Without getting into too many revealing details, my wife and I have a handful of Ring cameras that we are looking to replace, especially with the bullshit they’ve been trying to pull lately. They are used often, indoor and outdoor.
Last year, I tried rolling my own replacement with a standalone Frigate machine and the HA integration, but that ended up falling flat on it’s face. I am not looking to troubleshoot that setup - that ship has sailed. Moving on.
Enter Unifi Protect. I’m already familiar with Unifi, my network has been running fantastically on the OG trash can UDM since it came out, plus a U7 Lite AP for extra coverage in our tall-ish 3-story duplex. The place is wired with Cat5, but since we rent, some areas will have to be handled with wifi-only units - the G4 instant looks suitable for this.
Questions:
- Ring has a very “wife-friendly” interface. How does the Unifi Protect UI fare in comparison?
- I’m looking at the NVR Instant to handle about 6x FHD cameras. Would a 1TB WD Purple be suitable for that?
- Motion detection - How is Unifi Protect with this compared to Ring? Better, worse, or equivalent? How flexible is it?
- (less important) I’m reasonably certain I can set up a doorbell replacement via HA, zigbee button, and a G4 Instant. No Cat5 to the front door unfortunately, just the usual pair of wires to the wall-mounted ringer inside. POE is not an option here. Viable? Or should I do something else?
How long do you want to store footage for? With 6 cameras at 8Mbps each, you’d get less than two days of video on a 1TB drive.
The Unifi cameras don’t support ONVIF, so you’re essentially locked into their ecosystem, and it’d be difficult to use them with a different NVR if you ever want to switch. Maybe that’s OK for your use case though.
For the doorbell, I’d use a proper doorbell cam that can use the existing wires for power.
I’m not going to be storing 24/7 footage outside of important motion detection instances, which we can just download to our phones or whatever if it’s important enough to hold onto. Everything else can be recorded over.
When I was testing Frigate, I ran a single camera storing 24/7 footage specifically to see how long it would go for. I think it used 100GB after a week or so. Multiply that by 6, that’s, well, 600GB. But I’m also not super concerned with having crystal clear footage at all times (Ring set my expectations really low), and even 1366x768 @ 20-30 FPS is more than plenty for what we need.
That’s how my current Ring doorbell is connected.
I keep seeing Reolink pop up. Would a Reolink doorbell work with a Unifi NVR? I’d rather have a G4 wireless, but that’s very likely to not happen.
Sort of. You can add most cameras that support ONVIF and they’ll be viewable and record just fine in Protect, but third party cameras won’t support detection unless you also add a Unifi AI Port. I also wouldn’t count on Unifi recognizing it as a doorbell for the purposes of two-way audio or for doorbell notifications. Those would likely have to be handled outside of Protect.
Does Unifi not support ONVIF events? Seems like a pretty major missing feature if so.
Not sure. I don’t really have working knowledge of ONVIF.
I have a Wyze Doorbell v1 flashed with Thingino that was going to be my next test before my wife vetoed Frigate (relieving me of a very frustrating experience myself).
Pretty sure Thingino supports ONVIF. I’ll try it with my FIL’s UDR that has Unifi Protect.