I've had success with MotionEyeOS [0] on a Raspberry Pi. It used to be that a Pi ($35) plus the camera module ($25) meant ~$60 per cam but now that the Zero W [1] is out you can do Pi ($10) plus camera module ($25) plus the nifty official case that nicely accommodates a camera ($5) for ~$40.
MotionEye let's you store images or video locally on the Pi or has multiple cloud destinations available (Drive, Dropbox, your own custom FTP node). An email notification + dropping the files into Google Drive is stupid simple to set up. Plus you can configure just about everything from motion sensitivity to frame rate, etc. Most difficult setup is live stream which means you would need to VPN into your home network; certainly not impossible but still not turnkey simple. If there is a better open source solution for the Pi, I'd love to hear about it.
I just wanted to add, while I have an Arlo Pro as well, I've found the Raspberry Pi Zero solution cheaper and more reliable. The Arlo's camera quality is better, but the software often fails to capture someone walking by. I'm also more skeptical about how safe my videos are on Arlo's servers.
MotionEye works very well. Read all the docs first before messing with the settings as they are not intuitive - trying to tweak the motion trigger settings is a bit of a pain (frames threshold, timeout, etc.) but can be done and there is a debug frame setting which is helpful. Works with the Raspberry Pi cameras but also with any USB cam as long as you choose the correct driver. I have an IR nightview USB cam that gives superior night shots and doesn't require additional power outside the USB connection. You can save all files locally or send them to any number of services - I have all my photos and videos dropped into Google Drive. I'm also using DuckDNS for external access to the IP cam port for a real-time view into my home whenever I am out and about. The network stream feature in VLC on mobile works really well for that. The only issue I've come across (and this was ~4 months ago) is that 8GB RAM Raspberry Pi 4's are more trouble than they're worth for this application - software support was very much lacking but the 4GB Pi's work very well.
Would a Raspberry Pi Zero be sufficient to run motionEye? They are sufficiently cheap so that one camera could have one Raspberry Pi Zero attached to it.
I have almost exactly the same setup. I can recommend motion-project on the Pi for taking the pictures and MotionEye android app for real-time watching. Works fine as a security cam too.
I've been using MotionEyeOS for several months now. I setup a a couple of Pi3's with some cheap Logitech USB webcams. Works great from inside the house - I used velcro to tape the cameras pointing out from various windows around the house and in the garage.
I've run a bunch of pi zero based cameras w/motioneye. Ignoring some QC problems with the camera modules they've proven to be very stable even in >100F ambient temps.
I started by using a NVR off AliExpress. It worked well until I added a camera from a different vendor, same brand though and it refused to be reliable and had frequent disconnections.
Moved onto ZoneMinder and after hours of setup I felt the UI wasn't good enough for a non-tech person. I want others in my family access the feeds with ease, ZoneMinder does not cut it.
While I was experimenting with cameras, I was also getting into HomeAssistant which had motionEye as a supported service. It was easy to add cameras and almost any camera could be hacked to have RTSP support and motionEye.
Motion-detection could be enabled on the Raspberry Pi's motionEye, offloading compute off the cameras. This was important for me as many of my cheap Chinese cameras lag/hang/shutdown on load.
The Raspberry Pi also has Pi-Hole installed which I configured to block all IPs and domains being used by the IP cameras thereby limiting its access to local network only.
As I kept adding cameras (10+), performance on Raspberry Pi started getting affected, so I added another Raspberry Pi and installed motionEye on it. Setup MQTT on motionEye to send notifications to HomeAssistant on motion/human detection. Added multiple HDDs (4) so cameras can write with less conflicts.
I still haven't got some cameras (Xiaomi) into this setup as I don't want to hack them yet. (The open firmware(s) lack features). But they do backup recordings to the same Raspberry Pi NFS and I plan to find something which can show motionEye and Xiaomi videos in one interface.
MotionEye OS is good as a camera surveillance system. Needs a USB camera or a Raspberry Pi camera. Takes a bit of tweaking to get the optimal camera settings (using a GUI), but then it works well.
LibeElec is useful as a home theatre setup, based on Kodi.
I use motionEye to monitor RTSP feed from two IP cameras (Generic) on RPi 3(SSD, btrfs, zswap, ArchLinux ARM - headless, passive cooling - heat sink case) the feed averages around 30fps(720p) with motion detection. I had a third logitech c720 via USB but removed it to get better frame rates for the former and make room(CPU) for a SDR setup(To receive 433Mhz from other sensors).
Note: Generic IP cameras dial home for public identification on their apps and also would never receive security updates. I had to meticulously block all open ports using firewall. If you feel that's too much of risk, then I would suggest building a camera setup with RPi camera or ESP camera yourself to be used with motionEye.
There are a few projects out there [0][1] that make it fairly simple to set up a motion detection capable solution with a simple USB webcam. I'm currently waiting on a cheap infrared camera from China ($4!) for use with my Pi, but I've done testing with an older Logitech HD camera and have had excellent results.
I have run a Raspberry Pi Zero W with 5mp camera and MotionEye software outside for 3 Christmas seasons to control an animated display. I trigger on movement and capture still and video images to the SD card and automatically upload them over WiFi to my ftp server. I can monitor a live stream anytime too. MotionEye does everything.
This setup runs in a small waterproof enclosure and runs a bit warm (35-45C) that dissipates any condensation or rain on the fisheye lens. This might help you with snow accumulation.
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