re: General security camera discussion (was "Unifi Protect security cameras")

No I'm pretty dumb, I just read a lot about some specific things and then I talk about those things all the time.

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I just dont understand how ubiquiti doesnt have the patrol function and guard point like the lower lines cameras.

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Yeah that thing has been out for way too long to not have these critical features. It's not even a complete product without patrol, yet that camera is the product that smacks you in the face when you visit the store. And not just the Protect section of the store, I mean the home page of the entire Ubiquiti store.

So after having two nights with ton of false motion alerts due to a stray spider web in front of our main camera, I'm think personal/vehicle detection is pretty important.

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So, I'm in a bit of a dilemma. Do I just keep what I have and live without the extra bells and whistles like I have the past couple of years, or do I spring for a new NVR that gives me P&V detection? I'm currently maxed out using 8 of the 8 channels on my NVR. While that's fine, I'm also feeling limited by the 2TB storage space (about 4 days worth of recordings.) Do I spring for the 16 channel version? (There are 1 or 2 spots where I feel I could add additional cameras. Should upgrade a hard drive storage space? Jump into blue iris? FWIW I like the reolink ecosystem and have basically had zero problems with it since I installed it.

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About 18 months ago we started a remodel at our house. For that period of time, my truck has been parked in our driveway (we had a lot of extraneous crap from the remodel hanging around. With a little warmup in the weather, I endeavored to get the garage to a state where I could park the truck inside. I managed to get rid of and move enough stuff that I was successful. None too soon. The creepers were back again last night going thur cars and even got in a couple of garages that had man doors. We caught the guy on our cams but when the flood light came on, he stay away from our house.

I ordered a new 16 channel NVR with person and vehicle detection this afternoon. More cams to follow as soon as I can figure out what I want/need...

Did you go with reolink? I have an original duo cam and have been putting off swapping it out on front of house for wider fov than current cam…of course they have the newer duo 2 with 180degree and that seems smart for perimeter…and also intrigued about the newest trackmix…

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Did you go with reolink?

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Yes, I did. I really like the upgraded NVR interface.

I'm testing the vehicle and person detection and I've got the driveway cam set up to alarm when the kid get home from school here in a few mins.

My next project now (paging Korkstand) is figuring our some solar charged, battery operated IR illuminators for my back fence...

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If possible I would run some landscape wire and put up some 12V ones.

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The easy way? What's the fun in that?

Hard to make suggestions without a map/diagram/satview of the layout and/or a sample image, but I think the solar stuff will be futile, especially if you try to use cheap solar path lights. Let's put some rough figures to it...

Those path lights have like a 3x3 inch solar panel, so let's round up to 10 square inches. The high noon sun produces about 100 watts per square foot, so 10/144 * 100 ~= 7 watts hitting the panel tops. I think 20% efficiency is being generous so that's 1.4 watts being produced max. Over the course of ~12 hours of varying sun I would expect it to average about half that output (though probably much less), so we're looking at about 8 watt-hours collected per day max.

The cheap ones I looked at had less than 2 watt-hours worth of battery though, so that shows how generous I was with my estimates (plus I didn't bother with charge efficiency). Anyway let's go with 8 watt-hours produced by the panel. That has to last 10 or 12 hours, so you can only use less than 1 watt. Given that most of the cheap 12v IR illuminators operate at about 12 watts, you'd need bare minimum 12 of those little path lights to do what 1 12V wired one does, or if the size of the batteries are any indication you'd really need more like 50 of them.

You can give it a shot, but that's what I would expect.

If you can't get wire out to the fence, then I would try a long-range illuminator mounted next to the camera. Failing that it's time to try a different camera, probably from a different manufacturer. Reolink is probably the absolute best as far as value, but they are just not good at night and that's where the corner-cutting really shows. I don't care that The Hook Up Rob creams his pants over them, cameras at the next step up in price point perform much better in less-than-ideal lighting, and they probably have more options for further tuning the image. There are plenty of models from hik/dahua/unv/etc with their respective "starlight" low light performance sensors that probably cost less and will perform better than a low end reolink plus whatever lighting you try to rig up.


Or you could eliminate the bush.

SO 16 pages is a lot to go through.

I am in need of a simple in home system that I can view remotely from my phone for when we have the babysitter over.

I am thinking 3-4 cameras at the most and maybe a 48 hrs of video storage.

Would Wyze be a good option for this or are there similarly prices options that would be better suited?

TIA

Appreciate the info.