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

Finally got all 15 cams up and running. I have 1 left, but I'm not going to reinstall it as it has a cracked lens. Since 1 of my cams is a dual lens with 2 feeds, that allows me to run the 16 cam view on my monitor.

But that's not what I came to post about. My cams "paid off" this AM. We had a pretty good wind storm here yesterday. Tragically, my wife had a $3 garden flag blow away. I was able to track it blowing around the yard/neighborhood and tracked it down and found it in the much neglected side yard/garden. Thank goodness all the work I've put in with our system allowed me to save the day...

I just had a motherfricker walk up my driveway and check if my vehicles were unlocked. I'll tell you one thing, you can never have too many cameras.

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Do you have push notifications to your phone after hours? I do, but I also keep my phone in "do not disturb" mode so they're silent.

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If your detections are set well you should make exemptions.

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So the reason I turned off my cams vehicle detection alarm(s) was this. When the cameras detected motion, they look for anything in the frame that the on-board AI recognizes and a person, pet or vehicle. It doesn't matter if that object is moving or not, just if it's in the frame.

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That sucks. That hasn't been fixed with an update?



So this is kind of embarrassing given that I install cameras semi-professionally, but I have neglected my own home. Eight cameras is just not enough.

So having seen that cameras alone do not deter criminals, and notifications may not be wanted at all times, I'm going to take my home video surveillance a couple steps further with Home Assistant and WLED.

I believe Protect has a nice HA integration, and for other systems you could use Frigate I guess, but obviously we need to get person detection into HA via whatever avenue. From there it's a really simple automation to fire off a particular WLED preset (red and blue flashing lights sounds good). I'm gonna light up my whole fricking lot next time some a-hole comes around. Might even add some audio "get the *frick* away from my house".

Tonight I had the same SUV pass my house 3 times in 5 minutes, and one of those passes the vehicle stopped in the street for 10 seconds right at the end of my driveway. I don't think it's related to the guy from last night (the cops picked him up btw), but it's still unnerving seeing a vehicle that appears to be casing my house.

So after the deterrent lighting automation I'm going to start logging plates of cars that pass. I want to know about "new" cars vs the regulars. I'm a corner lot so two streets to monitor, I have a fence along one so I can build a "birdhouse" out there for LPR, and the other street hell I'll run some direct burial out to the mailbox, idgaf.

I want alerts before alerts.

I want a 30 foot night time face id perimeter 100% around the house. I'll hang some big arse 25x zoom ptz's out there, that's how much idgaf anymore.

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 I can build a "birdhouse" out there

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We have a network of hidden/camouflaged outdoor security cameras but also include highly visible outdoor security cameras. It doesn't really do any good as a deterrent if would be intruders can't see any of your cameras.

We currently have nine EZVIZ C8W Pro PTZ cameras covering 100% of the perimeter of our house. They are dc powered WiFi cameras (but also have an Ethernet connection if you wanted to run Ethernet cables and set up DVR recordings). Granted the EZVIZ cameras and system are not nearly as good as Ubiquity Unify Ethernet cameras and components, but I love them as relatively inexpensive highly capable and configurable security cameras. First, they are highly visible to anyone approaching our home. We live in a rural area and I WANT people to know we have lots of cameras. You can't miss seeing the kind of large EZVIZ C8W Pro cameras. We have additional more strategically hidden EZVIZ C3X dual lens fixed cameras, Wyze V3 cams and pole mounted camouflage painted Reolink PTZ solar powered WiFi cameras outside on our property as well.

These EZVIZ C8W Pro cameras have AI and will auto track detected humans within a minimum of about a 70' radius from the cameras. They are rated as detecting to 100'. So anyone walking near our house is going to have one to three cameras locked onto them tracking them. I have ours set to turn on a spotlight when they detect humans or vehicles and I also leave the blue LED indicator light on each camera. At night you can see the blue indicator lights from far away and if anyone approaches the house they will have one to three spotlights shining right at them and following them around like prison spotlights. It's very intimidating to an uninvited person on our property, but also nice when I walk outside at night to have spotlights where I am walking. Anyone walking right towards our house is walking straight into one or more bright "blinding" spot lights right in their face while I have been instantly notified before they arrive. Sure beats a security system from an early warning perspective.

