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The original was posted on /r/selfhosted by /u/Inevitable-File404 on 2025-01-23 11:25:20+00:00.
This is a reminder to really think about whoch problem you exactly want to solve and what the easiest way to do so is before sinking hours into a project that eventually runs mediocre at best.
When I was looking into a NVR that can be somewhat securely accessed from the outside (for one singular indoor Camera), I read tons of posts and eventually tried a few solutions such as Frigate, Shinobi, AgentDVR etc in combination with Home Assistant. I settled with Frigate, Home Assistant and quickly realized that I needed Mosquitto as a mqtt broker. Integrating all of that on my existing VM and making it work (looking at you, HACS) took some time and a lot of research, just to eventually run mediocre at best. PTZ controls were lagging and viewing saved footage via HA would have likely cost me another hour of my time at best. I decided to let it sit for a while and after a few weeks looked into a different approach. After a bit of research and thought, I realized that split tunneling in the WG-app on android is a thing and therefore would solve the bandwidth concerns with an always on VPN and full tunneling (located in Germany, DSL with a max Upload of 8MBit/s).
So now instead of 3 additional and ressource intensive containers i just use my existing WG-Easy gateway and the native Reolink-App with an SD Card in the camera for recording. UUID is disable of course and internet access for the camera disabled in my FW due to privacy concerns. It is a way simpler setup that needs next to no maintaining. Just wanted to share my experiences and post a short public reminder that not everything needs to be complicated and that one should check what the minimal input needed for a certain outcome is.