We've been using Blink Cameras since before they were bought out by Amazon. We've been pretty happy with them, but the (understandable) lack of live-view is proving to be a deal-breaker.
My wife would really like to be able to see a live view of the doorbell camera pretty much 24/7 on a wall-mounted tablet or monitor inside the house. So, I've been looking at possibly just replacing the Blink doorbell camera, but I think it might be time to look at possibly trading out all of them. I've played around over the years with Amcrest IP cameras and even have one on the front of the house that's pretty good. And I wanted to play around with Wyze and got one of their 4k PTZ cameras that I mounted on the deck. The quality is awesome, but they are so locked down that it doesn't seem to be possible to do any sort of 3rd party monitor solution. So if I wanted some sort of "Hollywood Squares" multi-cam view I'd be dependent on their cloud based app solution.
Anyway, this is a large collection of geeks. I'm open to jumping into most anything at this point. Yes, integration with Hubitat would be great, but it seems that many have died on this hill here. I have arming/disarming working when we depart/arrive and that meets our needs generally so at a minimum I would like to have that.
@wiegout Can only speak for myself. I tend to use Foscam and Reolink. Both very cheap but good. For doorbell I use a reolink POE. Everything is brought into Hubitat via Camect (Though Blue Iris works well too). All video is saved to a local san and synced with a cloud account.
When I was deploying Synology Surveillance Station my #1 recommended camera was Foscam. But lately with single plane of glass control being the top feature now, many of my clients have moved to Unifi. You can still use 3rd party cameras with Unifi.
Yes, it currently is running off of door bell Low Voltage AC wiring. I think if I really needed it, I could pull Ethernet in there for PoE if it was worth doing. Blink even though it has full time power, doesn't support live streaming longer than 30 seconds.
Foscam US is a separate company than Foscam in China, they distribute Foscam branded products in the US but IIRC they also created the Amcrest brand and now they sell those cameras too.
I recently found an image captured from a Foscam that we had over a decade ago. The quality was quite good even though it was a night shot using IR. Feature set was quite good for the era, as well.
Pretty sure I was lured away by the promise of Wyze and then to Unifi due to the disappointment with Wyze.
I just went to foscam.us to see what their product lineup looks like today, and that site provides some info about the relationship.
Not at all. Ubiquiti offers a wide range of cameras for all types of use. I have an older G4 Doorbell and several older G3 Instant cameras in use at home. They all work perfectly for my needs in a home environment. The fact that these older devices continue to run without issue is a testament to how good they really are.
Keep in mind, there is a bit more to running Ubiquiti cameras than just the cameras themselves. You need a device that can run the UniFi Protect application. This could be one of the routers/gateways that includes said app or one of the Network Video Recorders.
Synology can be a bit expensive because the software is only available on select NAS's from their catalogue but supports a wide number of camera's on the market. Unifi has lower cost devices like their cloud gateway that can support 4 to 6 cameras and record to NVME SSD depending on UDM device. Just did a rental home in Florida with Cloud Gateway Max and 2 outdoor and two doorbell camera's. Unfi has a list of requirements if you use 3rd party camera's on their site.
I can give you my experience. I started out with Roku WiFi cameras on my ISP provided router. They started out ok but over time I started having issues with them dropping off or the footage not loading in the app. So I switched to UniFi router and added an access point near my furthest Roku cameras and that did not really help.
Since I was in UniFi whirlpool by this point I pulled out all the Roku cameras and installed UniFi cameras. I honestly couldn’t be happier. I have several of the G5 bullets but I do use some of the older G4 instants and the G4 doorbells. I did have to Ethernet connect the bullets and doorbells but the G4 instant can be Ethernet/POE (with an adapter) or WiFi. They work really well on WiFi. I store all my footage internally on an NVR with SSD.
It was expensive but they have been flawless, no connection issues even on the WiFi cameras, and the app works really well.
I would recommend going to ipcamtalk.com and do a lot of reading.
My summary of what I've learned there:
primary focus should be based on DORI-- what are you trying to do with your cameras? Do you want to identify people, observe, etc. A single camera can only do one thing well, and everything else is a compromise. Figure out what is important to you.
wifi cameras suck. Not fast enough to keep up with stuff.
this will require some work on your behalf; it's not just a "throw it on the wall and it works" thing. Lots of cameras don't work well (especially at night) out of the box.
nighttime performance of most cameras suck, especially the stuff you can get at big-box stores
Do the research, figure out what you need, and do it. There are a number of really helpful people there that will assist you.
