Camect

I was curious if anyone else has seen the review of the Camect device from CES 2020? It looks like something that could really help with the disparity of camera issues, curious what your thoughts are.

That looks pretty slick! Object/individual person detection is something that I could utilize in quite a few automations, and I have a few Amcrest cameras lying around that have been replaced with Wyze...

I think its a very exciting option to move forward and hopefully they will release and API to tie directly into HE. I feel like this is something that has been missing from the HA market for quit some time.

I'm confused. If my footage stays local, why is there a subscription required? Sorry, another camera subscription service?

In the easy-to-use and not-cripplingly-expensive space, definitely. HASS has had object detection via certain methods for some while :slight_smile:

So it does the same things that Xeoma has been doing for a while now.... revolutionary indeed.

I will revisit the Xeoma, but unless things have changed little to no wireless, battery operated options integrate into the Xeoma, such as Arlo, Wyze, Eufy, Etc....

Battery/Wireless doesn't matter. What matters is if it's an IP camera that is directly accessible. ONVIF, RTSP, etc... direct communication with the camera. Same limitation as all local NVR systems.

If a cloud intermediary is required then no it won't work. This "new" box may be special in using a cloud intermediary which I suppose for some is great. I prefer keeping my camera's local and not needing the cloud for functionality.

Unfortunately Battery/Wireless is very important in my circumstance, I agree and would prefer a completely local option, but finding a middle bridge until that point is paramount to my needs. I am very thankful for your input.

That's the kicker isn't it. The battery powered cameras are all tied to some vendors cloud only solution.

The only way that will change is if people don't buy them. Unfortunately I understand sometimes there's a need or generally a want because it's easier and cheaper than running cable.

Looks very interesting but it's not clear where object detection is being performed. Object detection is very CPU intensive and the Camect CPU specs are very weak:

camect

Unless the object detection is cloud based I can't imagine that a Celeron would be up to the task of doing image analysis on "up to 12 cameras" [EDIT] which based on the snippet below assumes 2MP cameras.

Mine just arrived so I'll report back. Pretty sure it's local processing, the localness is part of the sales pitch. Once you've purchased they let you swap in your own hardware then install their image so you can then deal with higher megapixel cameras and more of them (if you're a techie and won't need support on that setup).

All my cameras are 8MP so I'll only be able to use 3 on the stock hardware.

3 Likes

Has anyone looked at SightHound? It's S/W only, not an appliance. I would want this on at least 8 of my 11 existing cameras so the per camera hit becomes substantial. SightHound has a pricey unlimited option. I may try the eval. If anyone else has tried it, I would be interested.

1 Like

I am really looking forward to hearing your review!

1 Like

I'm also evaluating Sighthound. Early comments are that the software feels 'light' in that is so simple, you'd expect more options/configurability, but then if it does as promised it should be good...

1 Like

I am on Sighthounds beta for ALPR, hopefully getting it in the coming weeks

Thank you! I am interested in your opinion on both. I am currently using iSpy without any recognition capability. Otherwise it works pretty well. I have 11 cameras. I would prefer something that runs on Linux - iSpy is on Windows.

I've been using it for a month or so with 4 cameras. People detection has been very good during the day but it struggles a bit at night. I'm using the camera's IR illumination and it frequently false detects cars and very heavy rain as people. The former isn't much of an issue since I'm using regions that excludes cars passing by. But I haven't been able to get around the latter which only seems to occur during downpours.

I'm running it on an old Dell Optiplex 7010 Core i7-3770 3.4ghz box with 8GB or RAM and the 4 cameras result in 35% - 40% CPU usage. SightHound has a 2 week trial available to the Pro version. I wasn't confident enough to buy after 2 weeks and asked if they could extend the trial for another 2 weeks which they did without balking.

They also have an unadvertised mid-tier license that allows up to 6 connected cameras for $120. I know you're looking at using 8 cameras but it's worth mentioning in case someone else is interested but put off by their $250 unlimited camera license.

1 Like

That was my reaction as well; there almost seems to be too little to setup in the app. But I will say that their detection rules creation workflow is very straight forward and seems to work well.

I loved sitehound. But it was too labor intensive for my primary server/tower. When performing other resource heavy operations (re-rendering video) it would cause it to lock up. They don't have a linux version unfortunately. They had the best motion detection I've seen. They have this great gate-way style method that can detect if an object or person is passing through the virtual gate. Works great too.

Maybe when I finally get a NAS set up I'll try it again in a VM environment.