Cameras, which ones?

Pretty happy with Reolink DUO 3v POE x2 + Floodlight Wifi PRO x 2 and Doorbell POE (white) all link into HA easily along with being able to trigger their sirens/lights/motion for Halloween triggers etc from HA if needed

Team Ubiquiti, a few hours ago I caught somebody breaking into my trailer.

With the new NVR Instant it really lowers the cost of entry. Yes there are still cheaper options, but I've not had to replace any of the Ubiquiti gear.

Just curious. Why?

I have a bunch of Wyze v3 cams. They were dirt cheap. They mostly work. But...

Getting notifications is hit or miss. Sometimes they do great notifying me that someone is walking up my front path. Sometimes they just do not send a notification. And this is the notification appearing from their own app.

I pay a small amount for the cloud storage plan. Sometimes they record the whole event. Sometimes not. For instance, I often get just 15s of the Amazon delivery person walking away from my front porch (not the video of them walking to the front porch).

And Wyze makes getting integration with their system a real PITA. There is an API that you can use for notifications and events (not video streams). It mostly works, but the API isn't officially supported and may go away at any time.

I used to have some Wyze cameras, but they've all been reassigned to the trash can. They were just too unreliable. I'd be away on a trip and try to view one of the cameras, and it would helpfully tell me I needed to power cycle the camera. Not every time. But enough times that I said never again.

I'm a Blink camera guy (22 of them), but my attraction to them is influenced by being grandfathered into free cloud service for life. Their tech support is basically non-existent lately, though.

As I said, I have a lot of Foscam and Reolink. Just ordered one of these. 69.00.
Onviv and rtsp

us.foscam.com/B4.html

Geez, you got me all excited there. :wink:

Foscam FAQ says B4 doesn't support RTSP.

Hmmm. Will have to see. When I talked to Foscam they said it did. I can always send it back

I've been eyeing the Reolink Hub with it's psuedo RTSP for solar cams.

But nothing in my price range so far. :slightly_frowning_face:

Wyze is just unreliable as a security camera,

Excessive updates with issues almost every time (I quit updating)

Low quality hardware, had 16 out of 30 get water in lens for a camera rated for outdoors.

Much happier with Reolink's quality and reliability :grin:

I have several Reolink solar cameras. Meh.

They're better than NO camera, but 1) the solar panel connection connections can be spotty, and seem worse on the newer USB-C connectors. 2) They are about 50/50 for motion detection with a high false positive rate when you adjust them to the proper range for actually detecting people and vehicles. 3) They don't work well at all as traditional IP cameras and require their proprietary app, although they do show up as discoverable in Home Assistant (I haven't tried that, largely because the main camera hovers at 10-20% battery or worse due to that lousy connection. I may replace it in the next week or two with one still in the box).

I have a friend who uses Ubiquiti and is happy with them but he needs actual security for a business while I just want to see who has pulled up to the house or barn, and I don't want to spend a fortune or replace my other wifi equipment or router. I need solar-powered cameras due but haven't found much to like on the market, which is the reason I'm watching this thread and also the reason I'm sort of stuck for now with those Reolinks. FWIW, I wouldn't buy more of them.

When I was renovating my home and had the drywall down I ran Ethernet cables to locations where I had cameras. I screwed up and missed the doorbell but wireless works fine so I’m
Not stressed over it. In any event, I setup proxmox virtualization on a mini PC and installed Scrypted. Then added all my cameras (Foscam for indoor, Hikvision for outdoor, and Reolink for doorbell) into Scrypted. We are an apple house so I also have homebridge setup as another virtualized server and in Scrypted use the HomeKit plugin to add all my cameras as HomeKit Secure Video cameras. I also have the doorbell and all outdoor cameras to record 24/7/365 on a 6 drive network attached storage in the home. All cameras are restricted from being accessible from outside my home network unless there accessed through the apple Home app or via connected to my home VPN and accessed through the Scrypted NVR app.

