moonfire-nvr/README.md

81 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
Raw Normal View History

[![CI](https://github.com/scottlamb/moonfire-nvr/workflows/CI/badge.svg)](https://github.com/scottlamb/moonfire-nvr/actions?query=workflow%3ACI)
* [Introduction](#introduction)
* [Documentation](#documentation)
# Introduction
Moonfire NVR is an open-source security camera network video recorder, started
by Scott Lamb &lt;<slamb@slamb.org>&gt;. It saves H.264-over-RTSP streams from
IP cameras to disk into a hybrid format: video frames in a directory on
spinning disk, other data in a SQLite3 database on flash. It can construct
`.mp4` files for arbitrary time ranges on-the-fly. It does not decode,
analyze, or re-encode video frames, so it requires little CPU. It handles six
1080p/30fps streams on a [Raspberry Pi
2](https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-2-model-b/), using
less than 10% of the machine's total CPU.
**Help wanted to make it great! Please see the [contributing
guide](CONTRIBUTING.md).**
So far, the web interface is basic: a filterable list of video segments,
with support for trimming them to arbitrary time ranges. No scrub bar yet.
There's also an experimental live view UI.
<table>
<tbody>
<tr valign=top>
<td><a href="screenshots/list.png"><img src="screenshots/list.png" width=360 height=345 alt="list view screenshot"></a></td>
<td><a href="screenshots/live.jpg"><img src="screenshots/live.jpg" width=360 height=212 alt="live view screenshot"></a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
There's no support yet for motion detection, no https/TLS support (you'll
need a proxy server, as described [here](guide/secure.md)), and only a
console-based (rather than web-based) configuration UI.
2023-08-03 17:03:48 -04:00
Moonfire NVR is currently at version 0.7.7. Until version 1.0, there will be no
compatibility guarantees: configuration and storage formats may change from
version to version. There is an [upgrade procedure](guide/schema.md) but it is
not for the faint of heart.
I hope to add features such as video analytics. In time, we can build
a full-featured hobbyist-oriented multi-camera NVR that requires nothing but
a cheap machine with a big hard drive. There are many exciting techniques we
could use to make this possible:
* avoiding CPU-intensive H.264 encoding in favor of simply continuing to use
the camera's already-encoded video streams. Cheap IP cameras these days
provide pre-encoded H.264 streams in both "main" (full-sized) and "sub"
(lower resolution, compression quality, and/or frame rate) varieties. The
"sub" stream is more suitable for fast computer vision work as well as
remote/mobile streaming. Disk space these days is quite cheap (with 4 TB
drives costing about $100), so we can afford to keep many camera-months
of both streams on disk.
* off-loading on-NVR analytics to an inexpensive USB or M.2 neural network
accelerator and hardware H.264 decoders.
* taking advantage of on-camera analytics. They're often not as accurate, but
they're the best way to stretch very inexpensive NVR machines.
2017-10-02 01:02:39 -04:00
# Documentation
* [Contributing](CONTRIBUTING.md)
* [License](LICENSE.txt) —
[GPL-3.0-or-later](https://spdx.org/licenses/GPL-3.0-or-later.html)
2021-04-27 01:21:39 -04:00
with [GPL-3.0-linking-exception](https://spdx.org/licenses/GPL-3.0-linking-exception.html)
for OpenSSL.
2021-04-01 18:40:31 -04:00
* [Change log](CHANGELOG.md) / release notes.
* [Guides](guide/), including:
* [Installing](guide/install.md)
* [Building from source](guide/build.md)
* [Securing Moonfire NVR and exposing it to the Internet](guide/secure.md)
* [UI Development](guide/developing-ui.md)
* [Troubleshooting](guide/troubleshooting.md)
* [References](ref/), including:
2023-01-08 04:14:03 -05:00
* [Configuration file](ref/config.md)
* [JSON API](ref/api.md)
* [Design documents](design/)
* [Wiki](https://github.com/scottlamb/moonfire-nvr/wiki) has hardware
2021-04-01 18:40:31 -04:00
recommendations, notes on several camera models, etc. Please add more!