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re: Security cameras
Posted on 4/10/22 at 2:41 pm to Korkstand
Posted on 4/10/22 at 2:41 pm to Korkstand
So I've decided on this as a start. Amazon has a 2 pack of the Reolink RLC-810A at $140. Ordered that plus an 8 port PoE switch with 2 upstream ports (brand NICGIGA... never heard of it but I suspect it's based on the same thing others are and it looks solid). Will start out using the 2 free camera licenses on my Synology but long term I'm going to plan on a Blue Iris server. BI looks like the gold standard for surveillance apps. Also decided I don't want to mix a high volume surveillance app with my media storage drives which is what the Synology is. I might do a little mix & match. The EmpireTech IPC-Color-4K-X is a 4K cam with a much better sensor (1/1.2" as opposed to typical 1/2.8" or the 1/2.5" in the RLC-810A) though at about triple the price. I might add a single one of these for the primary approach coverage.
For anyone looking into a 4 cam + NVR starter kit, Amazon has $110 off the Reolink RLC-812A version, at $450 it's a very good deal on a solid camera. LINK
For anyone looking into a 4 cam + NVR starter kit, Amazon has $110 off the Reolink RLC-812A version, at $450 it's a very good deal on a solid camera. LINK
This post was edited on 4/10/22 at 2:43 pm
1
Posted on 4/10/22 at 10:59 pm to pheroy
If you haven't pulled the trigger on your VMS consider using Milestone Essential to get your feet wet and figure out what you want to do. It's free for up to 8 cameras, although reolink is not listed as a supported camera, the Reolink website says it will work with Milestone. Milestone is used by some very large organizations; I have only ever heard of Blue Iris being used for home use.
Milestone
Milestone
Posted on 4/11/22 at 9:45 am to Rooguroo
Purchased this around Christmas time and i have been very satisfied.
Hiseeu
What i like about this setup is that the cameras are on constantly, and you are recording 24/7. They communicate back to the receiver wirelessly, but each camera needs power run to it. I have 6 cameras and it wasn't difficult to connect each one to outdoor outlets. It isn't the neatest installation b/c there are wires somewhat visible, but i don't really care. for under $400 to have decent cameras that record 24/7 that i can view from my phone since the receiver is connected to my router, i feel like i got great value.
It comes with a big monitor that is the receiver, and it came with a 3TB hard drive on it. It keeps recordings for about a month, automatically deleting the older files as time goes on and your constantly recording. There's no extra subscription for a cloud server. If my internet goes out or is messing up, it doesn't affect my security system at all, other than i can't view it on my phone. As long as there's power, it's recording and saving playback 24/7. I wasn't interested in getting alerts on something happening. Not like i can stop it in real time if i'm not there, and i didn't want to miss anything b/c a camera started recording the movement a few seconds too late.
Hiseeu
What i like about this setup is that the cameras are on constantly, and you are recording 24/7. They communicate back to the receiver wirelessly, but each camera needs power run to it. I have 6 cameras and it wasn't difficult to connect each one to outdoor outlets. It isn't the neatest installation b/c there are wires somewhat visible, but i don't really care. for under $400 to have decent cameras that record 24/7 that i can view from my phone since the receiver is connected to my router, i feel like i got great value.
It comes with a big monitor that is the receiver, and it came with a 3TB hard drive on it. It keeps recordings for about a month, automatically deleting the older files as time goes on and your constantly recording. There's no extra subscription for a cloud server. If my internet goes out or is messing up, it doesn't affect my security system at all, other than i can't view it on my phone. As long as there's power, it's recording and saving playback 24/7. I wasn't interested in getting alerts on something happening. Not like i can stop it in real time if i'm not there, and i didn't want to miss anything b/c a camera started recording the movement a few seconds too late.
Posted on 4/11/22 at 10:42 am to TeddyPadillac
Those cheap Chinese camera sets are great value for what you appear to get from them, but personally I think the security concerns are too great. Your video feeds are being relayed through Chinese servers to deliver them to your phone. And they are likely to have unpatched exploits during the lifetime of the device. So at the very least I'd firewall them off from accessing the internet and use a VPN to connect to them on the LAN instead.
Posted on 4/11/22 at 11:25 am to efrad
quote:
Those cheap Chinese camera sets are great value for what you appear to get from them, but personally I think the security concerns are too great. Your video feeds are being relayed through Chinese servers to deliver them to your phone. And they are likely to have unpatched exploits during the lifetime of the device. So at the very least I'd firewall them off from accessing the internet and use a VPN to connect to them on the LAN instead.
