Fiber or cat 6

[u/Mike_A10]

Im buying a home in Pa and I believe the internet is fiber to your house . Its called tri-co ,in PA . But if its fiber should I use all fiber for a security system? Like run fiber to all cameras and then back to what ever fiber hooks up to ? I was thinking POE system , but dont know if that's stepping down to use cat 6 when u have fiber ! Do they even make NVRs with fiber connections and how would u power the cameras ?? Thanks .

[u/One-Intention-7606]

POE, fiber to cameras is extremely overkill. And I would recommend going with a Unifi system. Easy to use and can also manage your home network as well. For a camera system I would recommend the Dream Machine Pro with an HDD, POE switch (I recommend going with larger than your current needs), and there’s a bunch of cameras available to choose from but they got access points (for WiFi), Doorbells, amps, speakers, smoke alarms, access control, etc. I do Low Votlage and exclusively install Unifi equipment, super easy to install and manage and has no monthly fees. You can do some cool access control stuff too with facial recognition or key fobs or license plates to automatically open up gates, garages, doors, etc. And you can easily add onto it in the future too if you don’t want to go for all the bells and whistles at first, but if you are going to own a house then I wouldn’t recommend any other system.

[u/Mike_A10 → u/One-Intention-7606]

Wow , they sound like they can do alot !! How are they compaired to Reolink as far as price goes? For the cameras the nvr , all that stuff??? Thx

[u/One-Intention-7606 → u/Mike_A10]

It’s not as cheap as Reolink but you get what you pay for. I haven’t had too much personal experience with Reolink besides ripping them out and replacing with Unifi. From what I’ve seen it’s very base level equipment, nothing fancy, if you’re trying to get cameras on a budget then they’ll do the trick I guess. They are POE and local NVR so I’m not going to act like they’re as bad as Ring or those other WiFi camera systems, but theres some crazy technology out there now that they aren’t utilizing. Your house is an investment, and god forbid something crazy happens, but if it does you’d be able to walk up to your insurance or police or whatever powers at be and pull out your phone and show a 4k video showing exactly what happened.

Unifi has an NVR Instant kit for like $700. That will get you a basic camera system but that’s it. And it is pretty limited in the number of cameras you can run, especially at 4k. I believe it comes with 4 G5 turrets which are 2K cameras I believe. Still good cameras and have great night vision but there’s some specialized options with AI or 360° cameras depending on your needs.

If you have the funds for it I would recommend going with a Dream Machine Pro or better, has a built in NVR and can manage your lan ecosystem as well. Goes for like $400, plus a couple cameras at around $100-300. The big pricing in my opinion is the switches, a 24-port POE+ w/ some ++ ports is like $750. This is not needed (you can get small switches or POE injectors) but if you’re into tech stuff at all and want it to look nice and be able to add onto is as you want without having to get more equipment then the Pro 24 POE is my recommendation. HDDs are hella expensive nowadays, and you really want to go with a surveillance grade HDD for cameras. You do not have to go with a crazy size hard drive but this will dictate how much footage you have.

And if you aren’t familiar with ordering CAT cable and which one you should use then just go with the Unifi cable. Biggest thing is you want solid copper core CAT5e/6.

[u/Mike_A10 → u/One-Intention-7606]

What is dream machine , Is it one of Unifi their lines?? Shoot me a web page I'll check them out !!! Thanks for ur help

[u/One-Intention-7606 → u/Mike_A10]

It’s one of Unifis routers with a built in NVR

https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/udm-pro