>>101384 (OP)
I have a desktop cobbled together from old parts in the basement. It hosts samba shared folders on three different hdds, a zoneminder instance and two telegram bots. The router that also serves as the gateway supports ddns and is linked to some free service you can connect through. Could anyway, haven't used that in a while.
What that means from a practical standpoint:
— You can connect to the home LAN from anywhere with an internet connection and do your business there as if you were at home on wifi.
— The Samba thing is for file sharing, you add these folders to your main pc, they appear in explorer and you use them as if they were directly connected to the pc. The same applies to any pc on the lan, or phones for that matter. Useful for storing movies (watch it from any device on the LAN), transferring files between devices etc.
— Zoneminder is a CCTV manager where you configure the conditions that would raise an alarm, and when those are met it records stuff and puts up a flag. Honestly it's an unwieldly and outdated piece of software that I'd love to have replaced because its method of movement detection are like 15 years out of date, this area is where machine learning should be used. The amount of false positives you get from weather and insects whenever you set it up to catch movement in the distance at night is insane. Some modern cctv cams have built-in motion detection circuits and the API to use that with opensource so one may as well just use that. The one advantage it has over proprietary software though is that the data isn't piped through some datacenter in Shanghai or something and Cheng won't peek.
— One of the telegram bots just sends the files zoneminder produces into a telegram group chat.
— Another bot uses the cameras' API instead, without relying on zoneminder to detect motion and produce a file. It can also take pics or vids on demand which is nice for checking up on things when away or quickly recording something happening, or taking daily pics for a timelapse.
You can all of this functionality, and often in a more convenient manner, by opting out of the loonix sudo circus and using cloud services and installing goycams with proprietary software, if that's your cup of tea. Just bear in mind that all those Amazon Ring cams that are always connected to the internet and are so heckin wholesome that they form a global net that "helps you find your lost pupperino by having every Ring cam in the area search for the sightings of the doggo thank you mr. bezos!" except they log not just pets but pretty much everything from who visits you and when and what route they take to how gently the amazon deliveryperson puts down your package with a Renamon Murano glass figurine inside, to what expression you have on your face when you come home from your 12 hour shift in the amazon warehouse etc.
>>101413
>cheap Chinese cameras that probably transmit the footage directly to Xi Jinping's bedroom TV then to your phone. My reasoning's that it's going to be staring at dirt 99% of the time and I'll only turn it on whenever I have to leave my property unattended.
That also kind of works. Theoretically you can also set up some rules on the router that would disconnect it from the internet at certain hours of day (say it turns off at around the time you wake up and turns on ~5 min after you leave the house, then turns off again at around the time you get home). Most cams, even the cheaper ones, also support ONVIF protocol so you can later repurpose them for a DIY server at home (it means you can connect to them without any chinese software involved, you can even bring up the video feed on VLC).
