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Re: [LUG] Dog Cams

 

Dear Henry,

> Looking at getting a set of elderly dog cams / child cams for round
> the house.  The intention being
>
> -     To allow me to monitor the creatures from my PC -       Allow me to also
> monitor through android
>
> Which suggest TP-Link Tapo C200 review or the TP-Link Kasa Spot Pan
> Tilt KC110 but I do not want to upload to the cloud. If I upload it
> will be to somewhere I control.

Quite right! I find it most strange that some people are happy to send
live streams of their private property to a remote server they don't
own, maybe even in a foreign country... I'm not sure these could count
as 'security' cameras!

> Any help / ideas gratefully received

I haven't had any experience with internet cameras but I did watch this
video a while ago which presents a reasonably simple albeit slightly
messy DIY solution.

https://youtu.be/CouxmNqxO4A

In the video he uses recycled laptop cameras (which could be replaced
with off-the-shelf USB webcams if required) and a program called
'contacam'. This software appears to be free software under the GPL so
you could try that in Wine if you wanted. I imagine ffmpeg would
also be a good alternative as it supports streaming to a network.

A small machine like an OrangePi or Pine64 would be a simple alternative
to a laptop for running the software (bearing in mind the bandwidth
issues he mentions in the video).

If this is just supposed to stream to a local network around your house
you could use VLC player (which has an Android port) to see the streams.
Watching from outside your local network is more challenging though -
not something I could help you with myself.

I suspect this is not the straightforward solution you were expecting
although I hope this has given you some ideas!

Best wishes, Sebastian

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