Overlap

wittaj

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I have seen articles of many places doing so, but the terms of some are crazy like they can access any and all video, some require you to give them a connection to it, etc.

Others are simply "Hey we have a map where cameras are and if something happens we will contact you and ask you to review the footage and if you notice anything, send a copy to us"

And then of course many have partnered with Ring





 

rfj

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It is in Northern California. I did do this in the hopes of making our city/neighborhood safer. That's also why I am installing a license plate camera reader. If something happened on my property I hope that other people who did also register their cams help law enforcement to get the culprit. Note that law enforcement doesn't see the stream on your cam. You simply tell them the property address, where the cams are located and what direction they point to. If law enforcement wants to look at the video they have to come and knock on your door and ask if they could see the video stream from this day/time. They did this a couple of times.

The risk is that their system gets hacked and someone gets access to it. But what would the hackers do with that information? Figure out that they don't want to break into our home because we have some half dozen cameras overlocking just the front of our home (not counting the side and back cameras) and avoid neighbors from getting robbed/attacked/stuff stolen/etc because the potential culprits figure they might get caught on our cams? I don't see much harm but I might be missing something. Having said that, I heard that some of those doorbell cams actually send video feeds to law enforcement. We have a crappy SkyBell that doesn't integrate with Alex, doesn't integrate with BI but also doesn't seem to automatically send video to law enforcement.
 
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Flintstone61

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Oh, now I rememeber whyi had to use BI as the Timestamp initially,,,I had no Internet at the Condo for the first 1.5 years. So the computer was the most stable time reference. When I got intermittent Wifi, I used Net Time over wifi but the connection strength was not dependable ( Xfinity public Wifi).
Then we got CenturyLink and now I have options.

So say If a guy is running a Dahua NVR isn't that the basis for the camera's time reference? The NVR keeps all the cams on time? or can they wander on their own?
 
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mikeynags

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The cams don’t have their own clock from what I recall. Even with a clock chip, clocks wander too. That’s why the best/easiest method is to setup NetTime and call it a day.


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rfj

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Oh, now I rememeber whyi had to use BI as the Timestamp initially,,,I had no Internet at the Condo for the first 1.5 years. <snip>
Seriously? No internet for 1.5 years??:wow: What a life!!! :D
 

dok0619

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Do you actually need NetTime though? I see the option in all the camera setups to enable NTP server...
 

The Automation Guy

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Another option for NTP to consider is that a lot of routers/firewalls can run a NTP server as well. Obviously that device will have access to the internet and can keep the time in sync. Then you can put that device's IP address in on each local device's NTP setup and every device on the network can sync it's time with your router/firewall - even if the individual devices don't have access to the internet. I think this is a better way to have a NTP server on your network because you'll never have to worry about a different device running NTP being shut down, or updated, or being otherwise unavailable on the network and not realizing it has taken your NTP server down too. If your firewall/router isn't working, you are going to know about it immediately.

Personally I go a step further and allow the cameras to only access the NTP port on the router/firewall with most of the other ports actively blocked. This means the camera's can't access the router/firewall except for the services I deem necessary - like NTP. I actually do this with a lot of devices and VLANs to prevent unwanted access to the firewall. A device on my Guest or IOT networks cannot access my router/firewall GUI for example.
 

dok0619

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You don't want the cameras to have access to the internet. So you setup Nettime on your network and point the NTP setup to your local computer.
ok I think i have it set up correctly. All the cams are still 1-3 seconds off from each other... is that normal? Thanks
 

wittaj

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ok I think i have it set up correctly. All the cams are still 1-3 seconds off from each other... is that normal? Thanks
Unfortunately there can be that with some cameras that suck at time LOL. And some cameras are so bad that even going down to the minimum the camera allows to go out and ping the NTP it can still be off.

Best practice in this case would be to set each camera to their minimum time to ping the NTP. May be 10min or maybe 30min and some cams may allow 1 minute.
 

dok0619

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Unfortunately there can be that with some cameras that suck at time LOL. And some cameras are so bad that even going down to the minimum the camera allows to go out and ping the NTP it can still be off.

Best practice in this case would be to set each camera to their minimum time to ping the NTP. May be 10min or maybe 30min and some cams may allow 1 minute?
Yeah I set them all to 1 minute
 

dok0619

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Yeah that is pretty sucky if 1min pings and it is off 3 seconds in a 60 second period LOL
well I guess its better than what it was anyway... some of the cams were several minutes off before... they are all Dahua cameras ... in any case Im good lol
 
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