Linux - full recipe for doing your own surveillance cameras

Linux is left out of a lot of this camera stuff.  But really, if you are concerned about security, then you better run Linux.  I can imagine people running security cameras with unpatched windows.  :)

It all starts here with your choice of camera.

You want a 'starlight' ip camera, using power over ethernet (poe).  That's the easiest to install in any house.  You do not want a wifi camera with Chinese software.  And, anyway, you always have to take care of the power.  You need a hundred feet of cat5e cable (the cheapest) and a simple poe injector.  That takes extra power from the outlet and injects it into the cable.  You can run a hundred feet with it.

Once you get the camera, it is filled with glorious software obtained from somewhere, and you can never update it.  Who cares?  These things are disposable in a few years.  The software is a nightmare to deal with on Linux, but I found the easy way.

Just install Virtualbox on your machine.  It comes from scummyoracle but it works.  Then get an 'appliance' from msoft that does win8.1 and ie11.  You can purge that later... yuck!  The horrible thing doesn't connect to the network, and it took me hours to find the simple fix.

'Nat' is their code-name for network, it doesn't really matter about the adaptor, but make sure all the boxes are checked.

The camera uses dhcp to connect to your router, and you have to find it.  Then turn off every speck of security on ie11 and connect.  You'll have to download a plugin, and just say yeah, yeah.

Then just change to a static ip, and forget everything else.

Then fire up a onvif device tool and you'll see the camera.  It gives a 'Live Video' url, and you're golden.  My tool always seg faulted when trying to access network options, so I can't skip the ie part right now.  Maybe you'll have better luck.

Then just use any Linux tool you want.  Check it with vlc.  I'm using Zoneminder right now.  That's another few hours, but I leave that to you.  :)