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I am planning on building out a system like this. I am currently working to get the RPI0W camera units into a weather tight 3D-printed case that screws into external light socket fixtures so I don't have to wire power. I'm going to start with MotionEyeOS and a few cameras to start because it looks like it is going to be easy to set up but I want to eventually add motion sensors and motion activated lights so that is phase two.

I am planning on building out a system like this. I am currently working to get the RPI0W camera units into a weather tight 3D-printed case that screws into external light socket fixtures so I don't have to wire power. I'm going to start with MotionEyeOS and a few cameras to start because it looks like it is going to be easy to set up but I want to eventually add motion sensors and motion activated lights so that is phase two.

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[–] • 1 pt

Micro SD cards are fairly robust, but they're not designed for the kind of writing you're going to get with a video surveillance system. They have a tendency to go bad when you're expecting them to be ok - I've had them go bad just powered up - in this case it was the FAT32 portion that does the bootloader of a Pi, and it transferred to a NFS mount on the network for it's OS. No writing ever, and the card still went bad.

You may have just been having really bad luck with SD cards. i have literally only ever had one or two go bad. The card running my OctoPi right now was harvested out of my very first phone that supported and SD... predates the smartphone erra. That SD has been running continuously since probably 2006

[–] • 0 pt

That may be, but when it comes to actual data storage I prefer something that has a better longevity when it comes to write cycles.

OctoPi really doesn't do much with the SD card other than write logs. The reason I mention all this is you're going to be writing larger amounts of data for longer periods of time, and that's just not what an SD card was designed for. It's all in what you want to spend, so it's whatever works best for you. I just prefer hard drives for lots of data writing.

[–] • 1 pt

Yeah I hear what you are saying... the thought was more about keeping the initial cost down. Right now my parts list is a RPi4, four RPi zeroW, four camera units, 5 power supplies, a little touch screen, etc... given the inflated chip prices right now I am already looking at around $300

[–] • 0 pt

Can you even get Pi4 units right now? I've heard they're quite rare.