Best products from r/selfhosted

What's not a stand-alone device? The Raspberry Pi is a stand-alone device as long as it has an SD card.

If you're looking to move away from Google, keep in mind that hosting your own data means that you're responsible for data redundancy, backups, up-time and configuration. For beginners, it means that you might sometimes lose data if you're not able to keep your info in more than one location (hard drive, building, etc.) or if you make a mistake configuring something. That being said, /r/selfhosted is all about trying new things!

What /u/Allistakn said is the right place to start. Go to NextCloudPi and read the instructions for how to install on a Raspberry Pi.

You can get a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ at Amazon with a case, power supply and heat sinks included. Or you can buy one from adafruit directly, but you'll need to get a power supply and case separately, and shipping is extra.

Here is a great video on YouTube that walks you through all the steps necessary to get it setup once you have your Pi.d

After that, it's simply setting up a port forward on your router to your pi and you can access your data from anywhere!



Good luck and welcome to the world of self hosting! Feel free to come back and ask more questions when you're ready (domains, dns, reverse proxies, virtualization and containerization, etc.)

I'd recommend Dahua, Hikvision, or any of their clones. But I wouldn't trust them. I have mine blocked at the router and can only talk to the NVR through a vlan. I tried a linux NVR but the false positives were out of control. Blue Iris is for Windows and costs $50 but is much better.

The important part is that the camera supports ONVIF and POE. Many of the big names only work with their own NVR hardware.


The second most important the camera uses a patch IR led instead of a bunch of discrete IR leds.

This is a patch IR led:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07N18N9ZW

The lens produces a diffuse spot light good for 30+ yards but a little too bright up close.

This one with no lens and two IR patch led's produces nice even lighting to 30' but only reaches to 100' max.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014JV0R4O/

The "old style" ring of LED's produces a bright spot light at 20' which is horrible for night vision. You have an over exposed picture when someone is close and absolute darkness if they are out of the spotlight.

Here is an example of "old style" discrete IR leds:

https://www.amazon.com/HIKVISION-DS-2CD2142FWD-I-Fixed-Network-2-8mm/dp/B013LR5B9I


It's a flashlight in the dark problem. A bright beam will light up what you are looking at but everything else will be complete black. A diffuse beam will let you see a wider area but won't reach as far.

Have you considered setting up a Zoneminder server? Fantastic self hosted option. Free, open source software, and only gets better if you use the h254 storage branch. That branch will keep your events as video files and supports motion detection OOB.

Theres a long list of supported cameras, some as cheap as $40/ea. My home CCTV system is based on zoneminder and have been very happy with it for the last several years.

ZoneMinder: https://zoneminder.com/

H264 branch PPA: https://launchpad.net/~iconnor/+archive/ubuntu/zoneminder-feature-h264-videostorage

These cams are supported, and sport wireless functionality, weatherproof, as well as IR all for a little over $40: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01J0V6BWA/ref=twister_B01M4R40QH?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&coliid=I1JN5ZPWJXZM5A&colid=1XRRHEIGE9S0A

You can also check out this compatibility list for some more ideas if you're looking for some more robust cams: https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Hardware_Compatibility_List#Network_Cameras

edit:
Oh, theres also a killer desktop and mobile app called ZMninja that allows you to view live streams and events on the go. Its more or less been dubbed the official Zm app at this point: http://pliablepixels.github.io/

I replaced my year old (and mostly inconsistent) RingPro with this RCA and LOVE it! I heard about it on IPCamTalk.

A month with it and I have been VERY happy! It works great with my BlueIris setup as well.

> If you expand too much you will end up being disappointed in the reliance on USB of any of the single board computers.

I built my server around a Raspberry PI and currently have four 4+ TB drives hooked up via a powered USB hub. I've had as many as six drives hooked up, but I consolidated my drive-mapping and storage sizes a bit ago.

(Note: If you buy through the Amazon Smile link I posted for the USB hub, proceeds go to benefit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a very worthy cause!)

One option is to go with a Synology. There are a lot of models to choose from, you could pick one with enough power. There are pros and cons with Synology. I used one for several years until a software update corrupted the raid. I had a backup, so not big deal, but my trust level in Synology went to zero.

Another option is a linux server. I got an Intel NUC (and 8gb ram + 128gb ssd):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MSZTD8N/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And this enclosure:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KCEAXJW/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I now have everything I had with the Synology plus a whole lot more power and versatility. You could even bump up to the i3 for a little more. The great thing about these NUC's is they use very little power and are extremely reliable. I have several that have been running 24/7 for years without even a hiccup.

I use these cameras all around the house paired with the latest branch of ZoneMinder which has come a long way in the past year; on top of Ubuntu 18.04.

The cameras have fantastic quality.

POE IP Camera, SV3C ProHD 1080p Outdoor Video Security Camera(Wired), 36PCS IR LED Night Light Surveillance Camera, Waterproof Security Indoor Outdoor Motion Camera with H.265 ONVIF …
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0777PNBY4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_stlyCbMC0Q1XT

I've been self-hosting DNS for decades. It's totally doable. Reading the grasshopper book wouldn't be a terrible idea.

I finally got off BIND and would encourage everyone else to do the same. I'm using PowerDNS and NSEdit to manage records.

I use a free service as a slave for my secondary DNS server.

Here's some links to the items I had mentioned,

Cloud Key Gen2 Plus

5TB USB Hard Drive (How to shuck it)

Cameras:

G3 Flex (Crosstalk's review)

G3 Micro (If wireless is required) (Crosstalk's review)

Other useful videos (Crosstalk Solutions does a lot of good videos about Unifi products):

Information about the hard drive upgrade

Information about unifi protect

Unifi video NVR Build

Yes. So I bought https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075G2PM17/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and used it to power the 4 cameras and for network connectivity. Plug 5 or 6 into your router and plug the cameras into 1-4 and flip the switch to "extended".

​

Install Shinobi (I used a 1u old blade with 4G of ram and a 1TB 7.2k HD)

Go to ONFIV in upper left hand corner dropdown menu on your registered email address

Put the range in for your subnet (mine is 192.168.1.1-192.168.1.200)

And click on the camera to add it

If you ever needed to move to multiple servers there are always setups like this: https://www.amazon.com/Layers-Clear-Stackable-Raspberry-Heatsink/dp/B07BGYGLZG

Add one task at a time and enjoy the ride!

We use the 3B+ with the offical PoE hat and had heating issues in other cases. Been pretty happy with this case at work. We didn't use the included fan, but instead the one built into the PoE hat. So I can't comment on how loud it is.

https://www.amazon.com/MakerFocus-Raspberry-Aluminum-Heatsink-Driver/dp/B07PNB7JWP

I have one of mine running in this case, which is virtually silent and keeps it nice and cool.

I use something like this to for my security cameras.

VECOAX MINIMOD-2 | HDMI TO COAX MODULATOR to distribute your hdmi video sources to all TVs as HD Channels over existing tv coax cables

I turned my laptop into a unraid server. Bought a mediasonic box.


https://smile.amazon.com/Mediasonic-ProBox-HF2-SU3S2-SATA-Enclosure/dp/B003X26VV4/


Works wonderful

I have a 8300 Elite SFF with an i5-4570 and it works wonders for my usage. I just maxed out the RAM modules and added a DAS box like this one to expand storage.