I’ve invested in multiple Wyze camera to only learn that they are not suitable (no API) to work with openHAB. Yes there are ready-to-use cameras out there and from what I’ve seen, they do command relatively steep price tags. I’m contemplating two options:
Which of the two would work best with openHAB ?
If you integrated them with a CCTV software like shinobi (for example) the software will provide you with the API you require
Rather than junking the Wyze cameras, why not install the RTSP firmware on them and use Shinobi or Zoneminder. It’s official firmware from Wyze, not some reverse engineered software. Both of these CCTV software very easily integrate with OH and will give you motion alerts in OH, they can support advanced stuff like person detection, and provide a full CCTV experience (e.g. rotating recordings based on motion triggers).
I have a Raspicam installed in my garage and I have the following experience:
I have four Wyze cameras with outdoor mount/protection that I’m planning on installing and using in the way described above (I use Shinobi). I just need to get power to where I want to mount them.
Thank you, reading now about both Shinobi and Zoneminder. One question I can’t find the answer to (yet). Those packages can be installed concurrently on my dedicated OpenHAB RPI or … they need their own hardware (another RPI) ? If it’s the latter, I should then get an array fixture and install multiple RPIs …
It depends on how many video streams you want it to process. Reach one has a fairly significant impact on both ran and CPU consumption, especially if you want to process the streams for motion and such. I would not try to run I it even on an RPi by itself.
Thank you. Care to elaborate a bit more?
I have 7 Wyze cams, but only need 2-3 (outdoors) to be constantly streaming.
The others would be only on-demand. In such case, what is the minimum hardware recommendation … would an Intel PC do the trick ?
I can’t fully answer but you should find a good answer on the zoneminder or shinobi forums.
Thank you … more reading then 
FWIW - I have been running 9 cameras, 3 RPi Zeros, 1 on the RPI 3 itself, the others are a mix from Amazon. The RPI3 is running Raspbian with MotionEye installed. All 9 cameras have been streaming to the RPI3 for over 2 years with no major issues. With MotionEye, motion detection can call a webhook to trigger a proxy motion switch in OpenHab. This has been working fine for me for quite a while, but I am going to check out Shinobi as it looks like it has a better API than MotionEye.
