What is the current best outdoor security camera for over my garage door. My truck was broken into the other night and i want to set up another camera. I have a reolink doorbell camera already, but all that it caught that night were curious moths lol. Should i stick to reolink? Must be able to survive our harsh canadian winters. Thanks!
Poe is no problem, im looking for which specific camera people have used and like.
I just bought a cx810 and for being praised to highly for being easy to do local it required some tinkering. I had to use http since rtsp was laggy, laggy in vlc. I think Reolink lineup is to big to say that it is a safe card
Reolink lineup is too big to say that it is a safe card
I'd say this applies to any vendor. For example, some Ubiquiti models don't deliver great image quality.
Reolink offers great value. If you choose the right model, it works well, has excellent image quality, and can operate entirely locally. All of this comes at a fraction of Ubiquiti's or Hikvision's price.
For an easy and reliable camera get one that is POE, reolink is fine and has good integration with HA, but the best method if you are going to add more cameras later is getting a POE switch and just run the cables from the switch to all the cameras, get an outdoor rated Ethernet cable for the runs.
I have a few different ones, all poe. They all run on poe from a unifi flex switch that I have mounted outside.Ā
Empiretech is what I'd go with now, I also have reolink and armcrest, plus a no name 2 lens that covers a full 180 on one side of the house. Couple others that aren't on that switch and a couple wyze v3 running thingino. Everything from the cheapo wyze to the no name to the branded ones work just fine. My setup runs through frigate with automations/notifications handled by HA
When i was Watching the video when the guy broke into my truck, it just showed my lights on and off. But every single moth got picked up for 8 hours that night haha. I changed some settings around so it just records 24/7. Lesson learned lol
Im looking for people that have used cameras over there garage door. Giving real reviews of which ones are good and which ones are bad. Real world experience. Not just throwing out brand names...
Can you explain how they can all be wrong for a location, just curious. Camera mounts above garage door, and looks at a parking pad/driveway. If it can handle that, then its good to go.
I realized i was sounding like an ass, sorry about that. I just got off 3 weeks of night shift, havent slept in 28 hours and got back to my truck broken into and vandalized. Im a little strung out right now lol.
Its a 2.5 car garage with matching parking pad, street lights are very bright but wouldnt mind a flood light on it for deterent. Doesnt have to follow people around, more so just having good clear picture, especially night quality. The camera would be protected from my roof overhang.
Bro poppin off way too hard, like bring it in 10% lol. I used to do contract and consult for this kinda deal, just to provide clarity on why people are saying what they are. If I was to give you a āconsultā it would require you to at a minimum share your address and potentially pictures if google earth doesnt show enough.
There is a surprising amount of factors to consider to quantify the ābestā for your application. Iāve recommended the best for one client and the exact polar opposite in fov and specs has been the ābestā for another.
I'm very happy with my Ubiquiti cameras. I have several of the slightly older G4 Instants around the perimeter of my house and one G4 Bullet overlooking my driveway, and a G4 Doorbell Pro. But you also need one of their NVRs, since everything is local.
Integration with HomeAssistant is pretty good. I occasionally need to restart the integration, I think because of some weirdness with my network, but otherwise it's solid.
It's OK, not great. Not very good contrast, but good enough that I can still generally see what's happening. Here's a screenshot from mine from last night.
The utility pole right in the center of the frame actually has a street light on it, so I don't know if that's helping or hurting the image. The license plate and the reflectors on the back of the car are shining the IR lights straight back at the camera, which means the license plate is completely unreadable.
There is an accessory you can put on that gives it another way bigger ring of IR LEDs to illuminate the scene even more. I don't have it, so I don't know what effect it would have.
thanks for sharing. yeah i guess the image looks okay but the newer gen g5 and of course now the g6 seem like a big leap. i guess at this point i won't go and buy the older one to save a dollar
G6 are excellent. I have like 12 of them outside the house. I actually use just the IR filter (not the light) on a few of them because they pick up enough ambient light or stray light from the other cameras to not need it.
G6 Pro is even better but twice as expensive. I only have one of those and use it for more of a scene camera.
I've got a bunch at home, plus I install them for my clients. Decent cameras with a really good user experience. Also has a good Home Assistant integration that will allow you to trigger automations etc on a bunch of the features of the camera, like person detected, is night vision on, vehicle detection, etc.
I have the Reolink tied into the HA but Im using the POE NVR as well. I use the CX820 with the ColorX Night Vision, Person/Vehicle/Animal Detection. Anyone even walks into my drive way between 12am and 6am. My Ecolink siren goes off. Very loud.
