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

I have a small Unifi Video system running at a location that I annoyingly now have to update to Protect, so I will see what it's all about in a week or two.

I'm kind of a little excited about it, though, because the software looks so damned slick. The primary use of video surveillance is reviewing footage for interesting things that happened, and the Protect timeline scrubbing looks amazing IMO. It looks like you can review a day of footage with moderate to heavy motion in about 30 seconds. Everything else I've seen or used has been downright clunky in comparison.

I'm a Zoneminder guy, which if you don't know is a very powerful recording program, but it takes some time to get set up right and isn't exactly a breeze to use. I can fly through it because I have so much experience with it, but your typical home or small business user is not going to want to deal with it.

For these cases I really don't know if there's anything better than Unifi Protect in this price range. And IMO the pricing isn't really as outrageous as all the dahua/hik fanboys like to talk about. The G3 Flex is only $80, so you can get 8 of those for $640. Toss in the entry level Unifi Cloud Key Plus for $200 and a TP-Link 8 port PoE switch for like $80, and for under $1k you have a surveillance system that will cover the vast majority of homes with the slickest UI I've seen.

Yeah, you can get a Costco chinese special for half the price, or get 8 4K cams for about the same price as the 1080p Flex's, but then you have a big clunky NVR box with integrated switch making it an easy-to-spot target for burglars, and also a clunky UI to deal with.

Or you can roll your own NVR with Zoneminder or Blue Iris or whatever, but then you're dealing with the hassle of all the setup and port-forwarding or VPN stuff to get remote access working, which Protect handles for you. And then you're dealing with not only software updates but also OS updates manually, which are mostly automatic and seamless with Protect (when they work properly, hence this thread).



Anyway, I generally avoid these ecosystem lock in situations like the plague, but that's because I don't mind getting involved with configuration and such for myself. But if I need to recommend something for someone else that's easy to set up and use, I'm not sure yet what to go with. Once I get hands on with it, I'll try to report back with a review of Protect from the perspective of a linux and zoneminder user who has cheap chinese cams around his own house.