I know a few people around here are running Home Assistant and the like. I'm keen to put in a few cameras, preferably not cloud connected but that can connect to Home Assistant. I'm planning on adding object detection via coral.

I'm thinking cameras powered by PoE. Anyone got suggestions for outdoor cameras?

What about a switch that outputs PoE and doesn't cost thousands? Maybe something like this? Though I don't seem to see good bang for buck switches where they are all PoE, they seem to just do half of the ports PoE though 8 PoE ports seems like it would be plenty.

And on another note, any suggestions for a network level VPN client? That is, for connecting the home nenetwork to an external VPN server (one that handles hundreds of Mbps, preferably wireguard). Is something like this appropriate? It's CPU is only 1Ghz so I worry it will be slow.

[–] kurikai@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (7 children)

I have a poe managed ubiquity switch and use reolink Poe cameras and reolinks Poe doorbell. Home assistant has great support for reolink; It's also local. I have home assistant save the streams on motion detection to a network mounted drive in home assistant

[–] Dave 3 points 4 months ago (4 children)

That's awesome, looks like PB Tech have a huge range of Reolink!

But with choice comes more questions 😆. PoE means you don't need separate power for the camera. But it looks like they sell solar powered wifi ones. Is there a benefit of using PoE instead of wifi+solar?

[–] Panq 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The solar/battery models don't run 24/7 - you can trigger them remotely (so you can check the live feed whenever) or they can trigger with motion. Still perfectly useful for a bunch of use cases (e.g. just checking if you closed something, or installed somewhere that motion sensing is reliable like a low-traffic corridor) but not super useful for, say, a front door.