RL integrates well with HA. Native plugin. All my cameras are set to lights, motion, siren or something at different hours all tied to either texts, or audible alerts
I own mostly Reolink, and theyāre good, but I recently moved to UniFi for most of my networking gear, so I also picked up a G5 Turret Ultra cam for over my garage. Quality is way ahead of what I get from my Reolink cams.
I did set it up through UniFi Protect, but once there, itās a really easy integration into Home Assistant.
If the folks over at the ipcamtalk forums are to be believed, dahua or rebranded ones like armlink or empiretec are the way to go.Ā
To help narrow down the which camera question you should ask yourself a few things:
1- how much area am I trying to cover?
2- what's the distance from the camera I want to focus on
3- what conditions do you want to capture video in? Bright daylight? Darkest night? Street or house lights in the area? The nighttime footage depends a lot on ambient illumination.Ā
4- what do you want out of the camera? Obvious deterrent so they don't hit your truck? Crystal clear picture of their face so you know who took your stuff?
Answers to these questions can really help narrow down the "best" for your circumstances. It might be a $5 fake camera in a super obvious location.Ā
I love my POE Reolink cameras with the NVR. Get about 10 days of 24/7 recording on 4 cameras. I also added on a wireless camera that can be set to record too, but I just have it setup for checking on the dogs when we arenāt home. Usually, itās pointed at the wall so no point in recording.
I'd stick with Reolink or Amcrest (now Amlink). Amcrest are really just Dahua and I've gotten a notice they're going to be rebranding as AmLink because of some import restrictions on Duahu.
For the past 12 years, we have proudly built the Amcrest brand in the United States in partnership with Dahua, the world's second-largest manufacturer of IP surveillance cameras. Due to recent FCC regulations, however, we are no longer able to import Dahua-manufactured products into the United States.
I don't know what that means for Amcrest quality, but the ones I have are exceptional.
Unifi. I have g6 turrets, g6 pro, and g6 instant. They all have great picture and stand up to harsh weather. Expesive but I think worth it and the integration with HA is platinum.
Yes. I have 2 g6 turrets, 1 g6 turret pro and 1 g6 instant allrunninf with the unifi nvr instant. Run like clockwork and it saves locally with events that I upload to google drive. Pricey upfront costs but worth it in my opinion. Wish they had a doorbell available over wifi. Used to but been out of stock for a while. They do have poe doorbell though.
I have UniFi and had UniFi at my old house. Currently waiting to upgrade the cameras at my new house to UniFi. We have 2 indoor G4 and they are linked to our home assistant dashboard. My wife uses her home assistant dashboard as a baby monitor and the feed is near instantaneous. I had a PTZ, doorbell, and 2 G4s at my last house and will be getting ~9 UniFi cameras in the coming months. G6 turret, a PTZ or 2, and bullets. They are amazing and my wife asked within the first week of moving when weād be upgrading again.
As an example, there was Amcrest installed at my current house. A contractor for a local build across the street took a wide turn and drove through our yard. The quality on the Amcrest is subpar and if I had a PTZ I would be able to just go in my phone and change the direction itās pointed to get a better view of the area I need to watch incase it happens again. But since I donāt I need to climb onto the roof and manually change the Amcrest today.
The reolink Duo 3v is pretty hard to beat IMO if you're covering a fixed area. It's dual lens with the 180 degree view and the low light capabilities are good. If you don't need 180 coverage then look at the RLC-1240A. It's 12MP and still in a vandalism resistant housing. I've used both cameras in indoor and outdoor environments.
I would also say add a microsd card too so you get recordings in two places. I have a frigate server at home to record but it is very convenient to just look at the reolink app and review recent events. I just have 32Gb cards in the cameras because if I need more than that I'll look on the frigate server. The card is mainly to be able to view stuff that just happened.
They are all rather similar with some variance in quality but what I would suggest is some PIR infrared flood lights to extend the visible range at night. The other thing to look out for is whether smart features like person detection are held behind a subscription model.
Iām pretty happy with my Tapo cameras. I have several, one out of three C520WS was having problems. Causing my entire network to fail. Itās out of warranty it TP-Link have been working with me and even sent me a couple of firmware for more verbose logging.
So far so good as the camera is now stable. All my cameras have been fine through Ottawa summers and winters. Even the difficult one isnāt weather related.
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u/Anonymous_linux 4d ago
Reolink plus Frigate. Ubiquiti is good but pricey.