I’ve got a server running Debian and I’ve previously borrowed a wildlife cam for my garden. It activates on motion and records, has night vision, etc…
That said the only way to get the footage is to go out there and pull the SD card.
Is there a self-hosted approach to this? I don’t know what weather-proof camera setup people like for this sort of thing.
Most of the cameras like this that I’ve seen have an app that lets you transfer the photos too. The issue is that you need to connect to the camera with Bluetooth, which then turns on the camera’s wifi for the full connection. The apps do this automatically.
I’ve been wondering if there’s a way to run the app from a computer, and connect to the camera through that, but I don’t know how you’d get it to wake the camera to allow the wifi connection.
If it is onvif compatible or similar sure, but it’s most likely not. If you’re lucky someone else have had the same camera as you and made a custom firmware for it, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Frigate and shinobi are two alternatives to use software wise on the server, but you still need a compatible camera.
I borrowed a camera - it’s not the one I would be using for this.
That’s why I’m asking. I haven’t bought anything yet and don’t want to get the wrong thing.
I would think you would need a wifi trail cam or something more permanent using buried cable.
That would be possible, yep.
Yes, there are trail cameras with WiFi or 4G connectivity, but the good ones are expensive. The Chinese ones are often a pain.
I had one with 3G, it wasn’t reliable. I had a Moultrie one that was nice, but like yours, only SD card.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters CGNAT Carrier-Grade NAT NAT Network Address Translation VPN Virtual Private Network
2 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 9 acronyms.
[Thread #1009 for this comm, first seen 19th Jan 2026, 12:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
You can get a WiFi or LTE trail cam that essentially to works the same. If you get LTE though, you’ll almost certainly need a VPN setup on your network as well to work around CGNAT issues.
WiFi would be easily sufficient. We’re talking a distance of 10m from my router, tops.
