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.
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.
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.