OpenIPC: Open IP Camera Firmware — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44758463 — Aug 2025 (106 comments)
The cheapest camera that you can install this onto, is Cinnado D1, which retails at under $14.99 USD FBA on Amazon Prime in the US:
https://github.com/wltechblog/thingino-installers/tree/main/...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CBBT5RMP — ≤ $14.99 FBA for Cinnado D1, #3 best-seller in "Dome Surveillance Cameras"
Some older Wansview, TP-Link, Wyze and Imou are also supported.
Part of the reason these cams are sold so cheap, and are directly imported into the US by the brand owners, is because they're making all of their money from the subscriptions. It's also the reason why buying a single camera is actually cheaper than buying a pack.
One neat thing about openipc is that it supports a huge range of SoC. Example link. https://openipc.org/cameras/vendors/hisilicon
Honestly, I couldn't find a single Amazon ASIN for anything listed on OpenIPC.
It's not much help for them to support more devices if none of those are being imported into the US.
Compare to thingino, which has support for Wyze, Eufy, Wansview, Cinnado, Imou, TP-Link and lots of other brands which are officially imported into the US and are best-sellers in their respective categories on Amazon, with the free Fulfilled-by-Amazon shipping.
Their "supported hardware" is what chipsets they support! It's up to you to go "do the research" or whatever to find out what cameras that might be!
I've bounced hard off OpenIPC in the past for this reason. That said I think the hikvision I bought a couple years ago is supported.
Also, by focusing on the Ingenic platform, you can be assured that your camera will actually work once installed. That was not my experience with OpenIPC.
First thing I want to know is "do I have this hardware".
These guys do it right.
I guess my question is: from a practical viewpoint, what do I get with this firmware (other than that it is open and all that, which I totally appreciate).
How would I, a random user, go about getting this functionality with Thingino?
That said, it's installation method uses containers, which I could do without. Configuring it can feel a bit fiddly depending on the hardware you have, but that's likely to be the case with most NVR systems that support a wide variety of setups.
I haven’t been able to get Frigate to see the garden eufy cam yet but iSpy worked right away with the same credentials.
I’ll choose my next cameras based on the Thingino supported list. Thank you to everyone working on this project!
[1] https://mariushosting.com/how-to-install-frigate-on-your-syn...
[2] https://mariushosting.com/how-to-install-ispy-on-your-synolo...
This looks like a great project!
Upgrade from dafang was easy if you follow the guide on the github wiki. Getting RTSP working was strange as it wouldn't work over IP but did over local DNS entry, but that's the only issue I've found so far.
Motion detection works fine of course.
That sort of task is usually done by the software that reads from the cameras, be that something local like https://frigate.video/ or the cloud-based ML of the manufacturer of your camera.
Seems like someone at Ingenic is a StarCraft fan!
https://github.com/themactep/thingino-firmware/wiki/Zeratul-...
The first problem I ran into what "what camera do I buy???" First I looked at trail cams, because those are made for this, right? Except, no, they almost all require a SIM card data plan. There are a few with wifi but they are all "mini hotspots", meaning you have to disconnect from your own wifi to connect to them, and maybe get nofications, and maybe you can stream live video, if they aren't buggy, and if the range reaches. So trail cams are out (and honestly that's fine because there's too many of them to look through as well)
So then I start looking at outdoor "security" cameras that can connect to my wifi, have some kind of app, motion detection, notifications, etc. Now I want to place this at the back of my yard where the animals come in, and there's no power there, so I think battery powered, right?
I spend 2 days doing research to finally buy a Reolink... only to find out 1) everyone says don't get Reolink (honestly it's not that bad), and 2) the motion detection is almost unusable, because all battery cameras only use a PIR sensor (to save battery), and their PIR sensors are not designed like the better trail-cam PIR sensors, so a wide-angle, long-range area won't detect motion (even if you can see the motion in live view). So your best bet for actually detecting motion is a plugged-in IP camera with an RTSP/ONVIF stream and some software to do pixel diffing (and then the "AI" (lol) feature of cropping away false-detection areas and shapes).
So now I'm packaging up the Reolink to return it, and looking at what cameras are cheap and have built-in pixel detection (if possible) or streaming to an NVR (which of course is another expense and thing for me to figure out how to build or buy). But there's still hundreds of different models of all kinds and price points to sift through. And of course there'll be the separate project of "how do I power the thing" (because I'd rather not spend even more on an outdoor-buried-compatible ethernet cable + POE adapter, plus the labor of digging below the frost line for hundreds of feet; but if I don't, i'll need to jury-rig up a spare battery and solar panel, and possibly wifi adapter if the camera doesn't have wifi).
It would be great if there were just a web page that asked me what I was trying to do and told me "buy this." The funny thing is, I've been using ChatGPT throughout this entire process and it failed to inform me of al this at the beginning, so clearly there's more tailored guides needed for people to pick the right thing.
So, you want someone to write a guide, but you admit you're not gonna read it or click on any affiliate links, because you'll just get that info from ChatGPT?
I think this is a problem we're gonna have with the AI age.
If the only consumer of information, is AI, who will be watching the ads and clicking the links to support all the content production?
Whether it's mindless "recipe blogs", the YouTube spam of reviewers being paid to lie about products, or the instagram Influencers (the fact that people call them that un-ironically is insane), I welcome the death of content. The "normal" web will still be here when it all goes away.
I should know, I help make it!
Combine thingino, friagte and go2rtc, with home assistant, and you can have a sweet setup with recording, and low latency playback. The family loves it.
zakki•6mo ago