Agreed, wired is preferred over wireless if you have a chance to get the wires in place!
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After going through multiple hubs and at least 5 kilobucks of mostly retired HA equipment, I have a negative view of Z-wave and wish I never bought into it due to extended frustration and wasted time.
As of yet, my favorite components are Hubitat, Blue Iris, Lutron Caseta, cheap Iris Zigbee sensors from ebay, and expensive NYCE Zigbee sensors where aesthetics rule out the Iris options.
I have read the Iris sensors, when connected to Hubitat, can preclude you from using Ikea zigbee repeaters since I believe neither are actually Zigbee compliant. Also the cheap Xiaomi sensors and Iris are said to not work well together as Xiaomi also is not truly compliant and will have issues when combined in Hubitat.
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Common cheap options are the Ikea wall-mounted Zigbee switches or Iris Zigbee wall-mounted switches from ebay. The latter also have Z-wave repeaters, but some people have problems with them. I chose the latter and do not use the Z-wave repeater.
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From the unit's I've owned and keeping it simple, these ALL DAY LONG
awesome repeaters if you can still find them. Which you can like that one. They actually do zwave and zigbee and can repeat both. Some have had great success with them as zwave repeaters and I've read that other's have not. I do not use the zwave portion personally. They make great zigbee repeaters especially for the sylvania and iris motion sensors.
Also I'll x2 the advice above that no matter what IP camera you get. Isolate it from the internet. Completely block them from talking to anything but what you want them to talk to. Like BlueIris.
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What comparable cameras do you recommend. I took a look at the Empire Tech line up, and they're Dahua, which is Chinese also.
Just put a fake subnet mask on the camera when you setup the static IP and it won't be able to get out through your router.
Frankly, I don't trust any camera manufacturer with security no matter where they are made. Unless you use a cloud recording service (Ring etc.), which also make me uncomfortable, there's no reason they need to be able to connect to anything. I probably go a little more complex than most with my network. That said, I use several vlans for different types of devices to restrict access. My IOT devices are on a separate vlan than is my Blue Iris server. My cameras are on the same BI vlan for performance reasons, but I've set up an IP Address group specifically for cameras that I block all network access to. So the cameras can't see each other nor anything else. BI can see them however. I do this all with the Unifi product line.
So far I've tried cameras from Hikvision, Amcrest, and Reolink, and even Wyze (with the special RSTP firmware). I've only had them installed for a few months though, so I can't comment on reliability yet. I wanted to see for my self what differences if any there where. If I did it all again I'd stick with one brand mainly because I'd only need one interface to set them up.
Meaning can't comment on Wyze? They're not reliable enough for security surveillance, casual maybe. Especially the RTSP firmware. I get lots of dropped streams, periodically. Can be really annoying, and they require a super strong wifi signal. Is difficult to use through brick or plumbing, due to the crappy wifi chip in them. And there seems to be an increase in the drops, the more cams you have. I've removed all but two at this point.
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I had to go back to stock because of this. What I have had good luck with is using Tiny Cam Pro on an old android phone as a middleman so I can still record my Wyze cam in MotionEye (similar to Blue Iris). Tiny Cam has a Wyze integration and can also stream the feed. Works quite well and haven't had any drops, that I can tell.
I tried out TinyCam Pro too. It dropped there as well. At stock they still drop in the Wyze app as well.
For $20, I didn't expect the same quality as a $150 Amcrest. I mean, you don't buy a Yugo and expect a Lambo.
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But darn it, I wanted that to be the case 
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Can anyone share more details of how they prevent their Hikvision, Amcrest etc. cameras from phoning home to China?
I started with option 1, and now use option 2. WIth either of these, you may find that your camera's time slowly drifts. To correct this, I run a local NTP server and point the cameras at that.
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Assign static IPs or make DHCP reservations for all your cameras. In your firewall, drop all outgoing traffic originating from any of your camera's IPs. I went a step further, and dropped all traffic except to my Blue Iris NVR.
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Segregate all your cameras (all IOT devices, really) into a separate VLAN. I have an IOT SSID that I used that tags all traffic with a separate VLAN. I then only allow traffic to pass from that VLAN to my Blue IRIS NVR. With this setup, it's much more seamless to add devices, since I know that as long as they join the IOT wifi network, they won't have any internet access.
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Thanks, I think I’ll try option 1 for now. I’ve gotten interested in using VLANs to segregate network traffic but everything I read online gets a bit over my head pretty quickly.
VLANs are great, but make no mistake - they add additional administrator overhead/time to manage. For something like cameras it might not be a big deal, but think through it, and make sure you want to do that level of configuration/management on your network.
Well I meant reliability (long term) of all of them. But in the case of the Wyse (I only got one to play with) I agree with you for the most part. I wouldn't rely on them for important surveillance either. But for $25 I think they may had some applications for non-critical areas. I'm also going to experiment with it a motion sensor. Mine has actually been pretty stable I haven't had any dropouts that I can see in a while. But my wifi is very strong and my home network is pretty robust. I haven't decided at this point if I'm going to get any more of them. I do have a couple of angles inside my house that I'm considering them for because they are so cheap. I should also note that like all of my cameras, I've blocked the Wyze from the internet so don't use the cloud functions.
Yeah, I get it. I'm no network engineer so I rely a lot on help from how-to videos and reading articles. I've invested in a kinda over-the-top Unifi setup but have been extremely happy with it. I can discuss my setup in more detail but this probably isn't the thread for it. I did find this video helpful with Unifi and it's got ideas that can be applied to other setups as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3SfeQTaaxw
I'm kind of on the upper end of network security "paranoia". Cameras are notorious for being security threats and have been utilized heavily by botnets because of it. So I'm extra careful with them.
Just keep in mind you can also block IP addresses from hitting the internet, even if they aren't in a VLAN.
Some users find it less work/easier to just assign static (or reserved DHCP) addresses to the cameras, and then block those IP addresses at the router/gateway - rather than setting up VLANs.
I’m going to give this a try for starters. Thanks again.
