurb about Nest, Arlo, and Wyze at the top of this page. I thought that was a pretty decent way of positioning it.

Camect works with some cloud cameras and almost all IP cameras. - camect

IP Cameras: Cameras that support Onvif or RTSP will work. There are hundreds of compatible models. IP cameras from these popular brands WILL work: Amcrest, Axis, Dahua, Foscam, Hikvision, Reolink (non-Argus), Trivision, Vstarcam (but read the brand-specific notes). Many others will work too...

camect.com

 

[mat200]

Welcome to the forum!

There's a pretty good thread about Camect below where one of the authors (spectator) had added some good info:

Camect - New “do all” box

Any thoughts on this new box? Allegedly allows local storage for all the big cloud cameras (arlo, dropcam, etc) as well as most other IP came. Includes 1tb expandable storage as well as event detection (by type). Looks promising. The one reason I got rid of my cloud cams and went to a closed...

ipcamtalk.com

@mat200, check out their blurb about Nest, Arlo, and Wyze at the top of this page. I thought that was a pretty decent way of positioning it.

Camect works with some cloud cameras and almost all IP cameras. - camect

IP Cameras: Cameras that support Onvif or RTSP will work. There are hundreds of compatible models. IP cameras from these popular brands WILL work: Amcrest, Axis, Dahua, Foscam, Hikvision, Reolink (non-Argus), Trivision, Vstarcam (but read the brand-specific notes). Many others will work too...

camect.com

Hi @aristobrat

I did not see how they were doing this..

man the the middle attack? ( i.e. hijacking the video stream from the Arlo camera? )
getting the video from Arlo's cloud servers?

last I checked there is no rtsp feed from Arlo cameras.

 

[Jono83]

Hi @aristobrat

I did not see how they were doing this..

man the the middle attack? ( i.e. hijacking the video stream from the Arlo camera? )
getting the video from Arlo's cloud servers?

last I checked there is no rtsp feed from Arlo cameras.

Hi Mat, is there a problem with the "man in the middle" approach? If that's what Camect is doing. Also isn't that what Tinycam is doing?

I am a novice but with 9 Wyze cams on the perimeter of my home for past few months, the "false alerts" due to headlights, shadows and branch movements are the #1 problem by far. Related problem is the Wyze "cool down" period which causes gaps in alerts. The Camect problem seems to address false alerts head-on

It sounds like Camect could be a great compliment for my use case:
1) Appears Camect will accurately address false alerts (my #1 problem) I do like the Wyze person notification but its going away with a TBD on a replacement)
2) I would like to try a higher end camera or two for certain locations and Camect app would allow for consolidated view with a remote app
3) I don't have much experience in searching recorded activity but appears Camect will be much more feature rich than my current Wyze app options
4) Appears Camect would be more secure option as all data can be local vs cloud

Cost of Camect I'll have to think about. Appears $300 for hub/app/1tb storage plus $60 per year to have remote access for more than 2 cams. (which is more than I paid for the 9 Wyze cams & sd cards for limited local storage).

I respect your views based on past posts, Mat what do you think?

Jono38

 

[mat200]

Hi Mat, is there a problem with the "man in the middle" approach? If that's what Camect is doing. Also isn't that what Tinycam is doing?

I am a novice but with 9 Wyze cams on the perimeter of my home for past few months, the "false alerts" due to headlights, shadows and branch movements are the #1 problem by far. Related problem is the Wyze "cool down" period which causes gaps in alerts. The Camect problem seems to address false alerts head-on

It sounds like Camect could be a great compliment for my use case:
1) Appears Camect will accurately address false alerts (my #1 problem) I do like the Wyze person notification but its going away with a TBD on a replacement)
2) I would like to try a higher end camera or two for certain locations and Camect app would allow for consolidated view with a remote app
3) I don't have much experience in searching recorded activity but appears Camect will be much more feature rich than my current Wyze app options
4) Appears Camect would be more secure option as all data can be local vs cloud

Cost of Camect I'll have to think about. Appears $300 for hub/app/1tb storage plus $60 per year to have remote access for more than 2 cams. (which is more than I paid for the 9 Wyze cams & sd cards for limited local storage).

I respect your views based on past posts, Mat what do you think?

Jono38

Hi Jono38

I like to keep my main core security camera system isolated from the internet. Less worries for me.

Also I like to avoid as many subscription charges as possible as I feel am paying enough monthly bills.

naturally others do like cloud connectivity and cloud services - so it will really be up to what you like to pay for.

