Can you share your favorite brands for the key components?

I'm going with Ubiquiti. I tried some of the cheap brands and was unsatisfied with their NVR solutions. Ubiquiti was the affordable and good business class option with HomeAssistant integration. I dropped details in a sibling comment.

I have ubiquity cameras around my property and they work great. I initially had just a UVC-NVR but upgraded to the DreamMachine.

I had headaches at first because my DreamMachine's SATA port was faulty and had a poor connection to the HDD. I used 4 different HDD's to prove this, and getting Unifi support to agree with me was about impossible. They ended up giving me an RMA with a "yeah, buddy.. I'm suuuuure it's the SATA port." I had to pay to post the RMA for a machine that never actually worked.

The exchanged DreamMachine has been working quite well for over a year now though.

If I were to do it again I'd buy it from a reseller instead of directly from Ubiquity for better product support.

I live in a humid area and all my Ubiquiti cameras died within a year. If the NVR powered off without a shutdown mongo would get corrupted, losing all recording metadata. I could import videos but what a pain.

I went with Hikvision and wouldn’t look back.

Not OP but I have a Ubiquiti 'UniFi Protect' system in my home that works well. Lots of different cameras to choose from, including a doorbell.

Thanks for sharing, though pricey, quick ROI based on Nest and Ring pricing.

What cameras are you thinking of using?

I've been looking at cameras from ubiquiti but I'm new to camera tech and have found it hard to find out "do they want me to use their service / subscription?" and etc.

Not OP, but i've recently set up 5 cameras, 2 more on the way. My system is Ubiquiti with the following hardware:

- UDM Pro

- 24 Port PoE Switch

- 3 G3 Instant (Wifi based Camera)

- 1 G4 Pro (4k Cam, optical zoom, etc)

- 2 G3 Flex (cheaper/simpler option to the G4 Pro for less important areas)

- 1 G3 Doorbell

- 2 Wifi 6 Lite AP

I've been mostly happy with it so far. My only complaint is that there seems to be a semi-common issue with scrubbing timeline history. Downloading the clip works fine, but the websocket driven UI seems to lock up - i suspect it is a UI Software issue.

Aside from their software i've been very happy. Also the cameras, i believe, serve standard RTSPS so if i get fed up with Ubiquiti software i might switch to something standard. Though i'll probably try changing the hard drive (something faster perhaps) or even a dedicated NVR in an effort to make the history scrubbing work better.

Seems like a minor issue that could probably be resolved easily if it was FOSS :/

Thanks for the feedback!

I think i'm going to try out Ubiquiti with a camera or two... one day. Unfortunately, Ubiquiti cameras at regular price are hard to find these days.

They're listed all the time - the Flex and Instants i bought very recently. I just ordered a Flex three days ago.

Check daily, usually first thing morning. https://old.reddit.com/r/UbiquitiInStock/ is handy, but i've often found stock when it wasn't posted - so i think my morning check is a bit better than the stock posts.

edit: to be clear, i've bought all of my stuff (within the last year) from Ubiquiti directly. No 3rd party inflated prices

TY!!!

I use a little self hosted thing to ping me when stuff goes in stock: https://github.com/dgtlmoon/changedetection.io

I'm a fan of Reolink's cameras but they are basic.

I actually use mine with an SD card inside and just use their app (it's all free).

It's a little pricy at $50 a pop but their RL-520 haven't failed me. They even put out an update to upgrade the web dashboard from their older flash to something modern.

Was about to write almost exactly the same post. Thanks!

Ubiquity Dream Machine Pro - downside here is no hard drive redundancy but the all in one solution is nice, with remote access if you want (or you can disable it at the device level and roll your own).

A PoE switch. You can get a ubiquiti one if you want a fancy UI but any good managed switch is fine. Used switches are perfectly acceptable.

If you plan to use Wifi cameras, you'll need an Access Point (AP). Again, go for ubiquiti if you want the fancy UI but any decent AP will work.

Cameras. Here you will need to go with Ubiquiti brand to use their software/network video recorder (NVR).

Router (Dream Machine) -> PoE Switch -> AP and Cameras

You can probably do your own Cat6a runs for your PoE cameras, just know it's recommended to use passthrus and not ports for PoE (I still use ports, it still works fine, :shrug:). Otherwise hire someone or stick to Wifi cams.

You can upgrade to a dedicated NVR and do redundant drives which is desirable since HDDs fail quite a bit. Regardless do use surveillance rated drives (Purples or SkyHawks).

Optional addons: Put the cameras in a locked down VLAN for security. You can also optionally integrate with HomeAssistant to tell cams to not record when you are home/awake/etc.

The long term maintenance cost is a headache including the remote connection, but not including stuff like network partitioning.

An Axis system is nice, but it will cost you.

The problem with non-cloud cameras, I think, is that burglars can, and likely will steal them. This kind of defeats the purpose of a security system.

The only camera brand I have experience with is Axis Communications (very, very nice cameras, but very, very expensive too). There may be more options now, but back when I was playing with them I was able to configure the camera to record to a Samba share (instead of, or in addition to recording to an SD card).

I also have setup the server that grabs those recordings to sync with a VPS through Syncthing, along with an encryption key that the VPS doesn't know, so it only hosts an encrypted payload. If I need to retrieve the recording, I can simply add another host to the VPS and input the encryption key on the new host and it will grab everything decrypted.

Did you know that security camera's have existed long before the cloud? Developed first, per wikipedia in 1927 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television

They are not a common vector for burgling.

The cameras are mostly meant to give me warning of someone breaking in while I am home and give me situational awareness across the house in the event of an entry.

Push notifications while I am away or being able to review people casing the place or such are bonuses.