Understanding Home Automation friendly Camera technologies - RTSP, ONVIF, POE and more!

2020 Security Camera Primer - Learn about RTSP, ONVIF, POE, AI Technologies and more

As part of my home automation series I am working on, I realized that there are a ton of terms that get thrown around that didn't make a ton of sense to me. For instance, what is an RTSP Camera? How do I pick out a camera that will work best for the home automation system of my choice? How do I pick out something that is flexible?

I had picked out Arlo cameras, and really have regretted it...they're cloud dependent, have awful reliability for live streams, are all wireless, expensive, required a monthly fee, locked me into an ecosystem I didn't like, and a number of other issues. So I decided to research, learn, and share what I believe are the things to understand when picking out a camera.

This video should be great for the person that is a beginner with these technologies and is trying to sort what ONVIF, RTSP, POE and so on are. I talk about the basics of each to give you a framework of what you may want to research more, or at least to be able to understand where each technology fits. My next video will be how to actually get these cameras into Home Assistant, and that video will be shorter because I can refer back to this one :)

One bonus at the end is I talk a bit about what an NVR is, and about AI technologies like Deepstack. I believe these technologies are what put a DIY system well over a commercial one as they allow for local processing of video to detect objects or people. No cloud service, subscription fees, or other services are required.