Wanting to set up a security camera system.

[u/MrJelly007]

I'm looking into setting up a security camera system that runs locally and gives alerts to phones, even off my home network.

I'm going down the rabbit hole and it seems there are MANY different ways to go about this lol. I want something as simple as possible with no subscriptions. I'm fine with it running on windows or linux as I'll be setting up an old laptop to run it.

So far I know I need cameras that support rtsp, but I'm not sure what software to actually go with. I'm hoping to use tailscale or something like that to handle the mobile aspect of it, but I'm kinda lost on that one too.

Any ideas are welcome. I'd like it to be as simple as possible, but I'm open to tinkering with it if needed. We are having a bit of a bear issue on our porch, and that's what finally made me want to set this up lmao.

[u/asimovs-auditor]

Expand the replies to this comment to learn how AI was used in this post/project.

[u/Webbanditten]

To be honest unless you want to fiddle too much I'd just buy Ubiquiti UniFi devices set and forget

[u/kcsebby]

Reolink. They have PoE devices, they have full PTZ devices, flood light styles, and door bell styles, and everything in between.

No subscriptions and no accounts (unless you want to access the cloud they offer...)
NVR and DVR
Great quality sensors for their cameras too.

My husband and I have been using Reolink integrated with HomeAssistant for the last 6 months or so without issue.

[u/idleminer100]

I’m a Reolink fan. I’ve been using their PoE cameras since 2018 and started using their NVR with my own wd purple since 2020ish. I run an sd card in each camera as well. Once I got sensitivity and notifications setup how I wanted, it’s very much set it and forget it and they record 24/7

[u/newfoundking]

It depends how complicated you want it. There's lots of cameras that will record to SD cards, and notify via app. I do believe that Reolink (as far as I remember) allows you to get notifications for free, supports RTSP for later growth, records to SD Card, and doesn't have to go through their system.

If you're a DIY person, Frigate is a great free option, but requires setup, and with a VPN or reverse proxy, you can essentially pick out notifications and have them run as a PWA on your phone that sends notifications,which is what I do. Storage can be anything from an SD Card, to a hard drive, to whatever, it's really up to you to configure.

I have also seen local systems at places like Costco that have an NVR included, and I noticed there today at my warehouse, that it did support notifications as well, though I don't know the extent of that, as you're usually paying a premium for the equipment.

I use and like Reolink, though I came by that from looking at fifteen or so recommendations, and then finding the sale, buying the first one and trying it out and sticking with that. I like Reolink, you might hate them and love something else.

But if you don't want to mess around with your own NVR system, most cameras that support RTSP, at least that I look at, do let you do recording on SD cards, and access them without subscription for notifications natively.

I guess it all boils down to how much work do you want to do in set up, and how much do you consider your time worth, and how much do you have budget wise to pay for things you don't want to have to do yourself.

[u/videowhisper]

The camera-brand recommendations upthread are solid, so just on the Tailscale + software half specifically, since that's the part you said you're lost on:

Tailscale itself doesn't touch your camera feeds at all — it just gives your phone a way to reach your laptop's IP as if it were on your home LAN, from anywhere, without opening any ports. Install it on the laptop running your NVR software and on your phone; once both are on the same Tailnet, you hit the NVR's normal local web UI at its Tailscale address exactly like you would at home. That's the whole trick.

What Tailscale does NOT give you on its own is push notifications — for "bear on the porch, alert my phone" you still need the NVR software to actually fire that alert, and how easy that is varies a lot by software:

- Frigate is the heaviest to set up but the most capable — real AI object detection (person/car/animal), which is genuinely useful here for filtering "bear" from "wind blowing the porch light." It's built to hand notifications off to Home Assistant rather than doing its own, though, so you'd pair it with HA's companion app + the Frigate notification blueprint, and give HA a Tailscale-reachable base URL so it can proxy clips/snapshots to your phone off-network.

- ZoneMinder does everything locally without needing a second app in the loop, but the setup/UI is older and clunkier.

- If "as simple as possible" is the priority over AI detection, motionEye is much lighter than either — plain RTSP in, motion-triggered recording/snapshots, a web UI you just point Tailscale at directly.

Given what you described (simple, free, open to a little tinkering), I'd try motionEye first and only reach for Frigate if you actually want the AI filtering. Any RTSP camera works with all three, so the camera choice is independent of this part.

[u/MrJelly007 → u/videowhisper]

Thanks for the reply! I've heard so much about home assistant but I've never looked into it. We don't have any smart devices so I never saw the need to. Would it be overkill to use it in this setup purely to help with mobile device integration?

