My dad just moved into a new house, sent this to him right away as he was asking me for recommendations. Rob coming in clutch

Right? We are closing on a new house next month and I need to start getting the cameras and stuff ordered.

Glad to see the timing worked perfectly for you. In my case, whether I'm in the market for something or not, as soon as Rob releases a video, I just hit play instantly. LOL

@@sniperoth haha same here my friend. Rob releases a video. Am I interested in the topic? Sometimes not even remotely. Am I gonna watch the video anyway? ABSOLUTELY!

@stevez @victor @pkt @trevor I appreciate you guys.

Mechanics are wizards in their own right, glad this helped.

I haven't found one good reason for the extra expense and then being locked into their ecosystem. My only guess is you spent too much money starting off and can't cut your losses.

I think he said in about a week how would do a video but he will soon - the new Deepstack integration in BI is great and once BI fine tunes it - it will be amazing!

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/pLJ4bKp2yMrGaY0.html

Thanks!

Updating this comment for item 2. Unifi now has a VPN client that connects back to your Unifi router from your phone it is nearly point and click, and also site to site VPN is very easy if you have two locations.

Hey! I just watched your hikvision vs protect comparison last night!

@@TheHookUp I love it.. I think ur smart to skip it.. I love this roundup, I need to give Reolink a try, what do u thing about it for commercial installs.

I don't do commercial installs, but my best friend does. Anything under 16 cameras gets reolink, anything above that gets synology.

@@TheHookUp Awesome, thanks for the feedback!

I love my Blue Iris system, and am not tempted to go to a Reolink NVR, but I agree that it is the right choice for the vast majority of people.

I've actually learned quite a bit while making the video.

Less filler, less stuff to edit :)

"The best photo is the one that gets taken." Excellent point!

My wife approves the blue iris app and uses it all the time.

Also, that first sentence “I’m a UniFi fan boy, although I’m not sure why anymore” runs deep with me. I really hope they can pull up on the stick before completing their crash landing.

@@TheHookUp So much this! I really wish they'd just open up Unifi Protect to 3rd party cameras. Their cameras/price points just don't make sense currently.

@@TheOgres3DForge and their availability sucks! hard to beat 2-day prime shipping on Reolink 810a's & 1220a's

@@TheOgres3DForge I’ve been saying this forever, even If they change a license per cam.

Yeah, that was definitely in the video.

It just seems so wrong to me that the selling point of a UniFi network is granular control of each device in the firewall, but then with UniFi protect there is no information about what ports is using, what it’s listening for, etc. Edit: love your videos btw.

@@TheHookUp I've brought this up with them before but it take Ubiquiti what seems like a long time to make any changes. wow didn't know you watched my videos made my day :) keep up the great content

Did you have the hardware to support it?

Should have just hired someone who knew what they were doing

You have to think of the bigger cost. It is not sunken cost when you can still use it for something else. 400 dollars per camera??? You would easily spend a whole lot more in cameras than just foregoing the unifi protect. I have a udm pro for the networking component. In no world, would i spend 400 bucks on one camera. You are better off investing in other system. Besides adding more functionality to your udm just means less resources for the other component especially when you have ips and ids running.

I think deploying a few g3 instant is actually the best use case for UniFi protect.

All the ALPR stuff that I've seen is subscription based, I have a camera set up to view license plates right now, but I haven't actually gone through with setting up ALPR.

@@TheHookUp Great! Would love to know which Cameras you recommend for reading license plates and specific setup settings needed. Thanks for getting back to me Rob!

I hear ya, so you got g4 bullets? Just devil's advocate. For the price of 2 G4 bullets (4mp cameras) and a a 2tb hard drive you could have had the reolink system with 4 4K cameras and a dedicated NVR.

@@TheHookUp I gues the main reason for Ubiquity products (at least it was for me) are not the cameras or NVR itself, but the whole system including Wifi APs, UDM Pro as firewall and Protect as NVR system as well as ease of use. Camera quality for the price might be a bit disappointing since you can get better image quality for less money, but G4 Dome at 179$ works just fine :)

@@Mailm4n That's one thing this video overlooks is the central 'ecosystem' of a Dream Machine Pro or Dream Machine SE (of which I just got the latter). Being able to log in and see your network activity/stats, live cams, recordings, AP, etc. There is added value there for the cost of entry. Like another commenter said about even the least tech savvy household family user (wife, teen daughter) being able to navigate is icing. The new doorbell pro and upcoming smart lock will further add convenience for little cost.

Digiblur made a video on that, I won't be touching it until it's a bit more mainstream friendly (offers playback and has a UI).

I am buying a Google Corral so I can test out frigate. Not sure I like all the YAML stuff without a gui for configuration. I currently run BI in a VM on my Xpenology server, but that is a lot of overhead (Windows). Hopefully, Frigate will give me similar results using less resources.

The lack of Linux support is unfortunate

This isn't Windows ME anymore. I use a Windows machine for my home automation system (Charmed Quark Controller), and my TV DVR system (SageTV). I run a second machine for my CCTV system (BlueIris). These machines run 24/7/365. I haven't had any of these Windows machines crash on me in years. Seriously, it's probably been a decade since I had one of these Windows machines bluescreen on me.

