Hello –
I know this is not a 100% fit for this community and I apologise - but I don’t really know where to ask best. There’s some selfhosting involved, so maybe the smart crowd here has some recommendations.
Here goes:
I want to mount a camera at a quite remote location. I have Wifi there that I can use (I pay for it, but its usage is shared, I don’t monopolize it). I do not have power there. It’s outside, mild in winter, quite warm in summer. I will not get there for months at a time. I want the camera to be private, not open to the world. Ideally I’d like a solar powered wifi camera that can connect to my home via Wireguard (I have that bit going, multiple roaming notebooks and phones connect to home, terminated in an Opnsense router).
I do not need any specific smart features on the camera - PTZ would be nice, but not even fully required.
I can come up with a configuration that involves a Raspberry Pi routing an off the shelf camera via a Wireguard tunnel, or similar, but that doubles the power issues I need to solve. I am not opposed to DIY a solution, but there’s the challenge of getting it well packaged in a waterproof way.
Considering I can’t really touch the wifi setup (cheap commercial router), I don’t really see a way to have a private connection without having some sort of a VPN (I could do others than wireguard in a pinch).
If you’d like to help me chip away at one or the other bit of this problem, I’d be very grateful.
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https://github.com/gtxaspec/wz_mini_hacks adds wireguard and other features to a few supported Wyze cameras. I haven’t tried wireguard because mine is on my home network but it works great for streaming rtsp locally.
OH this is nice. I did dabble with the original Wyze Cams and alternative firmware long time ago, I should try this!
There’s a pretty cool write up by KittenLabs about their SolarCamPi project - it’s pretty involved as far as DIY projects though, even down to stripping features out of the Raspberry Pi so it would use as little power as possible..
Awhile back I dabbled with a timelapse setup where I had a battery, GoPro and a Raspberry Pi with a 4G hat for remote monitoring - using Tailscale as the VPN - but that was never intended to run 24/7. I just set those up and accepted that they’d run for as long as they ran and then collect them.
Lots of 4G/WiFi solar security cameras around as another sort of ‘all in one’ solution - typically the main issue is they all want you to use their app. If you can find one with rtsp or ONVIF it’s easier to make them work with whatever you want, though again you’d probably need a Raspberry Pi or something inbetween in order to create the VPN/Tailscale/WireGuard connection to keep it secure.
That SolarCamPi looks spectacular - however, do I just miss details on the hardware - what is needed, and how to get/assemble? It has a few photos, but apart from the basis being a Raspberry Pi Zero with a hat and some other stuff, it doesnt seem to show much.
Grab a regular ethernet connected camera with 12V supply and ONVIF compatible (most PTZ cameras like Amcrest or Vikylon are 12V), and a OpenWRT router like GLiNet’s cheapo units in bridge mode. They have a wireguard VPN active already, you just need to get it set up. Then you specify what subnet the inside of that router is so you can get to the camera, and access it via IP.
Put down a car battery, a cheap MPPT charger and a panel or two. The PowMr charge controllers have a couple of USB ports on them to power the router and they’re $50.
I’ve thought of bundling a small router, since I have a GLiNet lying around - but I am afraid power management will be challenging. Car battery and a few panels seem bulkier than I had in mind, and packaging that for weather is a challenge, too.
Gonna add 100w solar panel works great (just not this time of year, mine picks back up around February), and get a gel battery 100ah or more. Lead doesn’t cycle as much and doesn’t like cold. A cheap charge controller with usb is all you need to power most cameras (I run two wyzecams with the panel on the top of my chicken coop to watch my driveway) Just know this time of year lacks sunlight, I might get 2 to 5 hours this time of year, with 24h later in the year.
Do you have an MPPT charger or a PWM? The amount of extra power you get off your panels in winter can be significant with a good MPPT charger because it isn’t clipping the higher voltage/power you get in cold.
Is the traffic not already encrypted? What would wire guard be providing here?
I’d like this to not be on the public internet, as general hygiene, really. Putting a weak little camera out there where it can be easily caught by an ip/port scan and get hammered seems neither smart for the device itself nor for the network it’s in.
Probably a direct link to the home network so the camera looks like it’s on the same network.
I’ve thought of and tried this for my VR headset to my home in a similar manner. The VR headset will only stream from my gaming PC if it’s on the same network and so I’d hope to use a VPN to tunnel into my network when not at home to play remotely. I’ve not gotten this to work, but this sounds like a similar hope for OP with a camera.
It’s not always about hiding only payloads.
Although if you are wireguarding to your home IP you’re still not really hiding the destination.
Have a look at Thingino. Comes with wireguard built in. No idea about the solar stuff though. Maybe run it off a generic 5V solar solution.
Yeah, seems there’s a lot of alternative firmwares out there. Thanks :)