At this time, I would recommend getting a nice small PoE switch and a good IP PoE camera and start to play with them to get a good comparison and contrast with the Wyze cameras you have.

 

[aristobrat]

Hi @aristobrat

I did not see how they were doing this..

man the the middle attack? ( i.e. hijacking the video stream from the Arlo camera? )
getting the video from Arlo's cloud servers?

last I checked there is no rtsp feed from Arlo cameras.

Sorry, I missed this reply.

I was just glad to see them call out that the "cloud integration" could stop at any time if Nest, Arlo, or Wyze make changes on their respective ends and see that they recommended switching to regular IP cameras if happy with the Camect product.

They have the specifics for some cameras on that page. Looks like with Arlo they're scraping the video from the Arlo web viewer.

ARLO

All Arlo cameras will work with Camect at the same resolution as Arlo supplies for live viewing on my.arlo.com.

Notes:

• Camect streams video and records continuously, and will quickly drain the battery on battery-operated models.
• Camect does not support Arlo 2-factor authentication yet, but support is planned. Until then, you can share your cameras with a another account that doesn’t have two-factor auth and doesn’t have permission to do anything other than view, and use that second account to connect from Camect.
• Arlo allows each viewer account to be signed in to view from the web once, and Camect counts as a viewer. If you wish to view your cameras on the web using other apps while also using them with Camect, you’ll be best off creating a separate arlo account, sharing the cameras with that account, and using that account with Camect.
• Arlo also has a limit of 5 live streams per base station. Bear this in mind if you have several cameras that share a base station that you’d like to use with Camect.

 

[MickPB]

How many cameras do you have connected? What are they rated forMP? I see mention the limit of 5 cameras. I have 7 but really like the idea that they are selling.

The wild life recognition would be very helpful. They are out number one vandalism problem.

Also,curious to know if there is any option to use webhooks or other option to connect other HA systems.

 

[spectator]

How many cameras do you have connected? What are they rated forMP? I see mention the limit of 5 cameras. I have 7 but really like the idea that they are selling.

The wild life recognition would be very helpful. They are out number one vandalism problem.

Also,curious to know if there is any option to use webhooks or other option to connect other HA systems.

5 cameras were used as an example in the price comparison -- if that's what you're looking at -- because the price comparison gets more favorable to Camect the more cameras you use, and 5 is still what an "average" home has.

The actual limit is roughly 24MP of total camera resolution ... i.e. up to 12 cameras if you're at 1080p, 6 cameras at 4M each, etc ... That's for "typical home security usage" and could be lower if, say, you have several cameras pointed at busy street scenes that require constant processing from the AI.

Camect also has an integration API that so far has been used to put together an experimental Home Assistant integration ... It gives you information about what's being detected (so you can trigger actions on another system), the ability to switch the operating mode under external control, plus the ability to integrate a camera display into the dashboard of another system.

See

camect/camect-py
camect/home-assistant-integration

 

[Jono83]

For those of you that have the Camect how are notifications working when you are away from your home? Is there much or any delay in receiving the notifications on your phone when away? Is it easy enough to review the saved notification event on your phone when away?

I assume live views on your phone when away are available

Thank you!

 

[MickPB]

Interesting. I'd think the HA and OpenHab cultures would be great early adopters

Are there filters for weather?

Snow for example gets the cameras pretty excited but often only on one side of the house. Is that addressed to possibly block a camera periodically or is the limit based on what the camera sends?>

 

[spectator]

Interesting. I'd think the HA and OpenHab cultures would be great early adopters

Are there filters for weather?

Snow for example gets the cameras pretty excited but often only on one side of the house. Is that addressed to possibly block a camera periodically or is the limit based on what the camera sends?>

There aren't any filters for weather, and you shouldn't need them .... One major point of Camect is you shouldn't get nonsense alerts from weather. Camect sends you alerts when it detects specific objects in the video... so if you get any alerts from snow, it would be due to incorrect detections happening when there's not really an interesting object present. It is true that we don't have a lot of training data from snow scenes yet, so you might get some false detections. When that happens, if you're willing to share video clips of the false detections, we add them to the training set and after 2 or 3 rounds of this the problem usually gets solved.

To answer your question about blocking -- You can limit when you receive alerts from specific cameras or from the whole set, and you can snooze alerts from a particular camera for a while. I think that would cover what you have in mind?