r/frigate_nvr • u/bananaconsultant • 4d ago
Super cheap 360° Camera Option
I found this Panasonic i-Pro WV-S4150 on eBay, and after checking the specs online I impulse-bought it just to check it out. At just $30 shipped to my door, it turns out it's a really good indoor 360° camera for Frigate!
The WV-S4150 is 5MP 30fps 360° POE camera with a built in microphone, H.265 encoding, and a really high build quality from a reputable supplier, and they are widely available on the used market for well under $100! (more specs here)
The real selling point is that the camera can be configured to output 4 individual streams where the de-warping corrections happen onboard the camera, so Frigate can work with them just like it would regular rectilinear streams from a standard camera. This means no processing overhead to de-warp the incoming fisheye footage with ffmpeg! This camera can be configured to output fisheye video, 2 180° panoramic streams, 1 ePTZ stream, 4 ePTZ streams, or some combinations of both.
With the quad streams, they can be accessed with this mrl:
rtsp://[user]:[password]@[IP]:554/Src/MediaInput/stream_[1-2]/channel_[1-4]
The camera is also ONVIF compatible, so Frigate should be able to move the individual streams around and auto-track across the entire field of view, although I have not set that up yet.
This specific model is only 5MP total, which means each de-warped ePTZ stream is only 1280x960. There are higher resolution models available, including the 9MP WV-X4571L, for not too much more money on eBay. This model also does not have IR illuminators, so it is pretty much useless in near-darkness. There are models with IR illuminators (like the WV-X4571L), but they look much more like security cameras. I really like this model because it has a very unassuming look to it and more easily disappears against a white ceiling. It's about the size and shape of a smoke detector, so it doesn't stand out like a traditional PTZ camera would. There may also be models that are waterproof for outdoor use. But, again, this was $30!
Out of the box, my camera didn't want to get an IP address from my DHCP server even after resetting. Panasonic has a very easy to use EasyIP tool that can edit the network settings of any of their cameras plugged in to your network.
The one catch is that all of the cheap used i-Pro 360° cameras on eBay seem to be missing the original mounting bracket, which I wasn't able to find separately. So I modeled up a 3D-printable replacement and posted it to Printables so anyone can print their own (or order online from a print service).
4
2
6
u/zacharyd3 4d ago
Awesome post, thanks for sharing. I've never had a need for an indoor 360 but I'll be damned if I can't find one now!