This is a rather crude project I only mentioned in passing because I’m rather embarrassed by it. But it has since garnered some interest. So, I’m begrudgingly sharing it on Github. It utilizes the VisionFive2 to collect, organize, and maintain video for several live security cameras around my property. It is fed by various ESP32-CAMs running the esp32-cam-webserver via PlatformIO. I then use various scripts on the latest Debian release for the VisionFive2 on an eMMC to organize and store these video feeds on a separate dedicated NVMe M.2 drive also on the VisionFive2. Those scripts are provided in this repo for others to freely use. Once those videos are secured on the VisionFive2, I simple use SCP via terminal to download any videos I wish to review. It's not pretty, there is obvious room for improvement, but it's reliable, and that's all I needed. Thus, any progress on my end has since stopped.

I use a separate “cam” shell script for each camera assigned with the proper IP maintained by my router. These scripts use FFMPEG to encode the stream into something more manageable. You will need to install FFMPEG on your VisionFive2. I don’t recall the steps but I don’t remember it being complicated either. Should be rather easy. A separate “pave” shell script is used to delete any video that is approaching a week old to make room for new video. It also compresses day old video. Like I said, rather crude, but effective for my needs.

To activate the scripts, I use crontab -e and add the following to mount the drive and execute scripts:

@reboot sleep 10 && mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/nvme
@reboot sleep 20 && /bin/bash /root/cam1.sh
@reboot sleep 20 && /bin/bash /root/cam2.sh # etc.
0 * * * * /root/pave.sh

The file structure looks something like this:

root@starfive:~# tree -d /mnt/
/mnt/
`-- nvme
    |-- cam1
    |   |-- Fri
    |   |   |-- 00
    |   |   |-- 01
    |   |   |-- 02
    |   |   |-- 03
    |   |   |-- 04
    |   |   |-- 05
    |   |   |-- 06
    |   |   |-- 07
    |   |   |-- 08
    |   |   |-- 09
    |   |   |-- 10
    |   |   |-- 11
    |   |   |-- 12
    |   |   |-- 13
    |   |   |-- 14

Like I said, rather crude.

The ESP32-CAMs I’m using aren’t great. They get an average of a few frames a second on the higher resolutions. But, I don’t see why this wouldn’t work with any feed from any camera.