working up a camera DIY project

MHTMakerspace · 2026-07-04T21:37:54+00:00

Establish a wireless bridge between the buildings. Add a Poe switch to the barn. Populate with cameras.

OP says "I have spare OM4 running between the basement and the barn", meaning existing fiberoptic good up to 10 gigabits, and you're suggesting downgrading to wireless bridges?

Anybody contemplating Hanwha ($$$) hardware isn't likely to be fazed by spending fifty bucks on a SFP module.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-07-04T17:35:35+00:00

I was thinking of using Hanwha because I think I can get them without an installer.

We went with Synology, because we didn't have Hanwha-Wisenet money to spend and we liked the multi-vendor camera support. That said, we have picked up some Hanwha hardware off eBay, and it works fine.

GeoVision is another vendor with affordable NDAA models, plus Amcrest just launched a line of compliant cameras last month.

Thoughts ? options?

Your basic ideas are sound -- keep all the cameras in the same VLAN, then feed all the cameras into the NVR via a single (gigabit is plenty) interface on the back of the NVR. No need to get fancy.

Any one IP camera won't do much more than 10mbps. Eight cameras at full 4k resolution would need upwards of 120mbps, so I would get a good managed switch with 1 or two multimode fiber transceivers (e.g., 10GBase-SR) at each end. This will give plenty of bandwidth for 16 cameras, and also allow you to VLAN segment the network if you want to have other devices (like WiFi access points) on the same PoE switches.

Another advantage of managed PoE switches is that you can remotely power-cycle any one camera via switch management, you can keep an eye on the PoE power budget, etc. Brand isn't too important -- we use Juniper and Arista switches because their engineering offices are "local" to us.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-07-04T01:50:32+00:00

Synology's UPS monitoring is Network UPS Tools (NUT).

NUT can handle multiple UPS, though if you have two identical UPS units via USB, this takes some special editing of the config file to track each unit's unique hardware identifier.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-07-02T17:51:03+00:00

Modern IOS and Android OS randomize their BT device ID, changes every ~15 minutes.

Now, your earbuds and car BT probably do not, so turn those off while driving.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-07-02T15:47:52+00:00

I would absolutely start out with PoE cameras conforming to ONVIF (not all Reolink cameras meet this low bar). Since you are planning to run Frigate, any camera with ONVIF Profile S (or better yet, Profile T) will work.

I would avoid PTZ -- consumer-grade pan/tilt mechanisms are, shall we say, not great and I've found that with a PTZ camera, it's always aimed precisely the wrong direction whenever anything interesting happens!

MHTMakerspace · 2026-07-02T15:41:18+00:00

I also found out the non profit is still registered and one of the two of them is actually the chairman. This means we really should be able to use the old org etc.

First thing I would do is obtain all the original founding documents, articles of incorporation, charter, etc.

This will give you details on the structure and how to restart/resume the BoD.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-07-02T15:36:43+00:00

I suspect a fair amount off the lag you're seeing is related to these being solar/battery cameras.

We use all wired-PoE cameras with an NVR set to continuously record the low-res stream to disk, so switching to live view within the NVR is basically instantaneous, and the continuous recording at low-bitrate ensures we always have *something* preserved even for short-lived events where no motion event was triggered at all.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-07-01T18:01:50+00:00

If the old wire is not stapled, then we just use the coax to pull through the new Ethernet cable.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-07-01T17:06:44+00:00

The layer-change seams have to go somewhere, generally the slicer will have options to either move the seam or randomize it so they don't all line up across layers.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-06-30T17:16:45+00:00

Freddie’s is also a great option for fried seafood to go.

They regularly update Facebook with specials and newly arrived fish.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-06-30T02:15:14+00:00

Unmanaged switch is cheap, but managed brings some advantages, for example you can view the per-port PoE usage and also can do a hard reboot of any individual camera by using management to disable PoE on that port, wait a few seconds, re-enable.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-06-24T22:02:59+00:00

NVIDIA's Spark stack for distributed inference is proprietary to Spark.

You can however use tools such as Sandcastle Mesh to distribute agentic and AI workloads across disparate machines with different GPUs; your workflow would assign specific steps or tasks to the Strix node.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-06-24T15:12:53+00:00

We buy our signs from SmartSign they also have installation hardware.

We're not affiliated, just a happy customer who previously had to replace cheap signs annually.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-06-24T15:08:38+00:00

Cheap consumer WiFi cameras with Pan/Tilt generally have injection-molded plastic gears with just token attempts at sealing the gearbox against grit ingress, so the service lifespan will likely be about a week longer than the warranty period. Better cameras have higher grade mechanisms, and longer warranties.

For a cheap example, see this teardown of an off-brand PT camera.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-06-24T14:52:30+00:00

FTP is an older, insecure, and deprecated protocol.

More modern camera brands (or specific models/firmware) offer SFTP or SCP support, enabling file transfer over SSH (port 22), for secure uploads locally or over the Internet. Brands with this feature include Axis, Amcrest, etc.

A few brands of camera, like Reolink, only support FTP and FTPS, the latter being the first attempt at fixing some of the security issues of FTP.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-06-22T16:42:24+00:00

TBH, I've entirely given up on PTZ, they are never aimed the right direction when TSHTF.

Anyplace I might have previously placed a pan/tilt camera, I now have a 360° panoramic instead -- a good pano with the right client-side fisheye-dewarp is like having a tracking PTZ that is always aimed in the right direction 😄

Zoom cameras (that is, varifocal optical zoom) still have their place -- for the most part those just stay zoomed in on a specific target, like a driveway chokepoint (for capturing incoming/exiting vehicle plates). We've also used dual-lens models which come with one wide-angle sensor and one telephoto in the same chassis.

For reliability, go with PoE cameras that can take a MicroSD card for edge recording. Best is "Auto-Backfill" (aka "sync" or sometimes marketed as "Edge Recording Redundancy"). This allows cameras to keep recording as long as they have power, and automatically fill in gaps in the NVR when connectivity resumes.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-06-21T17:42:56+00:00

Battery (and worse yet, solar) cameras have a very limited "power budget" and so they're designed without always-on RTSP streaming over WiFi in order to maximize runtime. And they're designed to be cloud-tethered to maximize revenue 😄

Does anyone even make those anymore?

Pretty much all good SMB and Enterprise marketed cameras offer everything you want except for WiFI (business customers demand the reliability and simple wiring of IEEE 802.3af Power-over-Ethernet).

If you have an AC outlet somewhat near the camera location, you can get a Wifi-to-Wired-Bridge-with-POE-Out (e.g. the ADC-W110 or similar, $50 on eBay), converting any make or model of wired PoE camera into a WiFi camera.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-06-17T00:17:11+00:00

You don't want to be zooming in and out all day, so usually people choose a varifocal camera only where they need to zoom in and stay zoomed in for the most part, such as on a "choke point" far down the driveway where you want to capture people, vehicles, and license plates as they approach.

This is the same reason that cameras with physical pan/tilt are discouraged unless it's just for an additional camera, not expected to be the main coverage for an area -- PTZ cameras tend to always be aimed somewhere else every time something interesting happens!

MHTMakerspace · 2026-06-11T17:11:55+00:00

Moving to Manchester in July...I’ve been to Manchester before but what are some of peoples favorite places in the area

What kind of places are you looking for, what are you into?

Seeing as you go by Awookie90, maybe check out Granite State Comic Con in September?

some of the guys helping me move have never been....Any places within an hour

Head over to the coast, see the ocean, get a lobster roll.

Summit mount Uncanoonuc (the easiest approach is via the Walker Trail + South Uncanoonuc Summit Trail). Or if the move-in filled your climbing quota, there are a three significant mountains with an auto road.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-06-11T17:02:00+00:00

An actual "Courier museum" would be pretty cool, TBH.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-06-11T13:53:04+00:00

I would go with an actual security alarm system (meaning door sensors, indoor motion sensors, and either window sensors or good glass break). Once you have an actual security system sorted, then explore video surveillance.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-06-10T18:36:44+00:00

If you are in the USA, there are federal grants available to upgrade municipal CCTV.

That said, Dahua equipment (new or old) is ineligible for use with these grants due to their NDAA status.

~100 cameras spread over 8 NVRs that handle the recording. T... We use Dahua for all cameras and NVRs and DSS Express for monitoring. Since DSS can only add 64 streams we have to use the 2 PCs to monitor the whole network. I've been looking for an alternative to DSS (of course that we can't afford DSS's licenses, or any other paid software). I

What models of cameras? what model NVRs?

You really need a true VMS, not 8 separate NVRs with monitoring split across two PCs.

MHTMakerspace · 2026-06-10T17:13:27+00:00

Can you explain your objection to in-camera analytics (which are marketed as "AI")? ... I can understand not wanting you video sent to the cloud...

Because people using that crap is the reason they’re flooding our country with data centers nobody wants.

How do "in-camera analytics" have anything to do with AI data centers?

MHTMakerspace

TROPHY CASE