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In China, more and more households are choosing to install home surveillance systems. Many of the popular options are affordable cameras from local manufacturers such as Xiaomi, Hikvision, and TP-Link. However, some of these cameras are locked into proprietary protocols and can only connect to their own cloud platforms. This limitation not only brings additional costs but also raises concerns over data privacy.

That’s why choosing RTSP/ONVIF-compatible cameras and pairing them with a self-hosted NVR platform is often the most secure and flexible solution.

Chinese cloud platforms for surveillance cameras typically offer a wide range of features, including full access to local SD card footage via mobile apps, timeline and calendar views, motion event jumping, and push notifications to iOS and Android devices. As a result, many open-source NVR tools struggle to compete in terms of user experience and functionality. Solutions like MotionEye, Kerberos.io, MoonfireNVR, SentryShot, and Camera.ui all fall short in some way—whether due to CLI-only configuration, the lack of proper event playback, the ability to only support one camera, or having overly simplistic user interfaces.

Until recently, I used Synology’s Surveillance Station for my home setup, running inside a virtualized DSM environment on my custom-built low-power NAS. The system itself uses OpenMediaVault with a KVM virtual machine hosting Synology DSM. While Surveillance Station offers rich features, this setup was overly complex and suffered from stability issues, occasionally resulting in broken recordings. More importantly, running Synology’s proprietary OS on non-Synology hardware isn’t exactly legal. These reasons finally pushed me to look for a more sustainable alternative.

With the help of ChatGPT, I explored several popular NVR options: Blue Iris, Frigate, Shinobi, AgentDVR (iSpy), ZoneMinder, and EasyNVR.

• Blue Iris, while powerful, only runs on Windows and was ruled out for my Linux-based setup.
• ZoneMinder felt outdated and clunky.
• Shinobi and AgentDVR both impose significant limitations in their free versions—AgentDVR, for example, disables all remote access unless you pay, and the paid versions are quite expensive.
• EasyNVR, developed in China, initially seemed promising—it supports up to 5 cameras for free and offers a relatively modern interface. However, recurring recording issues and weak mobile support made it a non-starter for me.

Then came Frigate, the rising star in the NVR world—and, unfortunately, a disaster for me. Its powerful AI capabilities quickly overwhelmed the CPU of my modest NAS, causing multiple system crashes. Since my NAS also acts as a network bridge for my desktop, every crash meant I lost network access on my main machine. That alone was frustrating, but after repeated failures adding cameras to Frigate, I ultimately gave up.

Just when I was about to throw in the towel—and even considered buying an official Synology NAS—I discovered Xeoma.

Xeoma struck the perfect balance: powerful features, an intuitive interface, and an easy setup process, without the need to pay for expensive licenses covering features I didn’t need. I was instantly hooked.

Running Xeoma on my OpenMediaVault server was as simple as downloading and launching a single file. No messy YAML files, no confusing Docker volume mappings, and no Linux dependency nightmares. It worked immediately and seamlessly. After adding two cameras, CPU usage remained stable, and everything ran smoothly.

It felt so perfect, I wanted to write a love letter to the software—and that’s exactly what this post is.

To the developers behind Xeoma: thank you. I truly hope to see this article featured on your blog. Xeoma is not just capable—even the free version is impressively powerful. Anyone looking for a solid home NVR solution owes it to themselves to try Xeoma. I’m confident that once they do, they’ll realize it might just be the best NVR platform for home users.

by Jiayuan Zhang

August 19, 2025
 

Read also:
CCTV Trends in 2025: how Xeoma is already implementing the future
Getting started, or how to use Xeoma as efficiently as possible
DIY home security system with video surveillance program Xeoma