Nest Cams are a BIG RIPOFF - DIY WiFi Security Camera Guide
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,703 words · ~8 min read
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our journey began when i made the admittedly short-sighted decision to
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purchase three drop cat excuse me uh
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nest cams without reading the fine print
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sure they had excellent image quality a modern design and a super easy to use
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app but there was one fatal flaw in
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addition to the 150 dollar per camera
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upfront cost nest wants a whopping 5 to
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30 dollars per camera per month to store
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the footage in the cloud for you and they offer no way for you to hook up
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your own storage device so we put together
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this it costs a third as much and has no
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monthly fees speaking of things with no monthly fees
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that is to say as long as you pay for it yearly private internet access it's a
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vpn service that encrypts all of your internet traffic and uses a safe
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protected ip it's got a ton of other useful features too so check it out at
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the link below
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there are a ton of reasons why someone might want a security camera system even
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if you're not a drug dealer or whatever a handful of cameras on your property
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can act as a deterrent for would-be burglars remember they're often after
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the easy score not the big one they can be a convenient way to monitor your pets
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or kids when they're at home alone they can significantly aid law enforcement's
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efforts to recover stolen goods and this one's kind of a no-brainer they can even
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lower your insurance rates making it so they effectively pay for themselves so
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what do we got well the build for each is actually pretty simple all we need is a raspi
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zero w so that's wireless so you don't need a dongle or anything like that
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a little camera module it connects with a ribbon cable and there's even a
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pre-built operating system some guy made called motion iOS is it free yeah sick
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and open source all right let's do it since these cameras are intended for use
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indoors we forwent any waterproofing but this could be done fairly easily with
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some silicone and conformal coating so after two days of tinkering with the
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software measuring the electronics and modifying some existing models from
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thingiverse we had a couple of options for 3d printed enclosures for our
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cameras so the model i found online actually needed a little modification
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for the heatsink wait
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the raspberry pi runs that hot yeah especially when you overclock which
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we're gonna do we're overclocking
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it's a it's a preset that's built in but you can get much better frame rate when
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you overclock them and i made a little ARM that uh adjusts both ways so you got
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lots of tilt and pan oh that's cool
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i see we've taken the uh chinese action cam approach and ripped
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off gopro hey man they make good stuff okay
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other way
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there you go not bad for those of you hoping to build
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something similar at home you can pick up a case with holes already cut for the
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official raspi camera modules from modmypi or you could get the models
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linked in the description printed from a company like shapeways okay so i
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pre-configured the os and the wi-fi as that can be a little time consuming the
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first time but we should just need to plug it in and wait for it to boot up
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hopefully it actually works right it's powered yeah i know but it might
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not uh have detected it so now that we're booted up you can see our ip we've
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got a login screen um we should really do a written guide on
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this yeah just on the forum probably should if you could do that up for me
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that would be great thanks
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okay let's see the interface so this is really cool the number of customization
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options in the software can look a little overwhelming at first but the
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premise is pretty simple now we just have this camera module here attached to
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this raspi at the moment so all we need
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to do is add the camera in
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set up our desired config so we're going to use 720p 10fps and then just set the
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footage to store on one of our servers here at the office
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what actually gets recorded is pretty much up to you so we're setting ours up
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to just continuously record up to a maximum of 24 hour long clips with a
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preservation length of one month after which the old footage will be
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automagically deleted but you can also set it to record only when motion is
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detected which will help you preserve space and your sanity if you ever have
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to go back into the footage to look for something so our config will change a little bit
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once we have multiple cameras but we can talk more about that later so this is
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pretty cool already but we can take it to another level
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a more conventional security camera enclosure would keep our razpi zeros
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much safer outside and would look a lot
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more like a professionally installed security system
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so we actually borrowed the idea of a
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common home security hack
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buying fake cctv cameras off amazon
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to kind of like set up around your property except
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we are going to put real cameras inside
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you know i'd say you're a genius but it was my idea
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once our fake cameras arrived cracking them open revealed an almost entirely
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empty casing perfect we did end up 3d printing a little
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holding bracket for our camera but if i were you i wouldn't bother it's much
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easier to just remove the black plastic piece that holds the fake camera and hot
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glue the real one into place as for the power cable the rear housing
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just needed a little hole for it so now that we have two cameras with the
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potential for more it's actually recommended that you get another raspi
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and run motion iOS on it as a server
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with no camera attached so we've got an
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example of what that might look like right here so most of its processing
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power can be devoted to encoding footage to be stored onto your nas via the
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network cable that way you can see all of your wi-fi cameras in one place
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do note though that you will need something like a raspi three plus
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because a pi zero won't be able to handle the load of a bunch of cameras so
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that'll limit the resolution and the frame rate of the footage that can be
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recorded to make this config work better the cameras themselves can be run in a
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special setup called fast network camera mode which uses the pi zero's GPU to
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encode a motion jpeg stream to the pi server for much higher image quality and
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frame rate so you can check out the forum post in the description for a
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how-to on that these actually look surprisingly good like that wide angle
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looks sick yeah so both of them are running 720p 10fps right now which
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doesn't sound like a lot but you know for a security camera it's actually
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quite a bit yeah i mean these look way better than your average cctv and
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all of the footage that you get can either be backed up to google drive so
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buy expensive nest subscription or it can be stored directly on a local nas or
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just a pc where it'll be safe from third parties and other prying eyes and
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because you can choose your own camera elements you can decide what features
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you want on each one so this one has a fairly narrow field of view whereas the
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one that we have over there is using a wide-angle lens so i guess it's
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conclusion time then this diy solution is a super awesome way to keep you in
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control of your cameras and it can actually help save you a very
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significant amount of money every month for your home or business
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but there are some compromises first we're giving up any special
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features like audio whether it's two-way or one-way
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second the control panel does look pretty great as a mobile web page but
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you'll need to do port forwarding tomfoolery in order to
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access it remotely and there is currently no Android or iOS app and then
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finally the casings
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and mounts frankly don't really look that great
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oh and keep in mind that you won't have any support number to call if you're
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having issues as helpful as those typically may or may not be
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the cove commuter is a portable bluetooth speaker that you can take
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anywhere that's where the portable part comes in it connects via bluetooth that's where
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the bluetooth part comes in and features 10 meter range that's almost 33 feet it
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features an xbase subwoofer to let you feel the bass and it doubles as a
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speaker phone for incoming calls the rechargeable battery can last up to
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eight hours and it's water resistant with an ipx4 rating it's got two eq
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modes one designed for indoors and one designed for outside and you can check
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it out today at the link below so thanks for watching guys if you
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disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get
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subscribed maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at
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the link in the video description also down there is our merch store which has
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cool shirts like this one sans hole
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and our community forum which you should totally join which is by the way where
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you're gonna find the guide for how to make yourself one of
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these on lychee