HUGE RUMOR: Unifi Protect will support ONVIF cameras (like from HIK/Dahua)

[CCTVCam]

Those platforms are too smart, i don't think so can be used for the overseas market. Have big law risks to use them or sell them.

Maybe one way around this would be for CHina to offer the extra features as a firmware update thus putting reponsibility for the face recognition on the end user. TBH, I doubt it's an issue with private buyers anyway, as most private buyers don't have an extensive database of identities unlike governments. You can only match people to a database at the end of the day.

Dahua also need to concentrate more on PQ. Whilst on the face of it PQ is good. With Dahua cameras despite high Pixel counts, the PQ quality is terribe away from the centre of the picture and the picture doesn't stand up well to being zoomed when compared to eg a mobile phone. Yep the mobile phone ahs the advantage of not recording 24/7 so can probably use higher bit rates, but ti still seems somehting is missing from CCTV in basic quality for picture size. The issue seems to be grain, overshaprening and a lack of definition esepcially away from the centre. On zooming, even a slight zoom in results in a blurry and poor grainy picture. Yes it's not CSI here with miracle zooming and picture improvements. But given what other devices can capture, it seems far worse than you'd expect from 4 or 8mp. This is clearly not an Andy problem but a Dahua one.

 

[tigerwillow1]

The image transmitted from the Dahua cameras I have is inferior to what the optics and sensor are capable of. Easy to see by using ROI on a small area, which gets significantly clearer while the rest of the image turns to you-know-what.

 

[duplo]

can take a brand new Unifi camera out of the box plug it into a USB cable or POE ethernet cable and setup everything right from the App on my phone within 4mins. Adoption, recording settings, quality settings, alarms, firmware updates, ivs, save files etc. Can't do that with a Dahua NVR/App.

Have you tried ?
Or just want to show all of us how dumb you are?
Why need firmware update ? Because unifi want to make sure that you may pay another 50usd/cam per month when you want to use them in future ? Great ! I love clouds too.

Configure a new camera to a nvr takes around 3-4min. With just SMD maybe only 1-2.

And now show us all how you draw ivs lines on your unifi app with your iphone.

 

[BenM]

And now show us all how you draw ivs lines on your unifi app with your iphone.

Have you tried?
Or just want to show all of us how dumb you are?

 

[duplo]

Have you tried?
Or just want to show all of us how dumb you are?

Yes ive tried it, but was not supported in the app around a 1 - 1.5 years ago. I scratched my head and wondering how that could be. Unifi is so beyond everything, its impossible that it was (and maybe still) not supported. So had to use a mouse, browser, pc like a normal human with brain instead, took only a few mins.

we removed the system a few months ago, because it had so many false detections from rain, wind etc. also the notifications where not 100%. sometimes they stopped working from one to another day, then had to manually restart, reconfigure whatever.
on that place we now use frigate. working good.

 

[Arjun]

UniFi cameras and Andy's cameras are two totally different ecosystems targeting specific people; UniFi is prosumer / mainstream consumer and Empiretech Dahua is literally professional. If you knows cameras and sensors, you know what it means to buy Dahua; UniFi is only great for convenience but still has ways to improve; night vision "sucks"

 

[kolt_]

I have been trying out Scrypted NVR as a BlueIris replacement. It's basically close to the Protect experience, simple to setup, scrubbing is nice, app is great, and AI detentions/notifications work outside the box very well. Someone says it achieves 95% of what BI does with 5% of the work and I agree. Definitely some weirdness with PTZ controls (tap, not hold, to move/zoom) but that is personal preference. The developer is also very responsive and active which is nice. I was at one point close to purchasing Protect cameras previously when trying it out, but like others mentioned, their cameras are not good low light wise, and I foresee future upselling (AI Port/Key for example), not to mention the Andy cams already work very well and I have a lot of them. Waiting for BlueIris 6 too but I am skeptical.

Their demo for those curious: Scrypted Network Video Recorder

 

[Arjun]

I have been trying out Scrypted NVR as a BlueIris replacement. It's basically close to the Protect experience, simple to setup, scrubbing is nice, app is great, and AI detentions/notifications work outside the box very well. Someone says it achieves 95% of what BI does with 5% of the work and I agree. Definitely some weirdness with PTZ controls (tap, not hold, to move/zoom) but that is personal preference. The developer is also very responsive and active which is nice. I was at one point close to purchasing Protect cameras previously when trying it out, but like others mentioned, their cameras are not good low light wise, and I foresee future upselling (AI Port/Key for example), not to mention the Andy cams already work very well and I have a lot of them. Waiting for BlueIris 6 too but I am skeptical.

Their demo for those curious: Scrypted Network Video Recorder

Essentially the same as UniFi Protect; W0W

 

[aesterling]

Is there a monthly fee for Scrypted?

Using the demo, I wish the video would play as you scrub the timeline. It appears to freeze until you stop scrolling the timeline, then resumes playback.

 

[jpc-s4]

Is there a monthly fee for Scrypted?

Using the demo, I wish the video would play as you scrub the timeline. It appears to freeze until you stop scrolling the timeline, then resumes playback.

Yeah, a pretty steep one, too...

 

[tigerwillow1]

Something like 50 bucks per camera per year.

 

[kolt_]

Something like 50 bucks per camera per year.