I run about 15 cameras, mostly some old Axis cameras that were here when I bought the house, a handful of EmpireTech (rebranded Dahua) cameras, and some Amcrest for lesser-important areas. Everything is controlled by a dedicated PC running Blue Iris. And since I have a UDM Pro, I record 24/7 on that as well as a backup.
First, if I were starting over and money was no object, I'd go all in on Ubiquiti. But that's not where I am.
I use an older Synology with Surveillance Station for all my recording. I have a mix of Amcrest and Reolink cameras. I switched from Foscam to Amcrest at one point, both of which are rebranded Dahua cameras. My current go-to is Reolink. I've used their 12v doorbell as well as the PoE version. I've found the PoE version to be MUCH better and I'm very happy with it. I run as many of the cameras as I can over PoE. And I have a Reolink Trackmix PoE on order.
Hidden costs: Surveillance station only comes with licenses for 2 cameras. Additional licenses will run you about $50-$60 per camera for non-Synology branded cameras. The Synology branded cameras don't require additional licenses. The licenses are transferable so you can buy them used. I've purchased a few from another HE user via this forum.
With all that said I have very little integration between my cameras and HE. Just a few motion detection events.
I love my Ubiquiti cameras. I've been running them for 6+ years, and they all just work. 5 of them have been mounted under the eaves of my house in the weather for that entire time. Great gear.
@wiegout
I've installed Reolink and Eufy cameras. They are both very good. In my humble opinion, they are slightly better than Amcrest & Foscam (which I used to install).
If you want to record to a NAS, the important feature to look for is "RTSP Streaming", I've used Surveillance station on Synology, and the software is easy to use and fairly robust. However, if I didn't already have a Synology NAS (for other reasons), I would never have used Surveillance Station - it isn't great enough to justify (on its own) a Synology NAS.
If you don't have a Synology NAS, some of the best best bets are: Blue Iris, Frigate, MotionEye, ZoneMinder, Camect, etc.
One other critical piece of information is required:
How (or where) do you want to show all these camera streams?
Is it a PC, a Amazon Alexa Show, or a separate monitor somewhere. That's a critical question which could dictate the approach.
I was assuming a tablet on the wall. We're a pretty Apple ecosystem centric house, but I also would be fine with running something else if need be. I figured an iPad would be sufficient but I could easily run a monitor off of a PC or Mac or Linux for that matter. I have a couple of RaspPi 4s including one that is currently unused. All are in the mix. I guess I had hoped that some NVRish solution would have a iPadOS app that I could use as a monitor.
+1 for Unifi. My system has been growing over time so it wasn't an upfront cost. They also integrate nicely with HE. The AI events are so reliable I have replaced my exterior motion sensors with cameras (same cameras, just dual use). I no longer get several false alarms overnight.
I also use HE's Maker API to send the events to a custom Mac app and I can watch the triggers in real time. Response time is fantastic.
I went through two NightOwl systems and Ring before switching to Unifi. Those three systems would have bought a lot of Unifi gear. The NVR on the first 1080p NightOwl system failed. The second 4k NightOwl lost cameras, but that was probably just the power supply. The Ring cameras were just OK until they let me down when they did not replace a vandalized camera even though they advertise they will. (Not to mention they are now Amazon and have made some sketchy choices.)
Since I was already in the Unifi ecosystem I tried a couple of cameras and haven't looked back. I'm still running some of the Ring cameras only because I like the redundant off-site recording. Now I'm also playing with their SuperLink sensors. The performance has been pretty good so far. Looking forward to see what the smoke/CO2 sensor looks like.
There are a ton of ways to display unifi protect if you choose to.
Unifi has apps for ios and android
You can just use a browser
With a viewport you just supply the screen.
Unifi is crack but you wont be disappointed if you go that route. There is are a bunch of ways to get info in and out of hibitat for it. Snell has a grest integration for various unifi stuff and i created the Integration manager to help manage his stuff and add some additional functionality with inbound and outbound webhooks.
The NVR on the first 1080p NightOwl system failed. The second 4k NightOwl lost cameras, but that was probably just the power supply. The Ring cameras were just OK until they let me down when they did not replace a vandalized camera even though they advertise they will. (Not to mention they are now Amazon and have made some sketchy choices.)
