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smartcam

Smart, low-cost, self-contained, cooperative IP security camera system in .NET for Raspberry Pi devices.

2020-06 - This is a new project in the earliest stages of planning, testing, and design. As I make progress I will begin documenting things like the basic setup process.

Requirements / Assumptions

  • Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB RAM (likely also compatible with v3, I haven't tried yet)
  • Camera using the Pi's on-board camera port (5MP preferred over newer 8MP version)
  • .NET and ASP.NET runtimes; SDK not required on-board the Pi; currently targeting 3.1.x
  • Raspbian OS (lite is OK but some of the setup process may be easier through the GUI)
  • Network-based centralized storage for video clips (e.g. a NAS or dedicated file server)
  • Cameras are on a trusted network (e.g. adequately firewalled on your home network)

Features / Goals

  • Fast new-device setup: copy SD card, change one config file, boot, rename the Pi, run updates
  • Self-organizing: the cameras discover other smartcams on the same network (group triggers)
  • Low traffic: 100% local processing, only copying recordings to storage is high-traffic
  • SD-card friendly: caching and encoding on ramdisk, logging on network
  • Self-managing: systemctl watchdog processes
  • User-friendly: easy web-based UI for interacting with the entire system
  • DHCP-friendly, no need to pre-assign IPs (a common requirement with IP cams on DVR servers)
  • TBD: support MJPEG / RTSP for interactive browser viewing?

The smartcam Process

  • Console program on each Pi device
  • Manages the pre-record buffer
  • Performs motion detection
  • Manages recording and saving to storage
  • Communicates via websockets with local "smartcam-host" process

The smartcam-host Process

  • Web server on each Pi device
  • Basic browser UI for interacting with an individual camera (not secure)
  • Simple REST API for interacting with other smartcam-host processes
  • ASP.NET Kestrel reverse-proxy setup behind ngnix
  • Interacts with "smartcam" process via websockets
  • Discovers other smartcam servers on the same network
  • Sends and receives group notifications when motion detection triggers recording
  • Manages network storage maintenance (trimming old files by date and/or free space)

The smartcam-master Server

  • Web server, one per network, not necessarily Pi-hosted
  • UI provides a system-wide view (similar to traditional IP cam DVRs)
  • Basic security (we assume this is potentially publicly accessible)
  • Interacts with all known smartcam-host processes

Notes About Network Storage

  • A top-level directory is dedicated to all cameras, for example //NAS1/smartcams
  • Each smartcam creates it's own subdirectory, for example //NAS1/smartcams/frontporch
  • The smartcam updates discovery.txt with information to help the hosts with discovery