Which cameras work with Calyston (and which don't)

Before you buy cameras for a self-hosted setup, there is one rule that saves a lot of frustration:

If a camera exposes an open RTSP or ONVIF stream on your network, Calyston can record it. If it only talks to a vendor's app, it can't — and neither can any other local NVR.

That single distinction matters far more than whether a camera is wired or wireless. To Calyston, a Wi-Fi camera sitting on your LAN looks exactly the same as a wired one — it pulls the same RTSP stream over the same network. So the real questions are:

1. Does the camera expose a local RTSP / ONVIF stream?
2. Is it reachable on your network?

✅ What works

• Wired / PoE cameras — the ideal. Stable, powered over one cable, perfect for continuous 24/7 recording. This is what we recommend.
• Wi-Fi IP cameras that expose RTSP (e.g. Reolink, Tapo's RTSP-capable models, Amcrest, UNV) — these work too, as long as they are on your LAN. Wi-Fi can drop packets, so for round-the-clock recording, wired is more reliable. Calyston's substream support helps a lot here by keeping bandwidth low.
• Most "security/CCTV" brand cameras — Hikvision, Dahua, Reolink, UNV, Amcrest, Axis and similar almost always speak RTSP/ONVIF.

A quick test: if you can open the camera's RTSP URL in a player like VLC, Calyston can record it.

❌ What doesn't work (and why)

Cloud-locked cameras — Ring, Nest, Wyze, Eufy, and the cheapest Tapo models — do not expose a local stream at all. They are designed to talk only to the manufacturer's cloud and app. No local NVR can record them: not Calyston, not Frigate, not Blue Iris. This isn't a limitation of the software — it's the lock-in you're trying to escape. Owning your footage starts with buying a camera that lets you.

What about Wi-Fi-only or remote locations?

For a remote site or an unreliable link, the proven approach — the same pattern used to run large cellular camera fleets — is to record at the edge and send only the events over the network, not the full video stream. Streaming live cellular video across the internet to a central recorder is fragile and expensive; edge recording is how it's actually done at scale.

Today, Calyston records cameras it can reach on your local network. Multi-site and edge recording are on the roadmap — exactly so remote and cellular cameras can be handled the right way, rather than by forcing a live stream over a connection that can't carry it. 4G/LTE cameras are not supported yet.

The short version

• Buy cameras that advertise ONVIF or RTSP in their specs.
• Wired / PoE for anything you want recording 24/7.
• Wi-Fi RTSP cameras are fine for less critical spots.
• Avoid cloud-locked cameras (Ring/Nest/Wyze/etc.) if you want to keep your footage — they can't be recorded locally by anything.

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