How to Build a Network Video Recorder With an Nvidia Jetson Nano
In the middle of working on an update to our articles on home video surveillance systems, I bought one of Nvidia’s new Jetson Nanos. While playing with the $99 board and using it to do object recognition using a variety of cameras, it suddenly occurred to me that it would be a pretty interesting starting point for a slick little Network Video Recorder (NVR) NAS device. It consumes very little power and is portable. Plus, the integrated GPU has more AI capacity than most larger NAS units, and the Nano comes with tons of AI tools pre-installed. So for those wanting to play with their own motion or person or package or pet recognition, it’d be ideal.
First Step: Setting Up Your Nano
Nvidia makes it really easy to set up the Nano. All you need is a microSD card and a computer to flash the L4T (Linux For Tegra) image. Technically, all you need is 16GB, but the system takes most of that, so I used a high-speed 64GB card. Once you’ve attached a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, all you need to do is plug in a micro USB power supply and you’ll be running Ubuntu 18.04. A wide variety of AI tools and demo applications are pre-installed for you.
Second Step: Beefing Up Your Nano
Out of the box, the Nano has a CPU, GPU, RAM, and comes on a carrier board that has lots of I/O options. The Nano has an Ethernet port, but if you want to use it with Wi-Fi you need to add that yourself. It’s pretty easy to add a Wi-Fi+Bluetooth card via the M.2 slot, but you could also use one of the four USB ports. For heavy duty computing, you’ll also want to get a 4-amp, 5-volt power supply with the appropriate barrel connector. And a fan. All of that is pretty easy, and Nvidia has helpfully provided some links to compatible parts on its Jetson Nano Developer site.
There are now even some 3D-printable enclosures you can make yourself or have a service bureau print for you. Several are linked in the Enclosure section of the excellent eLinux Nano site. Commercial efforts to create NVRs based on the Nano have added multiple Ethernet ports via M.2 adapters, but for a home-brew solution, as long as you have a way to get your cameras on the network (or can live with just a couple USB-connected models), there isn’t any need for that. One additional peripheral you will need is a storage drive for recorded videos. Almost any SATA drive is usable, but for performance and portability, an SSD would be best.
Configuration Tips: First, once you get it set up, you don’t need to connect a keyboard, mouse, or display to the Nano for most things. You can run it remotely over an ssh or other terminal session, and use either web interfaces for managing the NVR or a remote GUI like X Windows. Second, I recommend making a backup of your system once it is the way you want it. One easy way to do that if you have Windows is using the free Win32 Disk Imager to make an image of your microSD card.
Third Step: Picking Your NVR Software
There are a lot of good NVR software solutions. The tricky thing about using the Nano is that it requires software that not only runs on Linux, but that runs on an ARM processor. In my case, I didn’t want to spend the time to build a solution from source, so I looked for one that was free and would run out of the box. That led me to ZoneMinder. ZoneMinder is easy to install and has a native web UI, so it is easy to manage from anywhere in your network. It is flexible and powerful, but on the downside, I don’t find the user interface intuitive.
There was also a glitch in the version I used with the Nano (running 18.04 Ubuntu L4T) when trying to use the Probe functionality, so I needed to enter camera details manually. It seems like some sort of odd library version problem that will hopefully get fixed as the Nano gets more popular.
Fourth Step: Picking Your Cameras
Most of the big-money investment in home security cameras is going into walled-garden, cloud-subscription-based, NVR-unfriendly cameras like the Ring (Amazon) and Nest (Google). Personally, I think that’s a terrible trend, as all those cameras could easily support RTSP & ONVIF, but the companies behind them have chosen instead to bet that they can make you pay to look at your own video. That said, there is, fortunately, a flourishing market in IP cameras you can use however you want.
Finally: Configuring Your NVR
Assuming you’re using ZoneMinder, you add cameras as Monitors. To test them out, you can simply configure them with the “Monitor” action. But to start recording video, you’ll want to change them to either “Mocord” or “Modect.” Modect gives you the ability to detect motion in specified zones. At this point, as someone who has run a home video surveillance system for several years, I strongly recommend to record continuously if you can.
That said, it’s really helpful to be able to get alerted only when motion is detected, and to be able to fast forward through recordings to see detected motion events. If you’re willing to do some programming, the Nano is a perfect device to code up some clever AI to detect events you’re interested in and have them handled specially. The Nano is powerful enough to run both my ZoneMinder install and AI-based detection apps that I have using a Logitech USB web camera. So there is plenty of room to add whatever custom capabilities you can figure out how to code.
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