The above is how I have the cameras setup while we are asleep, away or not expecting anyone. If we are expecting anyone, I change the settings to not autotrack and I also turn the spotlight feature off. I also can instantly unarm all of the EZVIZ cameras with one click so my phone notifications are not constantly going off if we are outside, especially when neighbors, visitors, contractors, etc. are at our house. With a single click I can arm all of the cameras again.

In the event we have any issues with WiFi, the cameras still work fine independent of the WiFi. They are all recording continuously to microSD cards and still capture events and auto track, turn on the spotlights, etc. If the WiFi happened to be out, I just wouldn't get instant notifications or be able to live view or look at events, etc, until the WiFi was back online. But that is rare when the WiFi is an issue. 99% plus of the time our WiFi mesh system is working fine. Once any rare WiFi issue is cleared, recorded events can be viewed from a filterable event library with thumbnail pictures for each event recording. Each event recording adds 10 seconds of recording before the event trigger happened which is a really nice feature.

It's also really nice that we can watch all or any grouping of our EZVIZ cameras live simultaneously in multiview on all of our smartphones and tablets. So if I get woken up at night to more than one camera notification I grab my phone and I can quickly live view all of the perimeter cameras simultaneously. These cameras also have excellent two way communication. The camera speaker is loud. They also have customizable alarms that play on the camera's speaker upon detection (which can be set to Mute, a short ding, a siren, or custom recorded sound).

The only complaint I have with all of our outdoor cameras are those dang spiders. I am going to start trying repellents, etc and might even invest in separate IR devices, although that is somewhat of an issue since separate IRs typically have a 90° field of view and my cameras have PTZ with auto tracking to 340°. I haven't figured out yet how many separate IRs I would need for 100% coverage around our house.

Yeah, granted they are not perfect. Mine are 5MP 3k cameras. The picture is good enough to easily recognize my wife, my neighbors, etc in daylight. At night or even in daylight, I don't have to get a perfect facial recognition. I just need to know if a person is outside my house. My cameras are plenty good enough to let me know a person is outside my house. I can tell a UPS delivery person from someone up to no good. My cameras can't read license plates or be used for court evidence with facial recognition, etc. but for home security they work very well. I know exactly what is going on around the perimeter of my house. Plus I have multiple other hidden fixed cameras overlapping any gaps from straight on approaches from every possible angle to my house. I can detect a person or vehicle in my driveway before they get to my house. No one can approach my house on foot from any angle without being detected. I've tested it. I walk around my house and watch the cameras tracking me, so I know they work. I know there are better more expensive cameras and systems available. But my cameras work very well for what I need them to do. I get notified of a person outside and that gives me time to watch them on my cameras and be prepared to respond appropriately.

Thanks for explaining the different levels of camera coverage in detail. That will help inform folks new into security cameras and perhaps help them make the right decision on what to get. Some people will want more expensive cameras and NVR systems. On the flip side some folks may want to spend less and sacrifice some quality and to some extent reliability (due to WiFi).

A couple of other cool things about my "cheaper" dc powered WiFi cameras. I currently have them set for color night vision. They record in black and white continuously at night, but the moment they detect a human or vehicle, the spot light comes on and it puts out enough light and records the event in color. I already have solar lighting around the house. So the event recordings at night are in pretty good color. Also, I can change the spotlight to a strobe light if I want to. Also the cameras have a flashlight feature. If I hear a noise out in the yard but it's too far for camera detection, I can certainly use the PTZ feature to look around in black and white, but I can enhance looking into the yard by clicking the "flashlight" feature for the camera. This manually turns on the spotlight, and then I can pan around and zoom and see the yard in color and in more detail.

