Making your own Raspberry PI based CCTV setup

Motion Eye based CCTV system using IP cameras

This is one of the more simpler projects that I have done with Raspberry Pi. The major reason for that is the amazing open source software which is available out there, such as DietPi and MotionEye. It sometimes feels amazing that software of such high quality, is available for free use.

For this project, I started with a DietPI setup on Raspberry Pi Model B.

Install a dietpi image on the SD card using image from DietPI website.

The instructions are fairly simple and can be followed from here: https://dietpi.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=9#p9

My Rpi model is about 10 years old, and DietPi is really well suited to run on this kind of system due to its low running footprint. Personally, I am a big fan of this distribution.

Make sure to configure the IP address on the DietPi as well as the time zone correctly. This will be important when getting timestamps for the CCTV video recording.

dietpi@DietPi:~$ sudo dietpi-launcher

Change the settings to your local timezone. The changes will probably prompt for a reboot of the Pi. Go ahead and reboot the system.

Invoke the launcher again and select DietPi software installer:

Click on the search and enter “motion”

Select the Motioneye SW for installation:

Select Install to start the installation:

You might have to restart the Pi after the installation. The installation takes care of starting the Motioneye  services.

Open the browser and enter the IP address of your DietPI with port number 8765

Make sure you use http and not https.

Login using “admin” and blank password

Configuring your IP camera

You should be able to follow your manufacturers instructions on setting up the IP camera. An important point to remember is to make sure you assign a static IP to the IP camera. Else, if by default it might be configured to pick up DHCP IP’s, in which case you will need to keep reconfiguring MotionEye every time the IP changes.

Open up the IP camera network console in your browser. If you are not sure of the URL to be used in MotionEye, use Chrome browser to inspect the page. You should be able to see a URL like: http://192.168.1.99/videostream.cgi?loginuse=user_name&loginpas=password_1234

As you can see, some of the cheaper IP cameras dont really take security very seriously, the userids and password are visible in plaintext.

Configuring MotionEye

This is the easiest part of the tutorial, once you have become familiar with MotionEye itself.

Open the browser and enter the IP address of your DietPI with port number 8765

Make sure you use http and not https.

Login using “admin” and blank password

You will see an option to add a Camera to MotionEye:

Select the option for Network Camera:

Enter the complete URL that you have discovered using the Chrome HTML debugger. In many cases, this will be sufficient and you will notice MotionEye automatically establishing communication with the camera. Go right ahead and enter the username and password and Click OK on the dialog.

If all goes well, you should be able to see the camera output in the window, like the screen shot above. You can add additional cameras or configure the settings as per your need.

One of the options I liked, is the ability to record the video. I have enabled the MotionDetection option, and since this is a Raspberry Pi SD card with a limited storage of around 4GB, I decided to set the roll over of the video for every one day.

I have also disabled the streaming option since there are no other consumers for this video stream in my setup.

For enabling the motion detection option, I would recommend experimenting a bit with your settings, since the sensitivity will differ from camera to camera. Eventually, after playing around with the settings, I found the following having the highest percentage of detection.

That’s it! We are all set!!

Do let me know in the comments below if I have missed out anything  🙂