4 reasons a Raspberry Pi is perfect for remotely monitoring your home

Self-hosted surveillance servers are a great addition to your smart living space. Besides keeping intruders at bay, a home monitoring setup can also be used to keep a weather eye on your computing lab when you’re on-the-move. When you’re running your own NVR hub, you can outfit it with object detection and email-based alert mechanisms to further boost its monitoring capabilities.

But if you’re worried about spending thousands of dollars on a surveillance system, then don’t be. Here are four reasons why a Raspberry Pi SBC is perfect for your home monitoring server.

4

Compact size and low power requirements

You can even use PoE modules to reduce cable clutter

Thanks to their credit card form factor, the Raspberry Pi SBCs are small enough for projects where you can’t use gigantic PCs. Likewise, even the most powerful Raspberry Pi units consume significantly less energy than their mini-PC and server rivals, making these ARM-based devices perfect when you’re worried about the electricity bills incurred by running a security camera setup 24/7.

The more affordable Zero series further reduces the miniature size and power requirements of the mainline boards – to the point where your RPi Zero and camera module can fit practically anywhere in your computing space. Plus, the uber-popular SBC lineup can be powered by PoE cables, so you don’t have to worry about multiple cables cluttering your space.

3

Solid connectivity options

And you’re free to interface other sensors with your Raspberry Pi!

The Raspberry Pi family is loaded with different interfaces, ranging from the typical USB, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth standards to the more project-oriented I2C, CSI/DSI, and SPI connections. As such, you’ve got a lot more choices in building your home monitoring setup. For a low-end, inexpensive setup, you can interface a camera module to the CSI connector on your Raspberry Pi and call it a day.

Alternatively, if you’ve got spare webcams or IP cameras in your computing arsenal, you can just as easily pair them with your adorably-sized SBC. Thanks to the multipurpose GPIO headers, you can add weather seasons and air quality sensors to your Raspberry Pi to gain essential monitoring statistics in addition to the boring ol’ video recordings.

2

Support for AI modules

Add object detection capabilities to your pint-sized NVR hub

AI may have been the most overhyped buzzword of 2024, but it can still be pretty useful in your surveillance system. Although the newer Raspberry Pi models are fairly capable on their own, they’re not powerful enough for object detection and advanced tracking workloads. Thankfully, you can interface certain kits, such as the Coral Edge TPU, to add AI accelerators to your home monitoring setup.

If you’re on the Raspberry Pi 5, you can use the PCIe slot to integrate the official AI Kit with Frigate. Sure, the configuration process is a tad difficult on the Hailo-8L, but you should be able to get it working on the latest version of Frigate. Speaking of…

Including containerized apps that can run inside Home Assistant

Software compatibility has always been the Raspberry Pi series’ strong suit, and there are quite a few packages you can use for your home monitoring server. For instance, MotionEye/MotionEye OS provides a straightforward setup procedure on older Raspberry Pi boards, though it hasn’t received any updates in a long time. As such, ZoneMinder is a decent alternative if you don’t mind installing extra packages on top of your favorite Raspberry Pi distro.

Then there’s Frigate NVR, which provides the perfect balance between performance and functionality. Since it’s available as a Docker container, you can use Frigate alongside other self-hosted services on your Raspberry Pi – just make sure you’re running one of the newer boards to avoid running into slowdowns. Plus, if you’re already using your RPi as a Home Assistant hub, you can just as easily run your preferred surveillance service as an Add-on!

Keeping an eye on your surroundings with a Raspberry Pi

So far, I’ve discussed the perks of a Raspberry Pi-based security camera setup. But it’s time to go over the drawbacks of using an RPi for your home monitoring tasks. For instance, constantly writing files onto the microSD card can end up degrading it at a faster rate. So, it’s a good idea to use an external HDD to store the video footage. Likewise, if you encounter performance issues when recording videos or using object detection facilities on the older RPi SBCs, you can try turning down the resolution. Personally, I recommend switching to a newer variant if you want to interface multiple cameras with your surveillance hub.

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