The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #169615   Message #4101691
Posted By: Jon Freeman
10-Apr-21 - 04:31 AM
Thread Name: BS: Amazon Alexa
Subject: RE: BS: Amazon Alexa
I’m not following some of that, SRS but if you want wired, I’d suggest you look at cameras that can use power over ethernet (poe). That way you only need to run the one Ethernet cable. Power can be supplied to the cable via a switch or an injector

Our Hikvision and Annke cameras are powered this way. I use xeoma to view and record the cameras. I think they do offer a cloud service but I don’t use that. I can access the system away from home but go through the VPN set up on my router for this. That’s just one possibility and you would have more options to consider running Windows than I do on Linux.

I’ve also got an Annke Android app I can use. Perhaps there is also a Hikvision one, I haven’t looked but my Hikvision cameras are compatible with the Annke one. I don’t know what the connection is between the company but the Annke poe ones I have seem to be rebranded Hikvisions or something like that…

Getting Alexa to work with mine is a bit harder. There is an Annke skill that may have been able to do the task but this one is reported in the reviews to have been down for over 12 months. You might find better support with other brands of camera.

Monocle, mentioned in my previous post, does provide a solution though. I’ve also found a couple of others having had success with a different route (eg. here) but they are more complicated to set up.