@@BrianSimmons bluescreening isn't the issue. it's all the forced updates, reboots, and freezes. yes, i've disabled all the updates. the windows solution is still crap.

Frigate

If I remember correctly camect only supports 24 megapixels total of cameras, so it would only support 3 4K cameras, or 4 5mp cameras.

You might run into an issue where the RLK16 only outputs low resolution RTSP streams for each camera, I'm not sure if that has been changed/fixed.

@@TheHookUp I'll see if there is still an issue with low res appearing on BI5 and let you know. Either way, it sounds like BI5 is going to be my best option with AI motion tracking, and if the problem persists with the RTSP stream quality, I might have to utilize the Reolink itself to pull the higher quality video. 👍

@@TheHookUp Just wanted to give you an update: While I can't speak of the 810 cameras, the 820s don't seem to play nicely with BI5. Even with a high-end PC and only running 4 streams, the streams will cut out abruptly or dance around trading places with other streams wildly. Video is also heavily pixelated. Unfortunately, I'll have no choice but to use Reo's app until better integration exists with the superior BI5.

@@Aurleis You need to follow the steps in this video EXACTLY for them to work (yes, you must delete and re-add the camera using ONVIF): kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mdt8o6egkrq6e2w.html

@@TheHookUp Thank you. I made the mistake of just checking my firmware status on the Reolink NVR and it said it was up to date (but the version number told a different story). So, when I installed the cameras they auto added and the only main device is the "NVR" with the cameras listed below it. This means that the only way I could force an update to the RLC820A cameras was by downloading the latest firmware (from your Reo-link), and putting it on an NTFS flashed USB-drive. Done. The other two streams presently installed are a single Duo PoE 4mp, but since that was giving me the least of issues, I wasn't worried. After installing the firmware, I moved back to my PC and redid the cameras to be ONVIF protocol and not RTSP. For the Duo PoE, I kept that at h264 (since it's not 4k) and the other two RLC820A the main stream was h265. That took care of the pixelation. The cameras still will go offline and sometimes dance around the stream (albeit far less frequently than before). I did adjust the frame rate of the cameras in BI5 to be slightly than what was set on my NVR, but this didn't seem to make much of a change. It's possible that I may need a dedicated system (specs per an early video... or perhaps this one) running only BI5 and nothing else in the background to remedy this issue completely. I have since set up BI5 on my HA through MQTT and am quite happy with it. Thank you again for your help, it made a substantial difference :)

QNAP and Synology don't have their own person detection built in at the moment, if they start offering that I'll give them a look.

Synology has person detection but only on a specific NVR with a GPU, its also really pricey in Australia.

@@TheHookUp As locusm stated, synology does have it with there NVR geared nas such as the DVA3129 which I'm leaning towards.

@@TheHookUp Synology does offer AI detection. Deep Learning NVR DVA3219

Just looked it up, looks like the current version of the AI NVR is the DVA3221, it's $2500 without any drives and only includes 8 camera licenses. Thats... a lot.

I think they did listen because they recently add local connections. I haven't been able to test a VPN connection yet but I plan too soon.

@@jacobrohr Thanks for the heads up. I'll have to check as soon as I get home.

Haha, I just said the same thing.

@@TheHookUp I'm a Protect user though, probably mainly because I just generally like Ubiquiti's hardware. My whole home network is Ubiquiti (Edgerouter, Unifi switches, various Unifi APs, Cloudkey Gen2+ etc.) so I guess I chose Protect just to have a single "eco system" of hardware.

@@haukurorsson833 My home network's also Ubiquiti. Heck, it's also what I rolled out for our company. But being great with networking doesn't automatically make them good at NVR. The P2P-only / no VPN support is just infuriating and essentially means their NVR doesn't wanna play nice with what's already within the same freakin network. So in that regard, it doesn't really matter what 'ecosystem' you have in your network, it still needs to phone outside just to work. You'd imagine that a security-focused tech company whose clientele is mostly IT professionals or enthusiasts would understand the importance of security/privacy/access control, but I guess it got outweighed by their desire to lock people in to their service (by forcing P2P).

​@@haukurorsson833 I live and die by Unifi for networking with how well it works but the only reason I would consider Unifi Protect is for the doorbell. Although, at that point it isn't worth it, I may as well keep my camera that looks over the front door & generic doorbell that is DIYed to work with HA and send notifications with video.

@@SamPhoenix_ Yeah I actually plan on adding the doorbell myself, if it's ever in stock again ....

I understand will be dependent on your router etc, but you could recommend a router to purchase also?

The bullet is all metal vs the turret that is mostly plastic.

More cooling is never a bad thing. If Reolink developed their desktop app I think it would be a game changer.

Yeah, the G3 instant makes protect and interesting value proposition, unfortunately it doesn't work with person detection.

Curious on if the cloud key does everything the nvr does or even the dream machine..... also @thehookup which mobile app is the most wife friendly, she's not messing with a VPN and we don't have a static ip

My BlueIris alerts me of deliveries to :) My neighbors must think I sit by the door waiting because once they are delivered I grab them. I live on a main road and don't want to loose any more packages.

@@BellaNestCam I haven't tried out the deepstack settings yet, and I'm not likely to switch all my cameras to BI anyway but it would be a nice improvement over the motion alerts.