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Solar Powered Wifi Camera with Wireguard (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 days ago by johnnychicago@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

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Hello --

I know this is not a 100% fit for this community and I apologise - but I don't really know where to ask best. There's some selfhosting involved, so maybe the smart crowd here has some recommendations.

Here goes:

I want to mount a camera at a quite remote location. I have Wifi there that I can use (I pay for it, but its usage is shared, I don't monopolize it). I do not have power there. It's outside, mild in winter, quite warm in summer. I will not get there for months at a time. I want the camera to be private, not open to the world. Ideally I'd like a solar powered wifi camera that can connect to my home via Wireguard (I have that bit going, multiple roaming notebooks and phones connect to home, terminated in an Opnsense router).

I do not need any specific smart features on the camera - PTZ would be nice, but not even fully required.

I can come up with a configuration that involves a Raspberry Pi routing an off the shelf camera via a Wireguard tunnel, or similar, but that doubles the power issues I need to solve. I am not opposed to DIY a solution, but there's the challenge of getting it well packaged in a waterproof way.

Considering I can't really touch the wifi setup (cheap commercial router), I don't really see a way to have a private connection without having some sort of a VPN (I could do others than wireguard in a pinch).

If you'd like to help me chip away at one or the other bit of this problem, I'd be very grateful.

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[–] benagain@lemmy.ml 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

There's a pretty cool write up by KittenLabs about their SolarCamPi project - it's pretty involved as far as DIY projects though, even down to stripping features out of the Raspberry Pi so it would use as little power as possible..

Awhile back I dabbled with a timelapse setup where I had a battery, GoPro and a Raspberry Pi with a 4G hat for remote monitoring - using Tailscale as the VPN - but that was never intended to run 24/7. I just set those up and accepted that they'd run for as long as they ran and then collect them.

Lots of 4G/WiFi solar security cameras around as another sort of 'all in one' solution - typically the main issue is they all want you to use their app. If you can find one with rtsp or ONVIF it's easier to make them work with whatever you want, though again you'd probably need a Raspberry Pi or something inbetween in order to create the VPN/Tailscale/WireGuard connection to keep it secure.

[–] johnnychicago@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

That SolarCamPi looks spectacular - however, do I just miss details on the hardware - what is needed, and how to get/assemble? It has a few photos, but apart from the basis being a Raspberry Pi Zero with a hat and some other stuff, it doesnt seem to show much.