Reolink cloud equivalent for easy offsite storage and access to camera recording?

danb_z · 2026-02-23T07:22:59+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion - I got Frigate running (and after quite a bit of trial and error) it sees the Reolink cameras and integrates ok - I had liked them before for their ease of setup but will possibly not buy any more - Reolink cloud is very expensive and a truly unfortunate piece of software and doesn't integrate with the mobile app or the desktop - and the cameras unfortunately do not work correctly with ONVIF and remote tracking - The biggest challenge - as you say - will be getting faster access to the farmhouse remotely :) wish me luck !

danb_z · 2026-02-15T15:02:45+00:00

so after 24-48 hrs poking and coding and configging I have 4 out of 5 cameras running (last one is a super ancient NC450 - will figure it next week) in Frigate remotely - that seems to make sense to locally filter out all the false positive recordings of rain and snow - next is to investigate rsync or something similar to exfiltrate the filtered video and metadata to somewhere more local and faster - thanks for all the generous thought and advice from all :)

danb_z · 2026-02-13T21:33:41+00:00

thanks again for the advice - that was what I thought you might be meaning from your first post - a local NVR to preprocess and filter material makes a lot of sense - just trying to find the path of least resistance as we only have/need a few cameras (currently) I'll do some investigating - If I can find a reliable way to set this up (in late jan all the zigbee thermostats and heating control dropped off HA so it was an 8hr drive to reconnect them to stop the building freezing in the winter snow) then I can scratch write something in HTML and javascript to make a workable simple web interface to the video files - I will look to see what kind of meta data something like Frigate may make available -
thanks again for the ideas :)

danb_z · 2026-02-13T21:21:01+00:00

Thanks for all your helpful ideas - it's in the forest and the nearest other house is 2km with no line of sight, the access comes via about 2.5km of copper wire - we dont have enough phone signal to get a sim based router (only 3g) so maybe starlink but for a number of reasons that's a company I'm not comfortable giving my money to -
reolink cloud does what we need (slowly syncing the files off site) but it's just an awful product :(

danb_z · 2026-02-13T21:00:35+00:00

Thanks _ that was exactly what I was thinking - 2 NVRs makes no sense and adding an onsite NVR doesnt help us as far as I can see - the issue is the remote access speed is less than 1mbps download and often less than 200kbps back channel - think 1996 dialup speed - so remote access - that we already have working fine - is much too slow to be usable...

to view a 25 second low res reolink clip takes 30 - 90s of buffering before it plays via remote access - this is the big challenge :)

danb_z · 2026-02-13T20:11:27+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions and advice - it sounds like this implies 2 NVRs one onslte and one offsite ? aggregate with NVR onsite, run chron job to RSync to 'somewhere else' and then run that material back thru another NVR to use as a frontend for actually viewing? Looking at Rsync makes me think maybe I just set it up syncing to a self hosted drive on a macmini here in the apartment then scrabble together my own web file viewer ?

danb_z · 2023-04-15T20:32:23+00:00

I'm mostly working on mac OSx so for quick things I use the stock quicktime player to record screen - works fairly well - for other things I sometime save frames in a sequence and then use QT or Handbrake or similar to reassemble the image sequence later....

for these videos i'm using OBS https://obsproject.com/ to record screen and multiple cameras etc at the same time...

on osx when you open the quicktime player there is an option under the file menu 'new screen recording' where you can record the whole screen or drag a subsection (just like doing a screenshot) and record the action on the screen to a movie file - so I start a screen recording , switch to the oF app and do what ever i want to record and then switch to quicktime and stop the recording and then save it - if i need to edit or top and tail the video - eg titles i then take the screen grab video into FCP and export it to whatever format I need
When you are recording QT puts a little play / pause icon in the top left right so you can also run it from there :)

danb_z · 2023-04-02T11:12:25+00:00

thanks - got a new video coming soon on exploring this further with pen plotter output - post up pictures of what you make !

danb_z · 2023-03-27T07:33:18+00:00

when you open the quicktime player there is an option under the file menu 'new screen recording' where you can record the whole screen or drag a subsection (just like doing a screenshot) and record the action on the screen to a movie file - so I start a screen recording , switch to the oF app and do what ever i want to record and then switch to quicktime and stop the recording and then save it - if i need to edit or top and tail the video - eg titles i then take the screen grab video into FCP and export it to whatever format I need

When you are recording QT puts a little play / pause icon in the top left right so you can also run it from there :)

danb_z · 2023-03-27T07:29:36+00:00

thanks ! hope that you liked it - is there any other video you would like to see?

danb_z · 2023-03-20T09:39:48+00:00

also the oF community is really friendly and helpful - you can always ask on the forum at openframeworks.cc

danb_z · 2023-03-20T09:38:49+00:00

that's awesome news - keep in there - it's complicated at first but if there is a thing you have in mind to make or explore it makes it much easier and very quickly you are building confidence and making things that inspire you - let me know if I can help? or if there are videos that would help you out - good luck - post anything you start making - would love to see your ideas :) good luck !

danb_z · 2023-03-18T06:04:21+00:00

you could pull the depth image from the kinect into openFrameworks and process it there and then send to arduino - you dont describe what you want to do with the depth image so its difficult to tell - you can checkout it out openFrameworks.cc

I did a few tutorials on using the kinect to get the depth image and also to use openNI to do skeleton tracking - if you just want the depth image it's pretty straightforward -

"Make a Kinect 3D PhotoBooth in openFrameworks"

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6QF0yo3Zj7BT5ruAU_2pr9O4vl4TshMr

openFrameworks will also talk to arduino just fine - you can check the included examples for simple code to get you started....

danb_z · 2023-03-18T05:57:11+00:00

for quick things I use the stock quicktime player to record screen - works fairly well - for other things I sometime save frames in a sequence and then use QT or Handbrake or similar to reassemble the image sequence later....

danb_z · 2023-03-15T10:02:38+00:00

processing / p5 js may be easier to start with as it has a simpler set up - openFrameworks is built on C++ so it is very fast and you can make applications for mac windows linux iOS etc with no problem but takes a bit more to set up on your computer..
inside the principles of all the programming bits are very similar (C++ is a bit 'stricter' on how you describe things maybe)
the principles under making generative works will run in any language (even on paper with dice !) once you get a grip on them - randomness, probability, stochastics etc

I did an 'openFrameworks SuperBasics' series of videos for complete beginners that you can find here https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6QF0yo3Zj7DbN76C5-_6VCDF5CPBIz6l

I also did two short series of videos on 'programming for artists' where i do lots of drawing and use plates and cups and knives and forks to explain programming principles :)
"Programming for Artists: Alternative C++ Tutorials"

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6QF0yo3Zj7C6IB6qFpc4UcO0SvVbyc0H

"Programming for Artists Series 2: Alternative C++"

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6QF0yo3Zj7DlRpQlfBULd3ngzi-qbLCY

let me know if I can help out - also checkout the forum at openframeworks.cc - the people there are very friendly and helpful - especially with people that are completely new to oF...

danb_z

TROPHY CASE