[jerhinesmith]

I have similar concerns, but I was just on vacation for 2 weeks and would have loved a way to check-in on my cat / cat-sitter to see how things are going.

Are there products that would permit me to do this while still avoiding privacy concerns?

[mikestew]

Synology NAS, and some IP cameras you found online somewhere (it is simpler to ask which cameras doesnt Synology support). You’ll have to figure out which external access method works for you (I just use Synology’s dynamic IP mapper). My DS410 is seven years old, so I don’t know if that’s the reason, but remote access can be slow. But it gets the job done.

As an added bonus, you get a really nice NAS.

[jefe_]

I remote desktop into my home computers and can turn on the webcams and see what is happening when I am away. Obviously a limited solution in multiple respects, but for just checking in occasionally it works well-enough. There may even be an open source software somewhere that uses your webcam as a security camera and handles archiving, possibly even uploading daily files to a destination of your choosing so you can access while away.

[w0m]

Just unplug it when not out of town? Else there are lots of not-cloud solutions out there; though i'd assume the cloud to actually be safer.

[binaryblitz]

How would the cloud be safer? If you have a personal setup you can control the level of security yourself, and a hacker would only gain access to your cameras, and not the cameras of everyone connected to the cloud. A lot less motivation to hack one person, than thousands.

[88]

If you are only storing images locally, an intruder could destroy or remove recordings.

[prostoalex]

Presumably a cloud storage company has more incentives to hire a security engineer, conduct security reviews and keep things updated.

[antongribok]

There is an open source project that's pretty good: https://www.zoneminder.com/

[cr0sh]

I personally think Zoneminder is beyond "pretty good".

Honestly, for a casual home setup, it goes well beyond what anyone needs. You can configure it to the n-th degree. It supports pro-level PTZ security cams (some of those cameras are expensive af). It has options for triggering based on hardware interrupts (monitoring serial ports, ethernet packets, whatever you want). It can trigger external alarms itself (with addition hardware). It uses computer vision techniques.

In short - it is basically a professional video security package. There are companies out there that package it up (video security appliances) and sell it as such. Again - waaay overkill for most people's needs.

But it isn't very difficult to get set up and running, provided you have the right hardware. For instance, at home I run it using an old 900 MHz P3 with 512 MB and an old hard drive; it supports a couple of cameras easily - I could probably add one or two more streams and still be ok. Beyond that, though, you'd want to increase the CPU and RAM (something I plan to do is break out an old Core2Duo and repurpose it for this job).

I use cheap IP cameras for my cams, but ZM supports a wide variety of cameras (everything from video capture boards, to webcams, ethernet/wifi IP cams, etc). It can upload captured images and videos to servers of your choice, email them to you, there's a android phone app available...

[jeffdubin]

Shinobi, which isn't as fully featured as ZM but is far more modern (and in active development), is also worth checking out: http://shinobi.video/

[nonamechicken]

You can setup a beaglebone/rpi OpenVPN solution in 30 minutes. Then whenever you want to check the camera, connect to the VPN from your phone and launch an app like TinyCamMonitor. This is my setup.

[s0rce]

Call (or maybe text) the cat-sitter with a phone? Sorry to be facetious but that seems like the best privacy preserving strategy here and also what I do (for our dog).

[jerhinesmith]

No need to apologize - I kind of do that already with texts, but my last vacation was in Japan, so the timezone thing gave little overlap and it would have been nice to have something a bit more asynchronous.