Re: [LUG] Archlinux on the RPI and the PI camera

Apologies if this ends up as a bit of an ip camera review...

Last year I bought a couple of the cheap foscam clones off of ebay but
they just weren't reliable enough, requiring constant resets and I
ended up returning them. My experience is that a lot of these
cheapo cameras have zero support often just a forum where users can
complain about problems but no-one has any answers.

That is the drawback of the clones (which all share very similar login and controls, just themed differently). The software generally is okay (it based on the rock-solid Foscam - I'd love to know why it's so widely copied, whether Foscam did a deal, or it's free), but sometimes implemented badly. The hardware is borderline, but image can be surprisingly good. But tolerances are not great, and I've had some drop out in hot or cold weather where others have chugged along happily.

And the clones generally enjoy poor support. Some have some semblance - these are the "grey clones". Proper companies, ish. topipcam, ihome, gipcam, xipcam, watchbot, myvisioncam. They're all alike and all have very similar setups (including dyndns layouts). You may get some support from them, but I'd be surprised if it was to any depth.

Genuine Foscams, otoh, are well respected and give superb support. They're cheap and cheerful, but backed by a solid company. (The only real problem I have is their default password, dyndns and upnp making cameras quite easily located from the internet. Add to that a juicy little security exploit (now patched if you have recent firmware) that allows any visitor to download the entire filesystem in one handy 16mb file. This contains all the camera's configuration, including user and wifi passwords for any foscam and any foscam clone and is easily picked apart. I tested on one of mine and had a working login within 2 minutes. Awesome, and why I was encouraging people not to enable upnp on their routers a few weeks ago. Similar exploits exist for trendnet cameras.)

As for reliability, I have a foscam that's mounted outside which has been providing 24/7 streams for over seven years now. I have two gadspots of that era and around a dozen Axis cameras too. The clones I have, well, some have been crap - Xenta being one people may have heard of - much as you describe. Dropping frames, then deciding to drop connection and reboot every now and then just for giggles.

I was thinking about going the Pi + PiCam route not to save money but
just so that if something is wrong I have a reasonable chance of being
able to fix it myself. Plus I also fancy hooking it up to the doorbell
and fire alarm, etc. to send alerts and do some other stuff which would
be hard/expensive to do with the commercial solutions.

Many ip cams (axis, edimax for sure) also have i/o which can work in conjunction either with their software, or things like zoneminder (which also has X10 support built-in)