My partner and I have a trip planned in about 1.5 weeks, bur cat is unfortunately sickly right now. I’m tasked with setting up a couple of webcams in her favorite spots so we can check on her while we’re away.
Currently we have 1 basic webcam, two functioning Linux desktops, a couple old hard drives i don’t need, a domain name I have grand plans for but have never used, and enough experience with docker and self hosting to be dangerous.
If you were to set up a quick and dirty pet cam with a minimal budget and about a week to buy everything and get it all set up, how would you go about it? I really want a solution requires as little fiddling and config as possible.
I know I’ll need at least one more webcam, and I’ve been researching NVR software all night only to arrive back at idk-what-I’m-doing after hours of reading. I could potentially stretch my budget up to something like a Qnap TS-216G (which is as close to a good solution as I’ve found) since I’ve been wanting to buy a NAS anyways. The QVR software suite seems like a nice solution for easy setup, but I really dont need any advanced AI features. Even basic stuff like motion detection and video storage I could do without, although they would be nice to have.
I’ve never made any services available from outside of my LAN either. From what I’ve read in the past, Tailscale may be the simplest solution for that, but idk if it’s suitable for this type of application.
Edit: I guess I never should have brought up that our cat is sick. Most of y’all seem to think that I’m neglecting my animal or something because I didnt go into detail about all of the care plans that we have in place for her. Her illness is long term and managed by medications. She doesnt have flare-ups or any acute symptoms that are likely to cause an emergency. We have friends that she likes that will be visiting daily to feed and water her, spend time with her, and give her medicine. This camera solution is really just a little something extra to make my partner and I feel better about being away from her.
I recently left for a month with three cats. I have four amcrest cameras which I blocked in adguard and run them through frigate. Thinking of going back to agentdvr though. I do have one cloud camera, a xiaomi, that I only use on the days when I’m not home to have a backup. It’s not worth going selfhosted and FOSS then having an issue you can fix while away and worrying yourself to death.
I was honestly leaning more and more toward an off the shelf solution like this. I kindof agree with you about it not being worth it to use a fiddly roll-your-own setup like this, especially with such short notice. Plug and play sounds really attractive.
How do you like the Amcrest cameras and remote monitoring solution? Do they have a good reputation for security I hope? I’m afraid I’m completely in the dark about these types of security camera companies.
Edit: just reread this and saw that you’re running the Amcrest cameras through Frigate. Was that setup something that you think could be done in an afternoon? Or have you had to mess with things often? Simplicity and ease of setup are probably my highest priorities for this.
Both frigate and agentdvr are pretty easy to setup. If your webcam or whatever camera you get can work with it I can share some docker compose yamls. Frigate also requires additional settings but not too difficult. I’m considering switching back to agentdvr though. It was easier and had more features. You can also directly access your cameras over IP if you Tailscale into your network.
Personally if I had such little time I would just buy a Wyze camera with sd card then return it after a week. There is no security issue as it will only see your cat.
My cameras failed twice during the month I was gone during a server issue. As you know server issues only happen when you leave home, lol. If I didn’t have the backup Mi I wouldn’t be able to see them.