abominable_panda

Alovoa is free and opensource.

Its the only one i know that isn't out to make money

Good suggestions in the chat. Ill throw in my setup for your consideration.

I have several cameras, specifically with Ingenic SOCs on which ive flashed Thingino firmware (foss) so thats a bit of security on the camera side. Some others like hikvision ive picked up but not gotten around to setting up yet. But itll be plug and play as youll see next.

Next i have a router flashed with freshtomato but openwrt is also an option. On that ive set up a vlan for the cameras that do not have internet or inter vlan access. So even if i didnt have custom camera firmware, they still wouldnt be able to send it anywhere.

Next my home vlan has one way access in to the "camera vlan" so i can view from my network.

Finally wireguard server (on the home vlan so it has internet access) so i can monitor remotely

I just pull the rtsp streams. Havent gotten round to feed analysis yet but i used to use zoneminder. But i hear frigate and another software (cant remember off my head) supports for coral tpu quite well even after it has been dropped from support

Step 1. Spend stupid money on a supercar rental

Step 2. Drive up and down the high street. Getting stuck in standstill traffic is a plus so i can rev my engine next to the ears of the shoppers

Step 3. Profit??

Actually nevermind, i never actually do this and walked past a lot of this recently and it makes me wonder

Did you ever see the movie Holes (2003)?

Gotta find something to sell to stay afloat. Why not user data? /s

Tesco in the uk does this.

Coincidentally enough this post a few down from yours (on my feed) shows a trial for the second part of your post

Mauled, eaten or crushed to death

... or cuteness overload

Honestly depends on whats being served. As i say people can run servers on enterprise grade multi thousand £ systems or a £50 pi or mini pc.

Since you have a specific usage in mind, media server, you basically want hardware that will allow optimised performance so you can have a lag/ buffer free experience.

Say,

hardware thats good for on the fly encoding/ decoding

Lots of ram for multitasking.

Lots of storage to store the media.

Maybe gigabit network cards for multiuser streaming without bandwidth bottlenecks.

It really depends on the experience and chokepoints

ECC ram ill let someone more familiar answer but im leaning towards non critical and nice to have

Nothing you couldnt upgrade on your typical PC. Just makes life easier...at a cost.

Server serves a specific application(s). PC is general day to day usage.

Both are computers. Pc hardware can be used as a server. Server hardware can be used as a pc.

Using a computer for day to day tasks - call it a pc. Use it to run a web server application or host a game - that one or more users will access - call it a server

Hardware can be configured to optimise it for its function. E.g pc can have latest GPUs and "servers" can have multicore cpus and loads of ram, rack mounting form factor and dual power supplies for redundancy.

But it could also be weak - i have raspberry pi's and old laptops set up as a servers

Ulnar Nerve AKA Funny Bone