Hey guys,
I’ve absolutely had it with my Ring camera and doorbell, ive started using a network wide VPN and they are just too unreliable and expensive to continue - let alone actively blocking IPs from VPNs which I didnt know about and think is ridiculous.
I have looked in to Reolink cameras because I’ve seen someone talking about them before on lemmy, question is:
Have any of you used Reolink cameras and NVR in your setup and how well does it integrate / whats your opinion on the cameras themselves?
I’m on year 5 with 6 of them and they’re all fine.
RTSP stream to frigate, and then frigate does the magic AI and recording shit.
They’re also not allowed outside the LAN and don’t seem to care about not being all internet connect-y, though YMMV on newer models.
I can’t think of a single case of being annoyed with them other than the mounting pressure is a little wonky and a sufficiently fat corvid can land on them and change the angle on one of the ones in the backyard but I’m not sure I’d blame the camera manufacturer because of a fat crow.
a fat crow
Similar story here. Again, no way do these things get to the internet. I use Zoneminder. Reasonable price and a decent image - night and day. Rock solid stability - I’ve never rebooted one to solve an issue. Their up times match firmware updates.
They integrate fine with HA - I have several PoE and one wifi and no problems. For NVR I use unifi now that they will let you add onvif cams. For day-to-day reference to video streams I prefer viewing events in HKSV via Scrypted.
This is my use case and experience as well.
Not a full answer to your question, but I have a reolink doorbell cam and it works well and integrates easily into my home assistant setup. I hooked it up to my existing doorbell wires, though it does have the option for POE. I don’t care about long term storage of the feed, so I just have a 256gb SD card in it which is overkill for my use. I’ve had it since Julyish and I’m only a bit over halfway full.
I use them, and I love them.
They’re banned from the internet, and never complain.
I use both SD cards inside the cameras, and dumps over SFTP.The general standard of integration with HASS is very good (IR control, alerts, streams, etc.)
If you want to access streams over a VPN, make sure that you configure the IP addresses manually in the app, rather than letting it auto-find (took me a while to work this out).Doorbell cam: Lovely bit of kit. Button press and person detection hooks in nicely with HASS things.
I really like being able to answer delivery people (and be silly with visitors). 2-way audio works well in the app, I keep meaning to try integrating it with HASS now the latest version has capability baked in.810A: Decent picture quality, the only fly in the ointment is that it uses H265 for full res, and a lot of open source things don’t officially support it.
510: Good value, and decent quality image. There is a firmware floating around that adds pet detection features too.
It integrates very well. The only thing that doesn’t work is reading the state of the siren. You can turn it on or off, but you can’t see whether it’s on or off. Everything else works great. I have some outside cameras and some inside ones, and they all connect to the Home Hub or whatever they call it, and that connects to Home Assistant.
All of my cameras have their own SD cards, and the Home Hub has its own SD card. According to the docs, this means they’ll record in both places, but I haven’t checked.
A really nice thing about them is you don’t need to make an account. The app works by pairing with the devices, and you’re done. You can stream video from anywhere, no account needed.
I’ve had two wireless solar cameras for a few years now, and a doorbell one for a year. The main reason I picked Reolink was because it wasn’t tied to a cloud or account, it’s just on the local network for me to use as I want. Pros are that they are still working, both cameras and solar panels. It doesn’t take much to keep them charged up. They can’t compare to a wired higher resolution, but I wasn’t going to try and do all that for just monitoring an area. I did end up getting a repeater for the network as sometimes the connection would be bad or drop since they are near the edge of the network router range, and that seemed to help. The doorbell is much more reliable and fast, being wired.
Cons - they’re wireless, so there is lag both in logging on and in framerate. I moved one of them from one place to another and had to find a spot for the solar, discovering that during fall when the sun dropped but before the leaves fall there was a shadow, so I had to maintain the charge manually for a few week, which wasn’t a big deal with a battery bank. Only other complaint might be that the detection software isn’t perfect, especially for animals. We’ve set up a Blink camera (previously used inside a birdhouse) to watch some stray cats that the one Reolink kept totally missing even though it’s right in view.
But overall I think they’re quality, and I imagine based on the doorbell one that the higher end wired ones are probably pretty good.
Very happy with mine, linked up to synology NAS. No issues after a few years.
Any cameras that support RTSP and ONVIF should work well with whatever software you want to use. I’ve got some Dahua and Amcrest cameras, but Reolink is decent too. Reolink isn’t great in low lighting though, so prefer higher quality (albeit more expensive) Dahua cameras for outdoor cameras in areas that are dark at night.
I use Blue Iris. Frigate is good, but it’s not nearly as powerful as Blue Iris, and its bundled AI models aren’t as good as the ones in CodeProject AI (which Blue Iris uses).
Have one since a few years. Works great, unfortunately every time it rains it resets the network settings… (Its outside) I had waterproofed the connectors but it still happens. Will need to put a small cover on tip of the camera itself sooner or later…
I have 2 rc410 poe cameras (used for 4 yeara and the doorbell. I can’t say enough good things about them. Good quality, completely local and really tight home assistant integration, I don’t even use frigate now because of the integration. The quality and price is very good IMO.
I have the Reolink doorbell, integrated in both Frigate and Home Assistant. It’s been running for 2 years now. It works great!