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

So they just explained that mystery Protect product in this video, and as expected it's a fisheye camera. Kind of crazy they put it on Youtube and it's not even in the EA store yet.

They also mention the Flex skins which haven't been available for forever and have actually been completely removed from their site. Just strange.

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I hope the doorbell function and the phone interface is released soon.

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I want this on the g4 doorbell!
I should get my replacement doorbell Thursday. The little chime device was broken, so they RMA’d the full doorbell. I tried to ask them just for the chime, but they aren’t able to break the set.

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that 360 camera

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I’m holding off on home cameras because I’m thinking I could mount that right on my soffit.

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Under soffit would waste half its view

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Not if it were placed on a corner!

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probably won't be outdoor rated anyway.

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I actually never watched the video until today since you sort of highlighted what it was and had been waiting for an EA post/product announcement. But the video says “weatherproof” at 4:57 and “can be used indoors or outdoors” a few seconds later.

It didn’t look at all like a “rugged” camera which was the other reason I hadn’t watched, but those words perked my ears up. I want to see some beta/review videos on actual FOV and PTZ stats, but it’s interesting enough that I am going to hold off on buying bullets until I see this come out. That, or I just want to continue to be lazy and not get in my attic again.

"Hook Up" Rob has a new video out today comparing Protect with Reolink and BlueIris for person/vehicle detection. I know he's pretty knowledgeable about a lot of stuff, and I generally like his videos, but holy shite this video is just wacky.

LINK

A bit of the craziness:

He specs out the systems at 4EA 4K cameras with AI detection, so Reolink has just such a package with NVR for $475. Then he specs out a modest BlueIris PC build for less than $500 and throws in well you can use any cheap camera and uses 4EA Annke cams at $75 each and a $59 PoE switch for his cost calcs, which comes to like $840. Then for UniFi he uses a UDM-Pro, 4EA G4 Pros, and the $200 UniFi PoE switch, which comes out to more than $2400! He does mention that for that price you get a router, firewall, and switch, but he just glosses over it as a side note and rails on about how much more expensive it is. Why did he choose the $200 UI switch instead of the same $59 he used for BI? Why did he use the UDM-Pro instead of saving $180 with the CK+? Why did he chase megapixels and force 4K rather than save another cool $1k by getting G4 Bullets instead of the Pros? Cheap 4K like the Reolinks are useless at night, as he finds out later in the video, yet he continues to rail on the cost of Ubiquiti.

So then he goes into AI performance, but when he shows his cameras installed it turns out he used a Uniview PTZ camera for BlueIris instead of the Annke's that he specced for the cost! Of course BI performed well in the AI test, but no mention that any object detection software will work better when you feed it better quality video. That Uniview PTZ he used for BI has excellent IR and is an all-around solid camera, which surely improved BI's nighttime detection in his 24 hour test. He also didn't mention what sensitivity settings he used, so my guess is he left Protect at default which would intentionally not detect people walking on the other side of the street where he has them pointed.

On to the camera quality section, he does a side by side of the Reolink and G4 Pro, and predictably he harps on the Reolink daytime quality, and while he shows and talks about the bad night quality he just sort of ignores it. The difference is stunning, the Reolink is basically useless at night while the G4 Pro is almost cinema quality in comparison. You can clearly make out the kid riding a scooter in the street in the background, while on the Reolink you can vaguely tell that something is moving back there. Then he says there's no reason to talk about the BI camera quality because you can use any camera. Fine, but then he cuts to his score card where he gives BI by far the top score in camera quality, but the price at the top clearly does not achieve that score. And the kicker is he gave UI the worst camera quality score even though it's far and away better than the Reolink when it matters most.



I know that there are better values out there than UniFi cameras, but he went well out of his way to exaggerate the difference. He just casually tossed a business grade router and firewall, a managed PoE switch (vs unmanaged for BI and camera-only switch for Reolink), 8 extra switch ports (on the UDMP), and cameras with optical zoom (vs no zoom on the others), and then just harped on how expensive it is. He's got to be doing it intentionally, right?

He's still defending his bias. First it's "not fair" to exclude the cost of the routing gear, then it's "might as well" throw in the cost of the switch too because frick it I guess.

Again the dude is pretty knowledgeable all around, but I think Reolink is throwing some cash his way. Those cameras were straight useless at night, but he gave them a better score than the UI ones. And then to give BI top scores for camera quality while pricing in bottom of the barrel cameras is just laughable. He sure as frick didn't say that wasn't fair or "might as well" throw a few hundred extra dollars on that build.

Huge Eufy privacy breach

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A huge Eufy privacy breach has resulted in both live and recorded camera feeds being shown to complete strangers. They also have complete access to the account, including control of pan-and-tilt cameras where fitted.

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Statement from Eufy:

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Due to a software bug during our latest server upgrade at 4:50 AM EST today, a limited number (0.001%) of our users were able to access video feeds from other users’ cameras. Our engineering team recognized this issue at around 5:30 AM EST, and quickly got it fixed by 6:30AM EST.

The issue affected users at a small rate in the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. Users in Europe remain unaffected.

Our customer service team will continue contacting those who were affected. Eufy Baby Monitors, eufy Smart Locks, eufy Alarm System devices and eufy PetCare products remain unaffected.

We realize that as a security company we didn’t do good enough. We are sorry we fell short here and are working on new security protocols and measures to make sure that this never happens again.

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After watching the video, I don't think the rating is actual camera "quality". I think a more appropriate name for that rating factor is "value" which is a metric between cost and quality.

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I had the same thought, and it looks like that's what he's trying to do. Problem is, quality is already subjective, but he's compounding it by adding in his own subjective idea of value into a rating called "quality". He either doesn't understand that quality is quality and value is something different, or he's being dishonest.

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But if a picture is unusable, does it have any value at all?

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Right, I see no value in that Reolink nighttime footage.


And btw, I don't know if you guys keep up with the current releases of Protect, but it's getting better all the time. The 1.19 beta3 has loads of improvements to the web UI. Everything works much more smoothly (at least for me, I use it remotely 99% of the time), mostly because they've added automatically adaptive streaming bitrates.

My biggest issue so far is I have a few G3 Flexes that get extremely grainy/noisy at night. Camera restart fixes it immediately, so it seems like it's a firmware issue. They said they're working on it, so we'll see.