Alternatively, the Reolink Doorbell cameras for anyone who doesn't want to be on the Unifi/Ubiquiti platform. Also I believe all these cameras provide a generic RTSP feed which can be consumed by any computer running Frigate[0], an open-source NVR/AI platform.

0: https://frigate.video

(Reolink, Unifi/Ubiquiti, and Frigate are all good solutions for anyone who is not interested in supporting the proliferation of a police-state)

If it matters to you, Reolink is a Chinese owned company. Not passing judgement one way or another, but if avoiding Unifi over the remote incident matters, I could see this factoring in as well.

> If it matters to you, Reolink is a Chinese owned company.

It does matter to me. Because I am an American, my greatest risks (actual and theoretical) are from American entities.

Conversely, China has little actual power to negatively impact my life. I am most comfortable (and arguably safer) with Chinese gear.

Separate vlans for iot devices with strict firewall rules is generally enough to mitigate the threat of most iot devices phoning home i think. We’re already in the territory of hobbyists who should be able to manage that with these suggestions like ubiquity and frigate.

I have a Unifi Protect system and am generally pretty happy with it. The biggest problem I have is similar in spirit to the Ring problem: remote access is required to get push alerts from the mobile app.

Unifi had an issue at the end of 2023 where users could access consoles they didn't own through remote access: https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/15/ubiquiti_camera_priva...

If I (or more specifically my spouse) could work the mobile app without SSO I'd be thoroughly satisfied. As it stands I have some regrets.

I have the same UI protect system w 7 cameras. After that incident, I made it local only. I like Unifi gear, but I became super paranoid after that incident.

After some digging around, I found homebridge [0] (with the homebridge-unifi-protect plugin by hjdhjd [1]) which fixed that for me by tying the UI Protect system into Apple's HomeKit ecosystem (which also leverages the homekit secure video that keeps alerts/motion/snapshots on iCloud). Now all our devices are able to have it popup alerts for motions, packages, etc.

It's not perfect, but this way I'm able to get alerts without tying in to Unifi's SSO system. I also still like to open the UI Protect app when I'm not on the local network to sometimes archive videos, view cameras, mess with one of the new UI PTZ cameras, so I have backup access options, including Tailscale. Tailscale doesn't give me the alerts I want, but lets me access the app as if I were still at home. I also have it tied in with HomeAssistant and recently began playing around with go2rtc.

I'm a super-newb when it comes to all this but 2022 is when I began getting fed up with all these privacy nightmares and began to teach myself selfhosting, docker, etc so I can mitigate all this. Unfortunately, I'm the only one who knows how to tinker and keep all this updated. However, I do have documentation for my wife how to access everything and start fresh to make it easier on her by using UI's SSO way so it "just works" as they say in the Macintosh World, when I'm no longer around.

[0] https://homebridge.io/ [1] https://github.com/hjdhjd/homebridge-unifi-protect#readme

I haven't seen any in depth performance comparisons, but I had also started to dig into this and I was leaning towards using Scrypted instead of the HomeBridge plugin. Just wanted to name-drop them for others also interested in all this

Scrypted is faster when I tested it a year or so ago.

I almost jumped into their Scypted NVR system (with all the bells and whistles all fully integrated in one app and would cost me $70/yr for 7 cameras) but it seemed like I'm trading one remote access system for another hence why I decided to keep using Homebridge (HB) until the HB project starts becoming stagnant or unless something breaks on my end. You can have Scrypted+HomeKit just like I have Homebridge+HomeKit setup, but Homebridge is pretty fast for me on Apple Silicon hardware so as they say "if it ain't broke, dont fix it."

This is the beauty of open source projects like these. Pick which works for you and just keep it updated and donate a few $ when you can to support the project.

That's a really interesting setup, thanks for the links! I'm pretty deep into Home Assistant but that plugin looks amazing.

I had the same setup for a while, but eventually moved to scrypted instead which had better startup time for streams in Home.app.

I second this. I have Unifi + Scrypted and it has worked great. Remote access turned off on UniFi.

One more vote here for Scrypted. I have a bunch of cameras from various vendors, some with open FW, some with their original FW, all cut off from the internet. They used to be connected to Frigate but due to performance issues I offloaded the work to Scrypted on a RPi and an AppleTV and the setup works great. Bonus, it’s easier to set up and use compared to Frigate, especially for the less technical people in the family.

Sooo you've basically built a modern home surveillance system that doesn't phone home to a dozen third parties

Unfortunate that there's no stock except for the PoE variant.

I wonder if it's because the G6 is (afaict) launching in Q4? I guess we'll just have to hold tight for now.

I just installed mine (last weekend) and use a Unifi stack at home.

100% recommended alternative.