Smart home camera

[Mrs Pingu]

I've read Ian's thread of earlier this year about security cameras, but humour me.

I want to be able to spy on the cats (having some issues atm) while we're out. What you would you recommend to someone starting from scratch? i.e. we don't have anything like Nest or Smarthings to begin with.
I don't want to have to pay an on going subscription for anything  and although I have a smartphone, Pingu doesn't, so a feed that could be accessed from a PC as well as an app would be useful.

Cheers 

[tiermat]

If you are a bit handy with computers, I would go down the Raspberry Pi and webcam route. Use ZoneMinder to handle the feed and away you go.

If not technically minded, an IP enabled webcam backed by a cloud service would be the way to go, but go for one that backs up to Google/AWS rather than a proprietary system as, if the company goes tits up, you have an expensive piece of plastic!

[Mrs Pingu]

I was initially thinking of a Samsung Smart things but that requires a hub as well as the camera so quite spendy.
My colleague has one of these https://www.amazon.co.uk/JOOAN-Security-Surveillance-Monitor-Control/dp/B014R01TN0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495455005&sr=8-1&keywords=jooan+366 might give something like that a try...

[JulesP]

I've been using the Logitech Circle for the same purpose for a few months and couldn't be happier. Very simple to set up and manage, though it needs a smartphone. You can view video on the web too, though.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Logitech-Circle-Security-Camera-Monitoring/dp/B015STE0A8

[aidan.f]

If you are a bit handy with computers, I would go down the Raspberry Pi and webcam route. Use ZoneMinder to handle the feed and away you go.

I looked at ZoneMinder, it has rather a learning curve. Kerberos.IO looks very good - flexible, fully featured easy to build & configure, well documented. I will be giving it a try https://doc.kerberos.io/

[fuaran]

Depends on what you want to do. Do you want live streaming, or recording video, or taking a photo every minute, or motion detection and alerts etc.

Yes, you could use a Raspberry Pi, either with the Pi camera, or with a USB webcam.
For software, you could try Motion. It can do motion detection and/or live streaming. Maybe a bit complicated to setup, but there are a few guides.
Or if you just want a photo every minute, you could setup Fswebcam with a cron job.

[aidan.f]

.. Has anyone checked my link out yet?