FWIW, I'm working on replacing home alarm system. I've more or less decided to use
3 separate pieces:
- R Pi running motion (more below)
- ESP32 smoke/vapour
- ESP32 low temperature
Any or all of these, given current thread about security cameras, would make a decent
discussion for next meeting.
With "motion" I've been doing some playing with settings. It's non-trivial to get
the right set of settings, and they are highly conditional on available local
storage, the context of the need for motion detection and images, etc. I've chosen
to NOT capture video, just images, and not very frequent. Also to NOT upload more
than a few of these. And the trigger choice is still under experimentation. I'll
openly admit I've a huge body of learning to catch up on. I'll be happy to share
ideas and experience, either on list or "off list and prepare digest".
Rest of msg is (current -- but might change) rationale for choices that might give
others some useful points to ponder.
1) I've never programmed in C, but the ESP32 examples / tutorials I'm using are in C
(there are some out there in Python, but I bought a quite nice starter kit and am
working through the nifty circuits and code). My plan is to adapt one of the examples.
Testing one case is easier than wondering what happens if both smoke and low temp
get triggered at same time. Hence intent to build two separate modules.
2) I've just become aware of MQTT for notifications, so am novice in that.
However, I've managed to get ESP32 to send me an email message. Note that mobile
phone folk have killed off email to SMS in last year, just after I tested that
option and found it very useful. Sigh.
3) My main concern is low temp when away for more than a day or so in winter.
Friends got a call when in bed that their furnace had died based on such an "alarm"
with their commercial home system. It was -30 out. They figure the alarm saved
them a 40-50K$ freezeup. But such alarms don't have to be "within 5 mins". Probably
1-3 hours is OK.
4) Smoke is more "I'd like to know." If there's a fire, unless I'm home I can't do
much to knock it down. I'm not building a smoke alarm, but a "smoke notifier".
5) Intrusion alarm response is almost certain to be too slow to be useful except
in a case where someone pulls in a truck to empty the house. Professionals will be
after something special. It would be nice to know I have a Vermeer rather than
a couple of verMinders (my nom-de-paintbrush is Jan verMinder). Kids breaking in
for vandalism probably will not hang around for police, who won't get there for
at least 30 mins and likely longer. So main use is to have images. There are
plenty of issues to discuss on how many, what quality, and how / where to upload.
Anyway, I welcome the discussion going on. Everyone has a slightly different
use case, but airing them is helpful to refine the response.
Cheers, John Nash
On 2025-08-16 18:17, Dianne Skoll via linux wrote:
On Sat, 16 Aug 2025 17:07:48 -0400
Spencer Cheng via linux <linux [ at ] linux-ottawa [ dot ] org> wrote:
15 or so years ago, I did the system design for a linux based video
camera which could operate through a firewall as a favour to a
friend.
My home network has a static public IP address ($4/month extra from
TekSavvy) so once I fire up my VPN, I can access my camera from
anywhere.
I would not expose any sort of security camera feed to the
Internet other than over a VPN.
Regards,
Dianne.
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