Wifi Camera's to work with Home Assistant.

georgelza

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hi hi guys.

I want to add some indoor wifi camera's.

Any good brands to look at?
I have a pretty strong NAS (TrueNAS), lots of space, to which I can stream the media.
I'd also like to integrate it with HA, allowing me to view the "camera" remotely via HA

Any guidance appreciated.
Might eventually extend to same brand/external camera's.

PS: don't want anything that MUST have "internet" access to work, aka any foreign talk home.

G
 
HA is a popular attack vector and exposing the service on the internet without taking appropriate steps is not a great idea.

As is any NAT/port forward.

Imagining VPN is magically secure is also a problem. Your device is being exposed to an aggregation service over which you have no control, makes your device visible to the aggregation service and possibly any clients connected to it.

What you actually need is an outbound-only service. Sadly no vendors out there provide it. Because security is not the first consideration.
 
hi hi guys.

I want to add some indoor wifi camera's.

Any good brands to look at?
I have a pretty strong NAS (TrueNAS), lots of space, to which I can stream the media.
I'd also like to integrate it with HA, allowing me to view the "camera" remotely via HA

Any guidance appreciated.
Might eventually extend to same brand/external camera's.

PS: don't want anything that MUST have "internet" access to work, aka any foreign talk home.

G
Sounds like camera's are the least of your concerns. Why do you need to monitor the inside and why would you risk the exposure?
 
... appreciate the warning... but that was not the question.

looking for a indoor camera that i can point to something like frigate running locally, that I can integrate with HA... that my question.

G
 
honestly... dont want to explain the why's... I have valid reasons...

I'm looking for the simple question of what are others using, have found work in similar setup.

G
 
The way I have it is Camera > Frigate > Frigate HA Intergration > Tailscale VPN for remote access.

As for what camera brands, personally I would only stick with HikVision or Dahua. I run all dahua's at my house.
 
HA is a popular attack vector and exposing the service on the internet without taking appropriate steps is not a great idea.

As is any NAT/port forward.

Imagining VPN is magically secure is also a problem. Your device is being exposed to an aggregation service over which you have no control, makes your device visible to the aggregation service and possibly any clients connected to it.

What you actually need is an outbound-only service. Sadly no vendors out there provide it. Because security is not the first consideration.
What if he kept it all local, then used RDP to view the NVR output?

Technically he would have the same exposure as any other standard windows environment then.
 
used RDP to view the NVR output?
Would still expose Windows RDS to the internet which is bad idea squared... tripled even. RDS should never see the internet - at least not directly.

Configuring a restricted gateway on a custom port and segregated network with limited cross-talk.... *maybe*. Better than just plugging these services into the internet.

Would still have to bridge to the local network at some point and that point needs some thought.
 
Tapo cameras have good integration with HA (and with Frigate, but I admit I do not use Frigate). I use one to watch the area our cars are parked in.
 
Would still expose Windows RDS to the internet which is bad idea squared... tripled even. RDS should never see the internet - at least not directly.

Configuring a restricted gateway on a custom port and segregated network with limited cross-talk.... *maybe*. Better than just plugging these services into the internet.

Would still have to bridge to the local network at some point and that point needs some thought.
And 3rd party RDP providers? I love using Chrome Remote Desktop, never thought much about how secure it is
 
Pretty much anything that supports RTSP can work with Scrypted (better than HA native in my opinion) or HA natively.

Use Hikvision myself.

While my HA is exposed to the internet behind Nginx and Letsencrypt/DuckDNS, I actually much prefer my camera feeds living in Apple HomeKit giving me a better NVR experience than any local solution.
 
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