I'm looking to replace my Arlo cameras after they both screwed up the app and hiked the subscription prices. Ideally, I want wireless cameras that record and process video locally, offer AI, use batteries for some inside and some outside cameras, utilize encryption for data, and don't monetize my data or send my feeds to others, particularly China. I'd like local storage to be on a specialized, centralized hub, or possibly a Synology NAS, though I'm less sure about that one. I have no interest in wired Ethernet/PoE.
Does anybody know any product family that gets me close to what I seek, please?
@rlithgow1 Blue Iris looks interesting, but I don't see any list of supported cameras. I'm sure it isn't literally any camera. Is it possible to repurpose my Arlo cams, for example?
You could also go with Unifi Protect. It isn't the cheapest option but neither was Arlo. I am a former Arlo user as well and got tired of their crud as well.
Unifi has some decent wireless options, but battery powered will be a difficult one to fill. All of their stuff is either POE or USB powered.
Currently i have a G4 Instant camera and a G4 Doorbell. They do some AI stuff locally. For more advanced ai you want a AI Key or AI port.
If you dont want to use Unifi cameras you can use also use third party cameras that support the onvif standard.
How many cameras are we talking about, what resolution, and what kind of retention are you wanting to have?
Thanks! I looked at the Camect, but it said it will drain Arlo batteries in a day. There were similar caveats for Wyze cams. It seems that Camect streams continuously, which isn't a good use case for battery cams.
I want battery powered cams because I just can't run power/PoE to many of the locations. I'd like to support about 4 outdoor and 6 indoor cams. For AI recognition, I'm just looking for some differentiation of person, animal, and generic motion rather than facial recognition. I think some HD, and some 2K or better would suffice for most cams.
How/where it is recorded like a NVR or always on server
The cameras.
How to powered
From a nvr perspective we have heard three options. Blue Iris which is basically a computer that is always on recording and managing the cameras, Camect which is basicall a NVR, and Unifi Protect which is basically a NVR backed into thr unifi ecosystem.
The cameras are pretty cross platform as long as they support ONVIF or RSTP. As long as they camera supports those they will likeky work with any NVR storage solution.
Battery powered device are generally limited to devices that only send clips to their back in cloud provider. They do much of the video detection locally and then dont send data and waste battery power unless they detect motion. Solor powered devices still use a battery and i would question how well they would hold up when connected to a device that monitors them 24 hours a day.
Many cameras will do the basic smart detection mentioned by the OP. The Unify one will do that.
I understand the concern about running POE power as i have it to. This is why right now i only have the two cameras. One is powered by USB and the other is powered directly from the doorbell. I plan to add a few more at some point. But need to decide how i am going to run power to them. I suspect it won't be that hard though. From a reliability perspective you wint be able to beat POE.
I think most of the proposed solutions are beyond my security needs. Maybe I need a different approach. My Arlo cams still send videos to my Arlo hub and I'm fine using a VPN to get back to that remotely. But maybe there's a way to have something else pull the videos from that hub, use some local AI to sort by person, animal, and general motion and send push notifications for people.
Of course this idea probably veers away from being a Hubitat issue. As I think about that part of it, I mostly would like Hubitat's Away Mode to power on all AC cams and arm all the cams and when exiting Away Mode to turn off the AC cams and disarm internal cams, leaving only the external cams armed.
From what i recall Arlos approach was anything but external system friendly. You may be able to get some systems to log into Arlos system and watch your cameras but that creates other issues.
I pulled all of it and sold it on facebook to cover other unifi gear.
You may wish to look at the Eufy wireless cameras that come with their own solar panel, built in.
I've got a few going to Synology Surveillance Station, and into Hubitat.
Or, you could go the Homebase route and from their into Hubitat.
I have a couple of these and so far the batteries haven't run out during a 24 hour period. That said it could happen as the internal battery wears down. I've only had them a year and a half.
Actually I think if it is holding up overnight on batteries after 1.5 years that is a pretty fantastic review.
I dabbled with using Motion on Linux for monitoring cameras. I used Eufy cameras with the RSTP stream and it worked well. One thing that was interesting was that if they were set up to record only on motion and not for continuous recording the stream went blank while they were waiting for motion. Some users that experimented with it killed their batteries fast so to say that the cameras you mentioned were holding up through the night and then recharging during the day is fantastic. My experience with solar power was that it was good for topping the battery off and not exactly charging it while fully running.
I think this may be a remnant of a way of thinking when talking about a cloud based system. Once all of the video is kept locally and not accessible to external folks is it really a need to disable internal cameras. Or even manipulate the cameras at all through the day based on occupancy. I think that function exists on cloud based systems to provide a sense of control to prevent recording ourselves at home.
For me, Amcrest has played very nicely. I have an AI version looking up my driveway, when it detects a vehicle or human a rule fires to turn on a light outside for a few minutes.
I even connected a non AI version in the babies room that when motion is detected my wife and I get a push notification along with a verbal notification from Alexa.
Below is a link to the driver that I used to get it working.
