Shinobi: The next generation in open-source video management software
Shinobi is a self-hosted nvr and video surveillance tool. The next generation in open-source video management software.
Why self-host Shinobi
When you deploy Shinobi yourself, you own the instance. That means no rate limits, no pricing changes, and no worry about the service shutting down.
What it does
Shinobi falls into the NVR, Video Surveillance category of self-hosted software. It is designed to be deployed on your own infrastructure, whether that is a home server, a VPS, or a local machine running Docker.
Community traction
The project has 607 stars on GitHub, which is a reasonable proxy for how widely it is used. Active repositories tend to ship bug fixes faster and have better documentation than projects that stall after the initial release.
Deployment
Getting Shinobi running usually takes under an hour if you have a working Docker setup. The official documentation covers the basic deployment steps.
Alternatives
If Shinobi does not fit your needs, common alternatives include Ring, Google Nest. The self-hosted versions of these tools often differ in resource requirements and feature focus, so it is worth testing the one that matches your workload.
Maturity
The current release is furrykitten-3. The project has moved past early development and tends to ship stable, documented releases.
License
It uses the Other license.
Links
If the use case fits, Shinobi is a solid choice. Most of the complexity is in the initial deploy, and the day-to-day operation is low maintenance.