Yeah I thought about this too. I have a Hydrawise sprinkler controller and there is an integration. With my luck, though, I'd be walking home from the village pub and decide to use the side entrance.
My local water authority does "surprise" checks in the early AM to make sure you are watering on your authorized day (they have left "this is your final warning or you will get a citation" notes on my door before).
I can't wait for him to trigger this rule! 
1 Like
That will likely be worth the citation.
2 Likes
I have a UPS in my wiring closet that hand
If your power is cut, how will your poe, blue iris and wi-fi work?
UPS in my wiring closet.
The G4 Doorbell and G4 Doorbell Pro also support package detection (and my Hubitat integration supports those via smart detect).
But in my experience, the package detection on the G4 Doorbell is not great. It may be better with the dedicated down-facing camera on the G4 Doorbell Pro.
Have you looked into home assistant? I haven’t got arlo cameras but it looks like home assistant does support arlo integration. How the heck do I get Arlo into Home Assistant? - Third party integrations - Home Assistant Community
You can also use free cctv software with home assistant such as frigate which I personally do use with Reolink cameras and you can set up your home assistant as a NVR also. You can also integrate your habitat into home assistant if you are really looking to join everything together.
Frigate also all runs local so no cloud required for your cameras with China snooping 
almost every camere i have tested is fidely and needs to reboot periodically.
i put kasa wifi switches or zwave/zigbee switches behind them so i can reboot them remotely
I'm not really interested in Arlo integration at this point. Any integration with their product will be through the cloud, and therefore internet dependent. I like Hubitat - a lot - so I'll happily give up the laggy, drop-out prone, false motion alert generating Arlos and get something that works. If anyone wants the Arlos, they'll be available cheap. They'll be worthless to me.
That's a good idea - I'd only need one to power-cycle the POE switch if I go that way.
2 Likes
A managed PoE switch will let you power cycle a specific port... I use Unifi switches and the Unifi console will allow me to power down any PoE port I need, remotely or on prem. I even use PoE splitters to power my various hubs so they can be remotely cycled. Very convenient.
Yeah, but I need two of them, and my budget is about $100, The two 4+1 port unmanaged PoE switches my current plan needs will cost me < $60 total, and I have spare smart plugs. Are there managed PoE switches I've overlooked that are inexpensive?
Probably not. Mine were significantly more than that.
Kind of defeats the purpose of a security camera... were there any that you tested that were stable?
I have never rebooted my UniFi Protect cameras unless the power went out. They're expensive though, and buying into the ecosystem is a commitment. But if you already have a UniFi controller your barrier to entry is lower.
Ah that IS good to know. I had read several reviews of the Unifi cameras that suggested they were overpriced for their performance. But if they are problem-free that's priceless. I have a UDM Pro but I would probably install a dedicated NVR and PoE switch just for the cameras. I'd like to keep the video traffic local to a single switch if possible.
An option that may lower the cost of entry is a combination of Eufy Cameras that support RSTP, a Always on system running Motion/Motioneye, and then the app in hubitat called tinyCam Connector.
The question is how smart do you need this to be. The tinyCam Connector can allow AI detection buy calling different url's based on AI Detection, but base Motion doesn't do that.
The way this works is your eufy cameras talk to Motion over your Local network with RSTP. Then Motion does what blue iris does and records/monitors the video stream. When motion is detected, Motion will hit the URL for tinyCam Connector to tell HE that Motion was detected. You can run motion on something as tiny as a raspberry pi, depending on the type of processing you have it do, it can support many or very few cameras.
All of these componenets are independent of the others so you don't have to use Eufy, but any RSTP or network camera Motion supports.
I do believe there are ways to add AI to Motion, but i am not familiar with that as of now. This is just a way to make entry easier though. Blue Iris is certainly a top notch option.
I would also add I still user Arlo with Smartthings being the cloud aggregator. It seems pretty responsive, but will admit I don't depend on it to much.
That might be true. I'm not an extreme camera enthusiast, and I also don't have the highest end models from them. I'm pretty happy with what I have, though.
FYI, there are WiFi models. The doorbell is only WiFi (and is powered by a normal doorbell transformer, so no need for a PoE or ethernet drop). Some of their "instant" cameras are WiFi and can be powered by PoE injectors. So, if you can actually catch one of the more inexpensive ones in stock, you might give it a try to dip in a toe before you buy a new NVR and all of that to build the whole thing out.
1 Like
I'm leaning hard toward PoE cameras with Blue Iris. I have a reasonably good Windows PC that runs 24/7 anyway for other stuff, and my cameras are clustered in front and back, so I could reasonably use one PoE switch in front for 4 cameras, another in back for three more (one wrapped around the side), and then just one (on the opposite side) that would need its own PoE injector. Using two switches keeps the rest of the cables short enough that the effort of pulling them won't exceed the value.
Now the big question is, what cameras? I'll need about 8 of them, ideally with appropriate focal lengths (or zoom lenses?) Any recommendations for camera makes?
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
