I want a security camera system that I can trust to be only my own. My requirements are not hugely unreasonable, but I can’t find them the way search engines suck shit these days. I want a camera system with:
Local storage
No internet connection
No phone connection
No cables
No cloud storage option
No router necessary
And the option that seems impossible with the others: No option of remote connections
I don’t want to see whats going on in real time on my phone, I want a completely private recording saved if I ever need to see if I got robbed. I don’t want offline ability, I want cameras that can not connect to the internet at all, even through another device. I’m not worried about local network hacking, I want saved video that can only be viewed directly from the local storage. Longish life batteries so I don’t have to route power, and no cables that can be unplugged. Solar powered would be nice, but isn’t necessary.
Why is that so hard to find?
Sounds like you want a trail camera.
No internet and no cables but you want local access? Just get an IP camera and keep it local.
You just want an old-school NVR camera setup. These don’t need to be connected to the internet, it just records to a hard drive on the NVR. I’ve hooked up dozens of these at small businesses. Schwann is a good brand. You can probably grab a 2nd-hand setup for cheap on your local marketplace app.
You could get a raspberry pi and a camera module. MotionEye can be installed as the OS. It requires a network connection to your LAN to set it up, but it can be disconnected afterwards. I believe it can be configured to store all files locally.
Edit: Fixed link
Those instructions will likely still work, but fwiw MotionEyeOS (a minimal Linux distro built on buildroot rather than Debian) appears to have ceased development in 2020.
The MotionEye web app that distro was built for is still being developed, however, as is Motion itself (which is packaged in Debian/Ubuntu/etc and is actually the only software you really need).
Thank you! Didn’t realize it was broken. I’ve updated it.
Isn’t this a standard CCTV setup? I mean “no wires” is impossible unless you’re talking battery operated trail cams.
As you’ve probably seen you can buy semi dumb security cameras from Armcrest/Loryta/Empiretech/whatever that’ll run off of a barrel jack and/or Ethernet cable. Most of them have the option to insert an SD card and they’ll event log to that, at which point just don’t plug in the Ethernet cable except to manually pull recordings.
One other thing to think about is maybe consider “Frigate NVR” running on a pi or something and connected to cameras on it’s own wifi or Ethernet network that’s isolated from the Internet and your LAN. It’ll make local access easier because as with just about anything security related you’ll want to periodically check to make sure it’s actually working. You should be able to setup the pi to serve as the WiFi access point for all this.
You could get ESPCAM and program them yourself
Amcrest model with an SD card slot. Plug into the Ethernet jack to configure it first, but after that it just needs power and thats it.
