Having looked into this myself prior was mostly asking for disappointment. Getting a random Chinese IP camera to convert to open firmware is great in theory, but the problem is actually buying a camera or 10, or buying more over time.
You never really know what hardware ships internally at any given time, ie what SoC a camera really is. They change frequently in random Chinese manufacturers with internal SoC hardware update with constant improvement (in their margins at least), if reported by someone at a point in time, buying the same model a 6mo-1yr later you cannot expect the same model number to be the same hardware.
It is rarely stated on a site selling them what SoC they use, or the vendors sites, assuming you can find and/or translate anything usable, or if the vendor is even still around more than a few months under that name. Therefore there is no repeatable source of products you can get reliably across time without simply testing a sample and hacking your own as you go.
I really wish someone would take initiative to sell/resell a line of camera hardware with openipc or other open firmware on them. It's a business opportunity sorely missing with nothing to offer home/business users ip cameras with open sterile and guaranteed secure firmware vs. random pure Chinese jank.
When in doubt, I take for granted that every camera with closed firmware contains malware that phones home or waits dormant to be used to steal sensitive video+audio or to take part in a botnet, which already happened several times. The solution as of today is to put a firewall in between that blocks any traffic to the LAN and from the outside, except from trusted applications.
There are many multi ETH port mini PCs that can be repurposed as firewalls so that the video surveillance subnet can be physically separated from the rest by connecting all cameras (for obvious reasons I wouldn't take WiFi into consideration) to a switch, possibly with PoE support.
Couldn't agree more with this comment. I've had exactly the same frustration trying to get cameras months/years apart that will work. You have to open each one up and hack it yourself (and OpenIPC may support it or not), and nowadays they are protected from loading firmware easily (tiny UART/debug ports, disabled UBoot loader, etc.).
I also wish there were an option for someone to buy cameras with open HW/SW, to get away from the random cloud services they want you to open your network up to with cheap cameras.
Not just that; I'd be OK with closed source firmware if I can just put it on an isolated network and be done with it, but from typical listings on Amazon et al you cannot even tell if the camera works without a mandatory cloud connection.
I've bought a router from TPlink a while ago that wanted me to install a fucking app, create a TPlink account and send all comms over some cloud servers to configure a router that's sitting right next to me, that all the traffic from the very fucking phone is going through. It did have a classic web interface, but it was completely crippled and basically just allowed changing the Wifi SSID and doing a firmware update. There was nothing in the product description about this, and none of the customer reviews mentioned it, because obviously this shit is now completely normal to the average joe.
> I really wish someone would take initiative to sell/resell a line of camera hardware with openipc or other open firmware on them. It's a business opportunity sorely missing with nothing to offer home/business users ip cameras with open sterile and guaranteed secure firmware vs. random pure Chinese jank.
Manufacturers could do it themselves, but the license prohibits commercial use.
> OpenIPC source code is released under one of the most simple open source license agreements, MIT License, giving users express permission to reuse code for any purpose, even as part of a proprietary software. We only ask you politely to contribute your improvements back to us. We would be grateful for any feedback and suggestions.
Edit: since people are arguing with me, the text I quoted is right of the main page for OpenIPC, and everything here is MIT licensed too: https://github.com/OpenIPC
> Majestic code while is not open, provides unprecedented performance and capabilities for a wide range of hardware. The author of Majestic streamer is looking into possibilities to open-source the codebase after he secures enough funds to support further open development. You can help to make it happen sooner.
Stupid question from a noob: why not just use some raspberry pi zero, a camera sensor and some ONVIF server? That's what most of those cheap chinese IP camera are: a linux board, a camera sensor and some compression chip.
Because the camera comes in a neat box with resonable weather tightness and it is easier to setup and connect. IP cameras also have the advantage of not needing a power brick.
The Wyze cams seem cheap enough at ~35€ and with a stable SoC. A replacement for their (insecure) cloud stuff would be nice, otherwise the software is actually pretty decent.
You never really know what hardware ships internally at any given time, ie what SoC a camera really is. They change frequently in random Chinese manufacturers with internal SoC hardware update with constant improvement (in their margins at least), if reported by someone at a point in time, buying the same model a 6mo-1yr later you cannot expect the same model number to be the same hardware.
It is rarely stated on a site selling them what SoC they use, or the vendors sites, assuming you can find and/or translate anything usable, or if the vendor is even still around more than a few months under that name. Therefore there is no repeatable source of products you can get reliably across time without simply testing a sample and hacking your own as you go.
I really wish someone would take initiative to sell/resell a line of camera hardware with openipc or other open firmware on them. It's a business opportunity sorely missing with nothing to offer home/business users ip cameras with open sterile and guaranteed secure firmware vs. random pure Chinese jank.