Security cam hosting?

[datachicane]

I've got a handful of cheap 80211.x IP cams keeping on eye on the grounds of the family estate. For obvious reasons storing them locally on my own webserver would be less than ideal.

I'd dumped the images for years onto various free web hosting solutions along with a dopey thumbnail viewer I cribbed, but the sketchy reliability and slow response time got old. I started using Sensr.net a year or so back and it worked pretty well, but with their switch to a paid service and the demise of the free option they've been shutting my cameras down one by one. $29/mo is way too rich for my blood, so they're out.

My IP cams can handle FTP, SMTP, etc., and ideally I'd like to just ftp or email them to Picasa or Photobucket or something similar. Photobucket does have ftp support with their reasonably cheap pro package, but since they don't allow file renaming (something most cams do on the fly to prevent name collisions) it doesn't function here. Gmail SMTP requires TLS, which the cams don't support. Yahoo SMTP worked just fine until a few weeks back, then went dark.

Anyone have any options I've overlooked? Is anyone doing anything similar?

[SteveH]

You have an estate and yet you want free hosting, Mr. 1 percenter? :D

[G.]

I've got a handful of cheap 80211.x IP cams keeping on eye on the grounds of the family estate. For obvious reasons storing them locally on my own webserver would be less than ideal.

I'd dumped the images for years onto various free web hosting solutions along with a dopey thumbnail viewer I cribbed, but the sketchy reliability and slow response time got old. I started using Sensr.net a year or so back and it worked pretty well, but with their switch to a paid service and the demise of the free option they've been shutting my cameras down one by one. $29/mo is way too rich for my blood, so they're out.

My IP cams can handle FTP, SMTP, etc., and ideally I'd like to just ftp or email them to Picasa or Photobucket or something similar. Photobucket does have ftp support with their reasonably cheap pro package, but since they don't allow file renaming (something most cams do on the fly to prevent name collisions) it doesn't function here. Gmail SMTP requires TLS, which the cams don't support. Yahoo SMTP worked just fine until a few weeks back, then went dark.

Anyone have any options I've overlooked? Is anyone doing anything similar?
I recognize some of these words!



I'll ask a buddy what he does, but he might be in the same boat as you.

[chop456]

Host your own server at a neighbor's house?

[Kiwifan]

You have an estate and yet you want free hosting, Mr. 1 percenter? :D

Yes but I wonder if he has Jags in the drive and an engine pullin tree out back? :rofl:

Sometimes we all tell wee lies on the net.

PS NOT sayin data does. :o

[WickerBill]

Host your own server at a neighbor's house?

Or friend or relative. Otherwise you're going to pay some dough. You can look up VPS hosting and get a lot of options there, some $10-14 a month for <lots> of bandwidth and plenty of storage (assuming you would archive old video/stills off of the VPS and onto cheap storage monthly, or something). With VPS, you control everything, so you can set up the protocols the way you want.

Have you looked at Amazon S3? Absolutely no idea if they support what you need them to, and I'm too lazy to look it up, but they're cheap and getting cheaper. Amazon S3 FAQ (http://aws.amazon.com/s3/faqs/)

[datachicane]

The family estate is a holding consisting of hundreds of square feet nestled in the very heart of Hyperbole Heights. It's an, umm, diverse neighborhood.

No video, just low-res jpgs...

[WickerBill]

consisting of hundreds of square feet


:laugh:

[Insomniac]

How long do you need to keep the data? You could create a DropBox (or similar service) account and sync that to a local folder. Then save the data there and it will get synced to the cloud automatically.

[datachicane]

I'd like to be able to use a rudimentary viewer so I can monitor over the web. The IP cams connect to the web via my wireless router, so I don't necessarily have to keep a box running at home (nice, since there's no telling what the wife and kid will do when I'm out of town).

A couple of weeks' data would be adequate, and the low-res jpgs don't take a bunch of space anyway. I'll probably have to break down and buy some webserver space, but I was hoping that mine was a more common need that it apparently is. Like I said, Photobucket would work perfectly if their ftp support actually worked, and Sensr was slick as a free beta, but $29/mo? :saywhat: They've gotta be smoking something.