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Comment by rahimnathwani

4 months ago

I'm looking to upgrade my home surveillance setup, currently running Arlo Pro 2 cameras. They work fine, but I'd prefer higher resolution and to avoid saturating my internet upstream with frequent video uploads.

My needs are pretty much the same as people who buy camera bundles from big box stores. I want reliable motion detection for intruders, deliveries, and visitors, and the ability to watch videos recorded in the past couple of weeks.

Take a look at Tapo or Kasa devices (both TP-Link products).

I recently got a few to try out, and expressly chose them because they do motion and sound detection on device and also support microSD for local recording.

I've only had them a few weeks so can't speak to any slow-showing pain points, but so far both the video doorbell[1] and two inexpensive cameras I purchased[2][3] to test out have been awesome.

I set up an automation so they record continuously when I leave and when home to record on detection only (motion for all three and sound for the Kasa camera) to try to be economical on wearing out the SD cards. But for me personally knowing I'll likely have those go out on me and need replaced was an ok trade off for the convenience, and probably a wash financially because everything I wanted happens locally whereas I kept seeing them gated behind a subscription plan when looking at other options.

There's also an option in the app to enable them to speak stream locally to a NAS or NVR via RTSP if you want to do that with them. So I can eventually set that up for more reliability when the eventual SD burnout occurs, and scratch my tinkering itch with things like streaming it to Frigate and testing it out vs the native detection features, without any actual presasure to need to since it all just works as is.

The doorbell is what I was originally needing the continuous local recording and on-device object detection for. The two cameras were bonuses I threw in to grab a few of their inexpensive models to try out while I was at it. And so far for about $100 in total I've been impressed. Key word being so far – they're still recent enough I might be in my honeymoon phase with them and just don't know it yet.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQQZZXH9

[2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08ZXJJTYJ

[3] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DBPBSYMQ

  • Yeah the $30 2k camera you linked seems good, but I worry about local card storage, because if someone steals the camera you have no evidence who did it!

    I wish the camera could stream to Frigate/whatever but stream empty delta frames when nothing is detected.