Reolink. Cheap, good enough quality, great HA integration, no internet connection needed.
this post was submitted on 29 May 2024
45 points (100.0% liked)
homeassistant
12125 readers
38 users here now
Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
+1 they are completely local, cheap and have a tight integration with home assistant, I have 5 of their cameras.
can these be configured to stream TO a remote frigate server?
Example: I'd like to install one at my parent's house, connect it to my parent's wifi, but have it stream to frigate, that's hosted on my server in another city?
i had frigate running locally and could integrate them. That said i grabbed the stream from the local network. I guess you would need some sort of local pi to forward the streams. But that is well above my pay grade ^^ sorry
Yeah, I've already heard about such a solution, where I'd need a Pi that acts as the streaming client, which then should work with any camera.
It might not be original quality, but this should be fairly straightforward with a tunnel or VPN connection to your parent's house. You'd also lose quality in having a WiFi camera instead of wired.
Reolink cameras are twice the price of the Tapo ones in my area....
I've never used either, so I can't speak to their actual quality, but cheaping out on cameras defeats the purpose of getting cameras if the footage is too grainy or blurry to be used for anything.
The wireless Reolinks are not great. Like, nothing against the camera itself, however, the WiFi antenna must be smaller than the one in my watch. The range is truly abysmal.
Tapo ones are perfectly fine, good quality all around, but it’s important to specify that I have experience with external, solar powered Reolinks and indoor Tapo, so it’s a bit of a different category.
And probably four times the quality. If I could go back in time and choose Reolink for every camera I have, I would. In a heartbeat.
I'm pretty happy with the 2K footage on mine.
I use TP Link's TAPO C310 for outdoors and a C200 indoors. They are Wifi or PoE and have a custom component for Home Assistant that works pretty well.
I just got two Tapo C120 and 2 C125. Pretty happy with them so far.
Amcrest gets recommended a lot but I have no personal experience with them
I've got amcrest and I integrate them into HA via mqtt using blue iris.
But amcrest cameras need something like pihole to help block all their taking to the home base
Are you using an Amcrest IP4M-1041B, can you have a look at this? https://lemmy.world/post/16883143. Thank you.
I have a few. Some try and call home (mostly the doorbell, every 10s). The others are easy to setup and run with frigate.
I thought the doorbell camera worked great with frigate, is that not the case? I don't have a need for cameras yet but that was on my shopping list...all cameras will be on a locked down vlan so it's fine if it TRIES to phone home if it still works "offline"
The doorbell does, except for no sub stream. And the only way for mine to be setup is their bs app.
I should've looked better when buying, but alas. I have this one and I'm lazy.
Are you running them with Frigate? I was thinking the lack of substream wouldn't be a problem because the frigate server could downscale if needed (but I haven't really looked into it yet)
Yes, the issue I have with no sub stream (only on the doorbell) is that it uses more processing for detection on such a large resolution.
Ahh gotcha, didn't consider that! I'll have to make sure my processor is up for the task. I think it will be...I'm doing 4 cameras + doorbell max and buying a NUC
Just make sure they have substreams and get a coral (or GPU) for detection. Then a pi could probably handle it.
I have enough processing to do it all on CPU (8 cams+doorbell) but it ramps up the power usage, so it was better to use the gpu I already had for transcoding, as detection.
Without you can still just record and overwrite. Not that it's extremely useful without detection and notifications.
I was planning on an Intel CPU that was recommended when I was putting my list together which I was told could handle detection up on to 8 cameras without issue (so I could skip the Coral all together)
Handle is much different than efficiently calculate.
Sure, I just figured if it worked well with 8 it would work well with 4 + 1 unoptimized stream. If it doesn't work, I can just spend $40 on a coral
I use Amcrest, mostly because the guy who makes frigate recommended them, and has affiliate links on his site. As a software developer myself, I have to say frigate (and HA) are two jewels of open source software and so I’m happy to support them however I can.
That being said, the cameras work well and are easy to integrate with both frigate and HA. They all try to phone home at first, but stop if you tell them to (I’ve confirmed this by monitoring the traffic on my dns servers).
I couldn’t find a privacy friendly wifi camera with a big enough battery to run continuously, so I ended up building my own with a solar panel, an inverter, and a 9ah lithium battery that sits on a fence post at the end of my driveway. It was a fun project, but I wish I could buy it.
Another small gripe is that the PTZ cameras from Amcrest all seem to be crazy expensive or have mixed reviews, so I’ve just held off on those for now.
Thanks for the feedback, I'll keep them on my list. I wasn't considering the PTZ cameras just the inexpensive turrets and plan on running them PoE so it looks like those issues won't affect me!
Bon voyage!
I’ve owned a bunch of Foscam cameras, a sub-brand owned by Amcrest.
Amcrest and its Foscam sub-brand seem very interested in getting access to your cameras, have less capable and less convenient software, and the cameras themselves seem less well built than Reolink.
I bought a half a dozen V1 Wyze cams, and at least two of them have failed. I won’t touch that brand again. I also would never have used Wyze at all except for the exploit that allowed custom firmware installation for real local access and control.
I thought Reolink cameras were just rebranded Amcrest...or is it just the chips and lenses?
I will be using them with Frigate so I'm not too worried about the janky software unless it affects how Frigate operates
Are you using an Amcrest IP4M-1041B, can you have a look at this? https://lemmy.world/post/16883143. Thank you.
Are you using an Amcrest IP4M-1041B, can you have a look at this? https://lemmy.world/post/16883143. Thank you.
Think you replied to the wrong person. I don’t like or recommend Amcrest.
Besides your take anything else against them?
Amcrest is all up in your business.
Yeah, but aren’t others as well? My ideia was to run them on an isolated VLAN without Internet access. What brand would you recommend instead.
Not cheap but easy to setup and very very capable are the Dahuas. Especially in HA they are really mighty. But sadly they are not cheap.
I use Amcrest PoE dome cameras with frigate. Quality and price are excellent. My only complaints would be the dome cameras get dirty fast and at night the IR light from inside reflects off of the dirt and makes them useless. Frigate also seems pretty bad at detecting things in night vision mode. And yes, I’ve already made the recommended adjustments in my frigate config.
Are you using an Amcrest IP4M-1041B, can you have a look at this? https://lemmy.world/post/16883143. Thank you.
Wyzecam (V2) / Neos Smartcam with Dafang Hacks
Works like a charm. Cheap. Cheerful. I have 3 around the house all streaming to HA