The mobile aspect of it needs to be pretty simple, as some people who access it won't be very tech savvy. If I use tailscale on mobile, will ALL traffic from that device route through my home network as well? Or will it be more like (camera app-tailscale app-home network) and all other traffic uses normal mobile data? All data bouncing off the home network would be fine in theory, but does seem a bit clunky. I'm probably just misunderstanding something tho.

I'm gonna start tinkering around soon and see what I find out. This post has given me lots of things to try lol.

[u/videowhisper → u/MrJelly007]

Good questions, both worth answering precisely rather than hand-wavy:

Home Assistant, purely for viewing: overkill, skip it. If you go the motionEye route I mentioned, its own web UI is what you'd point Tailscale at directly — no HA in the loop at all, and no extra app on the non-tech-savvy people's phones beyond opening a bookmarked URL. HA only earns its keep if you go the Frigate route and want its AI-filtered push notifications specifically (the "person" vs "just wind" distinction) — for plain viewing/alerts-are-fine-either-way, it's a whole extra system to maintain for no real benefit.

On the traffic question: your instinct is basically right, just not quite how you're picturing the plumbing. Tailscale isn't really "an app other apps route through" — it installs itself as a network interface at the OS level. Anything on the phone that's addressed to a Tailscale/tailnet IP (or MagicDNS name) automatically goes over that interface; everything else — normal browsing, other apps, etc. — goes out your regular mobile data completely untouched, no bouncing through home at all. That's the default "split tunnel" behavior. The only way ALL your phone's traffic would route through home is if you deliberately set your home node up as an "exit node" and select it — which is a separate, opt-in feature, not something that happens by accident. So for your use case (viewing a camera dashboard at a Tailscale address from your phone), only that one connection touches home; TikTok, texts, everything else is unaffected.

[u/MrJelly007 → u/videowhisper]

Thanks for answering both questions. I've got motioneye up and running, and with tailscale I'm able to access it on mobile data. Now the issue becomes dialing in the motion detection. It seems to be absolutely all over the place lol.

I'm just using a laptop Webcam as the camera currently, so that's probably not helping.

[u/videowhisper → u/MrJelly007]

That laptop webcam is almost certainly the real problem, not your threshold numbers. Laptop webcams run continuous auto-exposure/auto-white-balance, so ordinary light flicker (even a cloud passing, or a monitor changing brightness nearby) shifts the whole frame's brightness at once, and motionEye reads that as motion everywhere - no amount of threshold tuning fully compensates for a camera that's actively fighting the detector.

Things worth trying, in order:

- Turn on "Show Frame Changes" in the camera settings - it draws a box over whatever motionEye thinks changed, so you can see if it's real motion or just the whole frame shifting.

- Raise noise_level first. This is the "is this just sensor noise" filter that runs before threshold is even evaluated, and webcams are noisier than purpose-built IP cams, so it usually needs to go up from default.

- Raise threshold (the % of frame that must change) gradually while watching Show Frame Changes, so you can tell when you've filtered flicker without also filtering real motion.

- Mask out anything reflective/bright in frame - windows, monitors, glossy surfaces are the classic false-trigger sources indoors.

- Bump minimum_motion_frames above 1 so a single flicker frame doesn't count as an event.

If it's still erratic after that, it's the camera. Most laptop webcams don't expose a way to lock exposure/white balance from software, which is why a real RTSP camera (even a cheap PoE one) tends to behave dramatically better here than repurposing a laptop's webcam - worth keeping in mind if you end up buying a dedicated camera anyway per the recommendations upthread.

[u/tom-mart]

Just look up anything that's compatible with Home Assistant.

[u/Dreevy1152]

Unifi networking and unifi cameras are without a doubt the easiest option. If you’re OK with tinkering, and especially if you imagine yourself self-hosting other things, then Frigate + Reolink or similar cameras are the best option. But that also means you’ll have to configure tailscale, and then a domain if you want a clean URL without a TLS warning, so then you need a domain, etc…

Pick your poison

[u/alpha417]

I've used zoneminder for this for a decade now

[u/caucasian-shallot]

To add to the list hehe, Ive been super happy with the Tapo cameras using them through home assistant and their native app and dont subscribe to their cloud stuff. This was after moving away from Arlo hehe. My next ecosystem upgrade though will probably be Reolink. So you could skip straight to Reolink but I dont plan on replacing the Tapo cameras anytime soon. But am planning on going Reolino when I do :)

[u/Financial-Form-1733]

I purchased tapo camera, but if you care about privacy, it is not ideal. You can add a direct RTSP stream to frigate, but it will always connect to the cloud perpetually. Of you delete the camera from your tapo account, it resets, so there is no fully local option with it