Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Afternoon, gang.

Ever fancied a completely portable home CCTV client? Well, here's one.

I first discovered Xeoma a few years ago.....round about the time, I believe, when @rockedge first started playing with ZoneMinder and was publishing semi-regular 'progress reports'. Coincidentally, someone else was asking about CCTV apps at that time, so I got curious, looked around to see what else was available, and found Xeoma, from FelenaSoft.

What attracted me to it was the ease-of-use, and the fact that the whole thing is contained within a single, statically-compiled binary. You can select from paid plans, or you can select from the free version during initial set-up. It works with any type of camera it can detect; not only IP cameras, but also ordinary webcams, so if like me you've got a couple of spare webcams kicking around the place it's pretty easy to set up a basic surveillance system.....one watching the front of the house, perhaps one watching the back door, maybe another one watching the back garden out of an upstairs window.....that kind of thing.

The paid plans will let you monitor up to several hundred cameras simultaneously, along with setting-up motion detection & all the rest of it. The basic, free version only lets you use up to 4 cameras, but for a small private house/flat/dwelling, this is more than enough for most people.

The full instruction manual can be found here:-

https://felenasoft.com/xeoma/en/description/

.....and can be downloaded as a PDF if you need it, although the configuration window is quite self-explanatory (Xeoma is described as being "Lego-like, of modular construction" by its devs).

I don't know quite what Erik thinks of this thing. I've mentioned it to him a couple of times in the past, but I think he's wedded to his ZoneMinder setup!

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Because of the single binary, it occurred to me last night that I could probably "portabilize" it (same as many that use an AppImage at their heart), so.....that's what I've done. Config stuff is sym-linked into place at launch, and sym-links removed again at close. Because of the sym-links, any changes are of course written back to the 'portable' directory.

If anyone's interested, you can find both 64- AND 32-bit versions of it here at my MEGA a/c:-

https://mega.nz/folder/3fIlhRaA#0W-fmZHxnl03zIXZWjymqQ

As always; d/l - unzip - move the portable directory anywhere you like, though preferably outside the 'save'. Click to enter, click 'LAUNCH' to run AS a portable. Scripts allow adding/removing a Menu entry for better system integration, if required.

It'll basically run OOTB with any Puppy from Xenialpup onwards; Tahr is getting a little long in the tooth now - though older versions used to work OK - and time moves on. That's 'progress', I guess.

Enjoy.

Mike.

I have an older copy of Xeoma that really ran pretty good on Bionic64. It definitely is one of the easier camera monitoring solutions to setup.

Zoneminder has a lot of power to operate 1 or 1000+ cameras or streams, is network based, can be operated remotely via the Internet and ZM is free. But can be tricky to setup in Puppy Linux variants.

Xeoma is pretty straightforward and does well for small setups.

I've experimented for awhile with Shinobi but would use Xeoma instead after all is said and done.

@rockedge :-

Yeah, I've been trawling the web to see what else is available this afternoon. Couple of others I've found are BlueCherry:-

https://www.bluecherrydvr.com/

.....and Ivideon:-

https://www.ivideon.com/ivideon-server-linux/

.....which looks interesting as a lightweight Puppy alternative in this sector, due to being able to run on an Intel Atom and just a gig of RAM. However, that's as far as I've looked into it yet; I've no idea how easy or otherwise these two might (or might not) be to actually get up-and-running.

There's something else called C-MOR, though that appears to be for IP cameras only.

Mike.

Right on time again @mikewalsh!

I went in on some studio space with a friend of mine, and I walked in and found he had set up a 'ring' camera, and I told him, "I have issues with 24/7 facial recognition algorithms being run on me!" He moved it out of the main space, and he would like to get a closed circuit system, but those are pretty salty. I'll check this out, maybe it's a good alternative.

Well, scratch my previous statement. I've just tried the latest version of Xeoma in Tahr 6.0.6, and.....it's running fine.

I did a brief run of a somewhat older version in Tahrpup last night, from the middle of last year.....and that version crashed almost immediately. Hence my previous statement about Tahrpup being long in the tooth, but it now seems the newest version has "fixed" whatever caused that.

I don't run Tahrpup64 any longer; haven't done for a couple of years. But it looks like there's a good chance the 64-bit portable ought to work in it. If anyone does get this working in Tahrpup64, let us know please.

Mike.