We are in a country setting. If I spot a new large hole in the ground near the house, I'll change or create the preset camera default view to focus on the hole. These cameras have 12 preset locations that return the camera to the preset position after motion ends plus some amount of time afterwards. I'll temporarily change that camera's AI settings to detect any motion. That way I get to see if the culprit animal is a ground hog or armadillo(s), etc so I know what I need to do to take care of the situation (trap the animal, etc).

Ive been amazed at how feature rich the EZVIZ C8W Pro 5MP 3K 4mm cameras are and how much better they are (and how much better the phone app is) compared to my Wyze Cam V3 and Reolink PTZ cameras. I had a little bit of issues up front upgrading the firmware to have all of the listed features and that also improved their detection range. Before that I was about to return them. I was able to call EZVIZ support and they helped me upgrade the firmware. They apparently had not upgraded their server to indicate a new firmware version was available to download from the phone app. They sent me a file for manual updating but before I did that I noticed the phone app was fixed to allow me to update the firmware from the app. Also these cameras have about a foot long cable attached to the camera with a DC power cable connection and an Ethernet connection. I opted for the DC connection to just use WiFi. So I had to figure out how to waterproof the Ethernet connection. I just applied dielectric grease on the Ethernet connector, plugged in an Ethernet cable and cut it off just past the connector and then coated the bare wire side with clear silicone. That way they are waterproof and if I want to buy an NVR and run Ethernet cables in the future I have that option.

I installed a lorex system for someone and I used cat6 that I ran and terminated myself. It works fine. I have never seen nor heard of an IP camera system that doesn't like cat6.

How did you test your cat6? Is it solid copper or cca cable?

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It looks like the Ubiquiti system is the top recommendation, so I am thinking about going with the Cloud Key G2 Plus and 6 G5 bullet cameras. Thoughts?

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A lot of security installer "pros" hate on it, and perhaps rightfully so because honestly there are better values out there as far as video quality per dollar. There's a case to be made that both cheaper and more expensive cameras than Ubiquiti offer better video quality per dollar, and while the new G5 bullets for $130 have narrowed that gap considerably they still perform something like a $60 Reolink. And other chinese brands that cost $130 will beat the G5 bullet.

Where Ubiquiti excels is the app experience and smart detections. The app is simple, works well, and makes it really easy to find what you're looking for. Want to find when something showed up or turned up missing? It takes seconds to scroll through the timeline and find it. Want to review the people and vehicles that showed up over the last day or week? The detections page makes quick work of that with well-cropped thumbnails that show the subjects clearly. Notifications are timely and include screenshots. It's by far the best app I've used.

A couple things to keep in mind:

1. You will need to get a PoE switch to run your Ubiquiti cameras. Most NVRs have built in PoE switches but Ubiquiti's do not. You don't have to use a Ubiquiti switch, I usually just use a tp-link or ipcampower switch.

2. One neat thing about the CK2+ is that it can also be powered via PoE which makes for a clean install. You can even hide it in another room away from your router/switch/whatever and just run a cat cable to it just like the cameras.

3. The CK2+ has only a 1TB hard drive which might be a bit limiting. With 6 cameras recording 24/7 I would only expect a few days of storage. But the drive pops out easily and you can replace it with a different 2.5" drive, either hdd or ssd, to get more storage.

I would like to get an idea of what a really good Ubiquity system costs and which exact Ubiquity cameras and components are currently the best bang for the buck for a high quality system. In the event I someday replace my Wi-Fi cams and run Ethernet, I just wanted to know ballpark what to get and what that might roughly cost.

So for example, just a ballpark idea what NVR and other components are recommended and what outdoor cameras to get and be able to record for at least a week continuously for 9 PTZ cameras and 8 fixed cameras and get the resolutions to see tag numbers and get good facial IDs day or night out to at least 50'.

It's more of a curiosity right now as I am happy with my current comparatively cheap WiFi cameras.