That's only applicable if you're using their cloud services. Using your own NVR or other video recording setup (Blue Iris, Synology, etc) will keep it local. You still have to take steps to lock that down if you open it to phone/Internet access of course.
Posted on 4/11/22 at 12:23 pm to pheroy
quote:
That's only applicable if you're using their cloud services. Using your own NVR or other video recording setup (Blue Iris, Synology, etc) will keep it local. You still have to take steps to lock that down if you open it to phone/Internet access of course.
The product in question is a bundle with Chinese NVR, so in this scenario we're not using one's own NVR. Even if you don't use their cloud storage, to use the app in the manner he's describing, it connects through Chinese servers to bypass NAT without user having to configure port forwarding. And in my experience, what cameras you get in these Chinese bundles are hit-or-miss in whether they support an open streaming protocol, so using Blue Iris or whatever might be out of the question.
Posted on 4/11/22 at 2:24 pm to efrad
quote:
Those cheap Chinese camera sets are great value for what you appear to get from them, but personally I think the security concerns are too great. Your video feeds are being relayed through Chinese servers to deliver them to your phone. And they are likely to have unpatched exploits during the lifetime of the device. So at the very least I'd firewall them off from accessing the internet and use a VPN to connect to them on the LAN instead.
maybe so. If you connect the receiver/hard drive to your wifi, you use the Esee Cloud app to see them on your phone. But no one is forcing you to use that in order to make your security system work. I personally could care less about being able to view my cameras in real time on my phone. LIke i said, i can't stop anything that's happening in real time.
Posted on 4/11/22 at 2:28 pm to efrad
quote:
Even if you don't use their cloud storage, to use the app in the manner he's describing, it connects through Chinese servers to bypass NAT without user having to configure port forwarding.
They system doesn't need to be connected to the internet at all if you don't want it to. That was the whole reason i bought it. Of course if you do that you can't view it on your phone away from your house, but as i said, i don't care about that. I didn't want to use any cloud server, whether it was chinese or US.
Posted on 4/11/22 at 3:49 pm to TeddyPadillac
quote:
I didn't want to use any cloud server, whether it was chinese or US.
Using cloud or not has no bearing on the issues being discussed though. You said you feel like you got good value because the device can be viewed as you have it connected to your router. The device phones home to China if it's connected to the internet at all. Even if you don't use their cloud, your phone relies upon this Chinese connection to negotiate the connection between your phone and the NVR back home. Even if you never download the app and connect to the NVR, if it's just connected to the internet at all, it's phoning home to set this option up for you.
quote:
They system doesn't need to be connected to the internet at all if you don't want it to.
Correct, which is why in my initial post I suggested to firewall all traffic off from the internet and then VPN into it. That way you could still see the live feed on your phone over the internet and it have no internet access whatsoever.
If you have no problem using this system with those caveats, have at it. You posted a positive review of the system and I wanted to make sure anyone following your post had the full picture. I myself bought one of these Chinese systems personally (all the same systems rebranded a million ways) without doing enough research and lazily waited over a year to install it (past return date), when I finally got it set up and I realized all of the ways it sucked I yanked it all out and replaced it within 2 days. Even if I can firewall it off to mitigate security problems I'm not really about plugging stuff into my network that I can't trust.
Posted on 4/11/22 at 10:10 pm to efrad
Well my system isnt connected to the internet. It was when I first put it up, but I got a new router and never hooked it back up b/c I never used the app.
Posted on 4/15/22 at 10:36 am to Rooguroo
quote:
If you haven't pulled the trigger on your VMS consider using Milestone Essential to get your feet wet and figure out what you want to do. It's free for up to 8 cameras, although reolink is not listed as a supported camera, the Reolink website says it will work with Milestone. Milestone is used by some very large organizations; I have only ever heard of Blue Iris being used for home use.
I just snagged a used Dell Optiplex 3060 SFF i5-8500 off ebay for a great deal. Going to set that up as the NVR. I haven't bought the BI license yet so I will take a look at Milestone.
Also decided to grab a Firewalla Purple (mentioned in separate thread) as a firewall/VPN/etc device. Looks like a very powerful unit that's easy to set up. Plus it's purple, always a bonus lol.
Posted on 4/15/22 at 12:56 pm to pheroy
I use ring and it’s pretty damn good. The yearly cost is cheap, full monitoring, and it’s a super easy set up.
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