So many off the shelf security cameras come with the ability to utilized FTP. The...
https://jamesburnett.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/001-ftp-server-for-security-cameras.mp3
So many off the shelf security cameras come with the ability to utilized FTP. The problem I found was that FTP servers were designed to share files and allow users to have their own secured area for file storage. Anonymous users aside, each FTP user’s space was isolated from other users, in a normal setup at least.
The camera themselves also introduce issues. Amcrest cameras for example, use long and cryptic file names with all kind of non alpha numeric characters. Another off-the-shelf $30 special did the same thing with their file names. Using a standard FTP server would compound the issue because I was forced to either share the same username and password, or create separate FTP accounts for each camera which makes it difficult to browser footage.
After a poor FTP experience for security cameras, I decided to write my own FTP server especially made for security cameras.
SecurityCameraFTP
SecurityCameraFTP is developed in 100% Python. This means you can run the software on Mac, Windows and Linux systems. Each camera has it’s own unique FTP username but all FTP users share the same file location. The uploaded video and snapshot files are prefixed (frontcamera-7-4-2020-1300pm.jpg etc) with the username and the files are renamed to include an easy to read timestamp. No more sifting through complicated folder structures and looking at cryptic file names.
The configuration is pretty simple. Here is an example.
[cameras]
frontcam=cam19
backcam=cam19
sidecam=cam19
These username allows the files being uploaded by the cameras to be renamed with a human readble filename and placed in a shared folder structure like /uploads/2020/07/04/13/ which stands for year, month, day and hour.
Feel free to download and use the server software for free!