Usage Scenarios

Terminology

motionEye is the web user interface (the frontend) that you access with your browser to manage your camera(s). motionPie is the operating system that uses motionEye as frontend and that makes it easy for you to make a surveillance device from a single-board computer. Wherever you can use a motionPie device, you could just as well use any motionEye system, if you want to customize your setup.

A device is, in this context, a single-board computer that runs motionPie. A device can have zero, one or multiple cameras attached. If a device has no camera installed, we call it a hub.

A network camera (also known as an IP camera) is a camera that can stream over the IP protocol, in a local network. Network cameras can be either standalone camera units designed to stream over IP, or they can be motionPie-based devices configured for streaming.

Scenarios

A single device with a single camera

This is the simplest scenario that will help you get started and will, in many cases, be sufficient:

Advantages:

• simple setup

Disadvantages:

• users need to separately visit the address of each of the devices (i.e. to open one browser tab per device)
• accessing the cameras from the Internet requires a separate port forwarding for each of the devices

A single device with multiple cameras

This scenario is suitable for places where two or more cameras can be mounted in a common spot, preferably facing different angles:

Advantages:

• the cameras can be controlled by a single motionPie device
• only one IP address and only one port forwarding are required for all the connected cameras

Disadvantages:

• the board controlling all the cameras has to be powerful enough to handle all the streams
• all the cameras can be killed at once by killing the controlling device

Multiple devices with a hub

motionPie is built around motionEye which allows controlling of a remote motionEye camera from a local motionEye installation. Particularly, you can simply designate one of your motionPie devices as a hub and add all of your other motionPie-based cameras to this hub as remote motionEye cameras.

Advantages:

• you can manage all of your cameras from one single place (i.e. one browser tab)
• only one IP address and only one port forwarding are required for all the cameras
• the hub device doesn't need to be any more powerful than the others, maybe just to have a better network connection, as it only relays the traffic between your browser and the rest of the devices

Disadvantages:

• all the devices must be reachable by the hub (in an HTTP sense)
• all the devices must run motionPie, or at least some motionEye-based system
• all media files (pictures and movies), if used, must travel through the hub when downloaded

Multiple devices with a central server

The main difference from the hub case is that the rest of the devices are used as simple network cameras rather than as remote motionEye cameras.

When using Raspberry PIs, the Fast Network Camera function should be enabled, for a considerably better performance.

The server can be motionPie-based (preferably using a multicore board) or it can be any Linux system that runs motionEye:

Advantages:

• you can view and manage all of your cameras from one single place (i.e. one browser tab)
• other MJPEG network cameras which are not motionPie-based can be added to the central server
• only one IP address and only one port forwarding are required for all the cameras
• the media files can be saved on a hard drive directly attached to the server, thus increasing the available space and download throughput

Disadvantages:

• all the media files are stored in one place, making it easier for attackers to destroy the recordings
• the server must be powerful enough to process the streams from all the cameras
• all the devices must be reachable by the server (in an HTTP sense)