Recording cctv to wd hard drive

Hi, I’m new to ST, just got my hub at the weekend. I have seen that Samsung will be charging to monitor your home ie cameras etc, is there not a camera that can record to a cloud account or my hard drive when a sensor has been triggered for free?

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Almost all cameras have this feature. I currently have 8 IP cameras (a mix of Dahua and Q-See [rebranded Dahua’s]) that are recording 24/7 to my Synology NAS via FTP. I also have 3 Foscams that record on motion alarms to my Synology NAS via FTP.

There is, of course, the up front cost of the equipment but no ongoing fees.

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+1 for that suggestion.

There are some caveats though, but that’s par for the course… :smile:

You can “roll your own” setup with a PC and use that to record the video (plenty of free and freemium software out there that does that) and set the destination path to a folder that you synchronize with the cloud. I used to do this with Google Drive / OneDrive but it had its issues… sync was slow, the need for the PC to be constantly on, etc. Not deal-breakers, but annoyances.

You can use a NAS like the Synology ones mentioned (I have one myself) but be aware that they have a per-camera licensing fee. You get 2 free cameras that you can connect but after that you have to buy a license for each camera, which can get pricey at the tune of $30-50 per device.

You should be able to find other options out there that allow you to record / sync to the WD drive / cloud without too much of a hassle or a fee though.

I don’t use the Synology camera software and just have the cameras record straight to the NAS via FTP (and thus avoid the outrageous licensing fees).

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Highway Robbery man… :smile:

I use Blue Iris for local recording. It’s a one time fee for the software and no camera limits. I have it record on motion trigger to my usb flash drive.

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Just keep in mind with local recording that if a thief does break into your house, they can take your records with them or destroy them. One advantage of cloud/off site recording is the that there is a copy of the video that the thief cannot access/destroy.

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Yes, that was my only doubt i intending to keep it in the loft, out of sight, out of mind.

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So can anyone recommend a 1080 camera that could do this for maybe less than £100 and works with ST? Or is there no such thing,

Maybe something that doesn’t stand out so much and can sit on a shelf?

I use Netcam Studio with local recording plus Dropbox and Google Drive integration.

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So will the Samsung ST camera work with this?

With most NAS devices nowadays you can choose to do 2-way sync with a cloud service, assuming you have the bandwidth to spare – remember that the cameras already use the network when recording to the NAS, then you have to send the data out to the cloud.

With Synology NAS setups you can choose to save the videos via FTP as mentioned above and save the videos to a folder that is synchronized back to OneDrive / Dropbox / etc. If you have a decent enough wireless network you can always just hide the NAS in the attic or a closet or something, and avoid having the box visible for whatever intruder decides to come looking around for your stuffs. :smile: