Creating your own security system
From a fresh ODROID-HC4 Ubuntu20 install, this tutorial will help you setup a 64 camera network video recorder. The installation of the server is simple and the setup is straightforward with the Monocle client.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
wget https://f002.backblazeb2.com/file/Monocle/monocleserver-odroid-1-31-0.deb
sudo apt install ./monocleserver-aarch64-1-31-0.debThese commands will install and begin the Monocle service which represents the NVR. Initially, the server will not have any locations to record data to, so the next step is to add those. The package installed earlier also contains a command line interface for interacting with Monocle servers. Using the commands below to add the files, changing the “numchunks” argument which is effectively the total number of megabytes used to store data, thus 2048 represents 2GB, the mount point and path where your storage drives are mounted. Doing this will allow the server to continuously record, deleting old data when necessary. The more disks available will improve the performance. This can also be done in the Monocle client interface in the “Manage Files” window.
monoclecli --username admin --password password --addfile --mountpoint /mnt/sda --path=/mnt/sda/file.dat --numchunks=2048
monoclecli --username admin --password password --addfile --mountpoint /mnt/sdb --path=/mnt/sdb/file.dat --numchunks=2048Download and run the appropriate Monocle client for your operating system from here and add the device, which should be discovered automatically, but if not, the hostname can be manually added.
With the device added, we now need to add the cameras. Use the “Add Camera Wizard” by right clicking on your server and inputting the appropriate username and password for your cameras and click ok.
There is also a web interface accessible by any modern browser and an example of it is shown below.
Here are screenshots of the “htop” and “iostat” tools while recording 64 cameras on the ODROID HC4.
The Monocle server supports many other protocols including MQTT, GRPC, OpenAPI and JSON-RPC as well as having a phone app. Get in touch via the links below if you have any questions, issues or suggestions.