It's $10 per camera per year

 

[tigerwillow1]

It's $10 per camera per year

Thanks for the correction. 400% error on my part, sheesh. If this were a one-time purchase I'd try it, but with close to 20 cameras I'm not going to take on yet another annual assessment.

 

[aesterling]

Thanks for the correction. 400% error on my part, sheesh. If this were a one-time purchase I'd try it, but with close to 20 cameras I'm not going to take on yet another annual assessment.

I agree, and still welcome more competition in the space.

Is there any way to try UniFi Protect? I'd love to test how the app interactivity feels. Do I just need to make friends with someone who is running it?

 

[kolt_]

I agree, and still welcome more competition in the space.

Is there any way to try UniFi Protect? I'd love to test how the app interactivity feels. Do I just need to make friends with someone who is running it?

Software is truly the best I've seen so far. And the app is flawless too. Tons of integrations. You get the best experience with using, of course, their own cameras. They only support viewing and recording for third party cameras and you have to be lucky it picks up the correct resolution. You also have to purchase a $200 dongle to get audio and their AI detections working which only supports 1-2 cams at a time per dongle. They also have a device that enables AI searching or whatever for the low price of $800 . But yeah, it kinda of sucks them not doing more to support other cameras but when when their customer base doesn't a whole lot about surveillance, it's easy to sell. The reason why I like Scrypted is it's close as possible to Protect but of course with the freedom to use virtually any camera you want while achieving AI detections and searching natively. I wanted to use something more user friendly than BI and Scrypted is it, especially for my family to use because I am the only person that knows my way around BI . Can't speak on reliability yet since I am still relatively new to it. It does have some weird behaviors like with the PTZ controls as I mentioned before, and viewing footage from all cameras. Sometimes it takes awhile to load camera streams but overall it's pretty solid

 

[aesterling]

Software is truly the best I've seen so far. And the app is flawless too. Tons of integrations. You get the best experience with using, of course, their own cameras. They only support viewing and recording for third party cameras and you have to be lucky it picks up the correct resolution. You also have to purchase a $200 dongle to get audio and their AI detections working which only supports 1-2 cams at a time per dongle. They also have a device that enables AI searching or whatever for the low price of $800 . The reason why I like Scrypted is it's close as possible to Protect but of course with the freedom to use virtually any camera you want while achieving AI detections and searching natively. I wanted to use something more user friendly than BI and Scrypted is it, especially for my family to use because I am the only person that knows my way around BI . Can't speak on reliability yet since I am still relatively new to it. It does have some weird behaviors like with the PTZ controls as I mentioned before, and viewing footage from all cameras. Sometimes it takes awhile to load camera streams but overall it's pretty solid

What hardware are you running Scrypted on?

 

[kolt_]

What hardware are you running Scrypted on?

Currently trying on Mac mini m4 with an HDD enclosure. This is basically the setup they recommend but I would rather have it on my main server which I am going to try to move back to now that many of the issues I had are sorted out. It is recommended to have a disk attached directly on the system, unless you store via NAS which I do with BI, since scrubbing footage would be faster but you can attach a 'Fast Disk' which would be attached directly to the system to store lower quality footage for quick scrubbing and have all the recordings stored on a NAS over the network.

 

[aesterling]

Currently trying on Mac mini m4 with an HDD enclosure. This is basically the setup they recommend but I would rather have it on my main server which I am going to try to move back to now that many of the issues I had are sorted out. It is recommended to have a disk attached directly on the system, unless you store via NAS which I do with BI, since scrubbing footage would be faster but you can attach a 'Fast Disk' which would be attached directly to the system to store lower quality footage for quick scrubbing and have all the recordings stored on a NAS over the network.

It appears that Scrypted is mostly a single developer, Koushik Dutta, based in Seattle, much like Blue Iris is also a solo developer. Meanwhile, Unifi has who knows how many people working on the platform.

 

[kolt_]

It appears that Scrypted is mostly a single developer, Koushik Dutta, based in Seattle, much like Blue Iris is also a solo developer. Meanwhile, Unifi has who knows how many people working on the platform.

Oh yeah, there is a definitely a solid dev team behind Protect which is the reason why it's very polished and some people might be on edge buying their cameras and switching, I was. If I was doing a new system today, I probably would've gone with them because their G6s are close to the standard that is set here. If I am installing/recommending to friends and family, it would also be a full Protect system since it's user friendly and doesn't require routine maintenance like BI does.

 

[wittaj]

Oh yeah, there is a definitely a solid dev team behind Protect which is the reason why it's very polished and some people might be on edge buying their cameras and switching, I was. If I was doing a new system today, I probably would've gone with them because their G6s are close to the standard that is set here. If I am installing/recommending to friends and family, it would also be a full Protect system since it's user friendly and doesn't require routine maintenance like BI does.

As myself and many others have stated, one can make BI maintenance free if one chooses. It is just many like to play.

My main system has been running uninterrupted/nonstop since May 2022. I found a BI version update then that was stable with my system and haven't touched it since. Still runs Deepstack.

If one gets to that point and disables auto updates of BI and Windows, it can be a very maintenance free system.

Now I do run a 2nd system for redundancy LOL, and I do update that one to see what the latest gizmos and stuff are in BI and yes there are updates that break something, but that is my choice to update.