How I Turned My Old Laptop into a CCTV Feed Storage Server

What You Need

• An old laptop with Ubuntu Server (no GUI needed)

• TP-Link Tapo Camera (or any IP camera with RTSP support)

• Basic understanding of the command line

• ffmpeg installed on the laptop

Accessing the Camera Feed

Most Tapo cameras provide an RTSP stream. Here's the example I used:

rtsp://username:[email protected]:554/stream1 

I verified it worked using ffmpeg.

Recording the Feed Using FFmpeg

To record continuously and split footage into 1-hour segments:

ffmpeg -rtsp_transport tcp -i rtsp://your_user:your_pass@camera_ip/stream1 \
-vf scale=1280:720 -r 12 -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 30 -an \
-f segment -segment_time 3600 -reset_timestamps 1 -strftime 1 \
/home/your_username/recordings/recording-%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S.mp4

This:

• Scales to 720p

• Reduces framerate to 12 fps

• Uses libx264 with crf 30 for size optimization

• Ignores audio (-an)

• Saves hourly segments

Managing Storage Automatically

I added a cron job to delete files older than 2 days:

crontab -e

59 23 * * * find /home/your_username/recordings/ -type f -name "recording-*.mp4" -mmin +2880 -delete

Running It in Background with PM2

Even though ffmpeg is not a Node.js app, you can still manage it with PM2:

pm2 start "ffmpeg -rtsp_transport tcp -i rtsp://... -c:v libx264 ..." --name cctv-recorder --interpreter bash

pm2 startup
pm2 save

📦 Storage Efficiency

With 12fps @ 720p and CRF 30, my storage looked like:

• 24s = 786 KB

• ~2.8 GB per day

• 80 GB free = ~28 days of footage retention

🧠 Lessons & Takeaways

• FFmpeg is powerful and lightweight

• You don’t need a GUI or expensive hardware to manage CCTV

• Proper cron management can automate cleanup

• PM2 makes long-running CLI jobs easy to manage

Final Thoughts

With this setup, I turned a spare laptop into a full-fledged surveillance recorder, saving money and gaining control over my data. Whether you're a DIY enthusiast or privacy-conscious, this approach is a great weekend project.t