16 Open-source Projects to Build a CCTV System With Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi is still the most popular affordable SBC (Single Board Computer). It is used as the core in many of projects for education, healthcare, security, and IoT.
In this post, we list the best Raspberry Pi project that will give good alternatives for anyone who want to build their own CCTV (Closed-circuit Television) systems.
Hamza Mousa
1- SmartCCTV Camera
The SmartCCTV Camera repository has a detailed instruction on how to build a CCTV using Raspberry Pi 4, OpenCV, Raspberry Pi 4 Camera Module with Python.
The project is provided by SmartBuilds.io, and is released under the MIT License.
Hazem Abbas
2- Rpisurv 3 - Raspberry Pi surveillance
Rpisurv is a free open-source application that transforms your Raspberry Pi into a dedicated device to display video streams or images. It comes packed with a dozen of features and customization options.
3- Raspberry Pi Security Camera
A detailed instructions on how to use Raspberry Pi as a base for security camera system. It is provided and written by Romain Pellerin; a software engineer at Doctolib.
Hazem Abbas
4- Build a Raspberry Pi CCTV camera network
This is yet another guide on how to build a full security network system with Raspberry Pi. It is a part of a collection of Do-It-Yourself projects for Raspberry Pi 3, 2, and Raspberry Zero W.
5- Smart-Security-Camera
IoT Raspberry Pi security camera running OpenCV for object detection. The camera will send an email with an image of any objects it detects. It also runs a server that provides a live video stream over the internet.
6- rpos: Raspberry Pi Onvif Server
Node.js based ONVIF Camera/NVT software that turns a Raspberry Pi, Windows, Linux or Mac computer into an ONVIF Camera and RTSP Server.
It implements the key parts of Profile S and Profile T (http://www.onvif.org). It has special support for the Raspberry Pi Camera and Pimoroni Pan-Tilt HAT.
RPOS won an award in the 2018 ONVIF Open Source Challenge competition.
7- pi-cctv: Turns your Raspberry Pi into a CCTV Camera
pi-cctv is a script for use with your Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi camera module. When ran it will continually take image captures with the camera module (placing them in an 'images' folder).
Images which appear to be at nighttime will be discarded to save on disk space.
8- Raspberry Pi Smart Security Camera
Security camera running OpenCV for object and motion detection. The camera will send email with image of any objects it detects. It also runs a server that provides web interface with live stream video.
This is a University project from the 2018 by Mieszko Makuch, but it has working instructions and a functional code.
9- Raspberry Pi security camera system
Yet another proficient guide on how to turn your Raspberry Pi 3 and 4 into a functional security camera.
A Raspberry Pi camera system with a live video feed, motion detection system, H.264 mp4 recording capabilities and a storage management system with support for remote storage.
The recorder supports pre-motion frame recording and no internet environments (e.g. Wildlife cameras).
Confirmed working on Raspberry Pi 3b, 3b+, 4. Other versions will probably work, but they haven't been tested.
10- picamera
This package provides a pure Python interface to the Raspberry Pi camera module for Python 2.7 (or above) or Python 3.2 (or above).
The package is released under the BSD-3-Caluse License, and it has a detailed documentation.
11- Piro: A Raspberry Pi Rover Guard with a Security Camera
The Piro is an easy DIY project that allows you to remotely control a roving security camera securely from your browser.
12- Pi-Camera-in-a-box
Pi-Camera-in-a-box will take a vanilla Raspberry Pi with a Camera Module, and stream the footage directly to your web browser.
The stream resolution, FPS and Bitrate are fully configurable. Pi-Camera-in-a-box is capable of streaming 1080P, 25FPS video from a Raspberry Pi Zero.
Pi-Camera-in-a-box uses raspivid to capture the video, FFmpeg to encode, and nginx compiled with the nginx-rtmp module to deliver a HLS steam. This is displayed on a custom Web UI that uses video.js to display in the browser.
13- Pi H264 To Browser
Pi H264 To Browser is a simple Python application designed to stream hardware encoded h.264 from a Raspberry Pi equipped with a V1, V2, or HQ camera module, directly to a browser.
14- RPiMotionCam
Raspberry Pi motion surveillance camera with email notification and GDrive storage
This application is a fully-featured security Raspberry Pi camera. It can be built with the Raspberry Pi 4, 3 or the tiny Zero 2.
With an inexpensive RPi V1 camera ($ 7,=), you'll have your security camera up and running in no time.
You will automatically receive an email when the camera detects a movement.
At the same time, an optional video recording will be saved to SD-card, USB stick or your Google Drive.
You can view your footage in your browser at any time.
You don't need to be able to program.
However, the used C++ source code comes with the image.
15- CCTV Raspberry Pi
This is a simple proof-of-concept project that aids anyone to use Raspberry Pi and its camera module as a CCTV.
16- Pi Video Streaming Demo
This is a demonstration for low latency streaming of the Pi's camera module to any reasonably modern web browser, utilizing Dominic Szablewski's excellent JSMPEG project. Other dependencies are the Python ws4py library, picamera library (specifically version 1.7 or above), and FFmpeg.
If you know of any other open-source Raspberry Pi CCTV projects, that we didn't mention here, let us know.
Hamza MousaHamza Mousa
