Hey all, just wondering if anyone has any good self-hosted security cam recs? Have plenty of space and server options, and next big thing on my list is to get rid of my battery cloud cams. They have worked well enough I guess for a few years, but really pretty slow and limited, wondering if anyone has experience with any self-hosted solutions, preferably with similar features ie: motion detection, app/webapp, maybe battery op?
This is maybe controversial, but I love the Ubiquiti security stuff. Cameras (interior and exterior) doorbells, etc, it’s all great. Pricey, but you get what you pay for.
And the data can stay local or be accessible via their services.
I chose to go local only, grabbed their UNVR and populated it with 4x 2TB drives and it has enough space to handle 7 cameras HD history for about a month.
+1 for Ubiquiti. I’ve got a Dream Machine and 5 camera hooked up, it’s great.
I’ve experimented with ubiquiti cameras and for the most part I find them very overpriced for their quality point. They’re good cameras, but they’re not ONVIF compatible so if you want to get into their (super overpriced and limited) ecosystem you won’t be able to intermix other cameras easily.
A good example is their doorbell camera. It’s just not good. And they don’t have more than one model, so if you want a good one you’re buying something else, that won’t work in their software, so now you’re using two systems to watch your cameras.
I’m glad they work for you, but I don’t recommend getting into their camera ecosystem.
UniFi Protect now has limited ONVIF support allowing various 3rd party cameras to work with Protect.
UniFi cameras can have RTSP enabled also, but it requires UniFi Protect to enable the setting.
Their support for ONVIF is, as you said, limited. Being able to add a camera into your protect feed is a good start, but until they make it work better for PTZ, audio, sub stream capture, and everything else it’s not worth note IMO.
RTSP allows you to check a live feed in another software suite (even just VLC) but again, without the cameras themselves being ONVIF standard you’re missing all the aforementioned features and now you’re really REALLY overpaying for what is essentially a dumb camera.
Always some sort of cloud based dicking around with Ubiquiti stuff. I’m so over them.
You can self host Protect. It’s what I did for ages when I was using a few of their cameras. Don’t have to use cloud unless you want to.
There’s a lot of downsides to ubiquiti (I’ve been dunking on them all over this thread) but there’s a LOT of great stuff too, and being able to self-host their management suite if you choose to do so is GREAT. That doesn’t make me want to invest in their walled garden for cameras, but for people who want to get into a functional ecosystem they’re a great choice. Overall the price:performance curve is not worth it to me, though, but neither are apple products, even though I know they work well also.
Unifi Protect is what runs on the CloudKey/NVR physical device - you don’t need to have it go through to the Internet.
Remember, for better or worse Ubiquiti is positioning themselves as SMB Enterprise security - some companies won’t want their footage to be accessible outside their network.