All my Reolink's are wired power, not solar.

Most solar powered cameras run power saving features that make them less sensitive compared to a wired camera.

Also I went with newer 4k cameras, haven't tried their cheaper offerings, the 4k cams have been flawless compared to my Wyze cams.

I have 2 on my driveway that run on solar but the solar system was designed by me :grin: They are wired cameras connecting to 400 watt solar panel system. Had to go big on wattage to cover the lack of sun this time of year.

I use this model in my camera locations, Reolink 4k PTZ TrackMix Amazon.com : REOLINK 4K Wired WiFi Outdoor Security Camera, 8MP Dual Lens, 360 PTZ Camera, Auto Tracking, 2.4/5GHz Wi-Fi Smart Person/Vehicle/Animal Detection, 6X Hybrid Zoom, Color Night Vision, TrackMix WiFi : Electronics

But only purchased them when on sale, Reolink & Amazon usually has sales that are $30-$60 off

Just a brief thanks to those of you recommending Reolink. I tried Wyze first and found the connectivity to be slow and having to pay $100 / yr. for the option of displaying all my cameras at the same time was a deal-killer.

In comparison to Yi (what I did have for years) and Wyze, Reolink has pretty much blown my mind. All the options from setup to configuration were not only easy, but intuitive. The iPhone app and Desktop app are wonderful. Stability has been great. And most of all, no ads, no pop-ups, and no forced subscriptions! Everything just makes sense, simple, better than I expected and it is such a relief to have something that just works. Thanks again.

And they function fine if you want to block from accessing Internet and calling their home. However, you would need to find a way for remote access to cameras for yourself.

My firewall logs are mostly filled with my Reolink cameras being blocked from calling home.

They also integrate very well with Scrypted/Scrypted NVR.

I would once again recommend Scrypted. The mobile apps use a Cloudflare tunnel to connect back to your server at home.

Man I’m stunned to read the positive experiences with Reolink. I’m in the process of returning 5 cameras and NVR that are well past the normal return window, because of how horrible they are. From constant “person” detection in otherwise still or slightly breezy but empty frames, to “auto-update” firmware that fails without notification and no re-attempt until there’s manual intervention (if you ever even realize it), constant missed motion detection that obscures the entire frame, cameras regularly disconnecting from the network and having to be factory reset and added in again, and much much more. I find it hard to believe I got 5 lemons and that usually their quality is acceptable or even respected. I’ve never been so stunned by a company trying to rationalize something like major design and security flaws as “something that just happens sometimes”. Sorry to come in with a negative position but I feel obligated to comment that there are a lot of very concerning potential issues with Reolink if anyone reads this and decides to give them a shot.

Likely the issue is with their NVR programming. I use Reolink cameras and their pretty solid. However I don't use their NVR, I use Camect. Their AI is pretty good. Though occasionally it recognizes our Maine Coon as a dog because he's so big. By and large though it's rock solid as are the cams themselves.

I wish I could say that was the case but I utilized them with and without the NVR, for significant periods, and have weeks and weeks of emails with their tech support team, and in both setups the problems were significant and unacceptable.

Having an off grid property spread out over several acres, I needed to use solar powered cameras. Purchased two different iterations of the Reolink PTZ offering over the past five of six years, as noted earlier somewhere in this thread. They use on-camera microSD cards for storage and communicate with the Reolink cloud is desired (I don't use it). They're better than no camera, but that's about it. Not even remotely reliable at detecting people or vehicles, and setting the sensitivity higher results in so many false positives as to be useless (and battery draining). Also, the newer versions are prone to battery problems while being considerably more expensive. I've purchased my last Reolink anythings.

As we build out systems on the property I'm just adding more solar and battery at each building and will tie in regular POE cameras tied into the main power system of each building instead of solar cameras. I don't know that any will be Reolink given the poor performance of these units.