We have a vacation home that we’re only at once every ~6 weeks. I’d like to install two or three cameras inside the home which will upload a frame every 15 minutes or so, so I can look at these images from my home 250 miles away.

It’s not for home security and doesn’t need to be motion activated nor upload a live feed. We basically just need to see if any mice have moved in, if a bear or cougar have decided to sleep on my deck, or if a winter storm has caused a tree branch to smash through a window.

The place has full internet, a few desktop computers, and I’m an IT guy so I can setup whatever needs to be done. But I’ve been stymied by the apparent simplicity of what I want to do. I don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars plus a monthly fee on a whole home security setup. I don’t need to be able to remote control them either.

I want to hear about a bad snow storm passing through the area of the cabin, and then check some uploaded images to see if I need to fight my way up there tomorrow with a chainsaw and tools, or if I’m good.

I just want a few cameras, preferably connected via wifi, that snaps a picture and uploads it somewhere (Google drive, my home synology NAS, AWS, whatever) every 15 minutes. Indoor use only.

They don’t need to be particularly high resolution, they don’t need low-light capabilities, nothing like that. Hell, the 8 year old webcam I have on my desk right now that I use for Zoom would work fine quality-wise.

Any thoughts or ideas?

  • bmengineer@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    They have plenty of security concerns, but for this a few cheap Wyze cameras would be perfect. Even with no subscription you get motion alerts.

  • imfm@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I just use cheap IP cameras, Frigate, and Tailscale for remote access. Monthly cost is zero, upfront cost was a Coral, I can check live feed and events whenever I like. Mine runs on a server I already had running, but I have an embarrassing number of cameras, and if I didn’t have the server, I’d have just thrown Debian and Frigate on an unused computer. You don’t have to enable the motion or object detection if you want only live feed; just don’t put it in your config file. You can also control how long events (if you record them) are stored.

  • naynner@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Home Assistant is a bit overkill for this, but if it was me that’s what I’d do. Any camera with RTSP can be integrated and then you can setup an automation to take a snapshot from the camera every x minutes. You could use the Google Drive Backup integration to upload the folder with the snapshot however often and then you have immediate easy access to them.

  • Chad_Jeepie_Tea@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    So am I the only one who keeps my old cell phones or tablets for a few years.

    I’ve used them as makeshift webcams and nanny cams a few times.