Hi all, my Unifi Doorbell just died after only 4 years of service. I’ve been pretty disheartened with them lately, other products haven’t lived up to the company’s promise.
So I’m not looking to replace my networking stack yet, but I am looking for a doorbell camera. I only have the Unifi machine, but I also have an extensive docker/kubernetes stack, and mostly I want to use it with Home Assistant.
Any recommendations? Open to software, hardware, you name it. I have a few other Unifi cameras too, if they could be brought into the fold while I slowly migrate, I’d be interested. Thanks!
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I’m working on a project involving home assistant, zigbee, and Google home. In a perfect world the doorbell would make all the Google homes chime. Not sure if it is going to work, but I know that I can simply hook up a Bluetooth speaker to the brains of it and it’ll work.
Materials
- Doorbell: https://a.co/d/02HBrOnB
- ESP32-C6: https://a.co/d/011HRydn
Software
My home assistant will be a docker container. In order to make this work, I will be installing esphome on the esp32. I got an esp32 screen because it will also operate a self watering garden, but you don’t need to. It will need to be configured as a zigbee proxy for home assistant, but seems pretty straight forward.
FrigateNVR is a bit of a pain but has worked great with all my Reolink camera’s. I also link them into HomeAssistant. I have one 4K PTZ camera, four 1080p fixed cameras, and one dual 4K lens 180 degree view camera all POE powered and hooked into both FrigateNVR and HomeAssistant.
I use a Quanta LB6M for 10G backbone and a Dell PowerConnect 5548 for Ethernet with a pair of DAC cables linking the two with my router and server connected via OM3 to the LB6M.
Once you set up Frigate, you’ll never want to go back. I also use Frigate with Reolink cameras. I use two Coral tpu for recognition, personally, but similarly have a fiber connection to my NAS from my server with frigate.
I’ve tried to use a Reolink POE doorbell for a while, and while the camera itself and chimes are just fine (and I have it recording to my Unifi UDM-PRO) the actual doorbell call and chat functionality is pretty awful, high delay, poor audio, buggy.
I know there are ways to DIY the call and chat function through HA and Frigate, but I need an app that works reliably whether my HA server is running or not so that non-technical users can figure it out and the doorbell doesnt go dead when i’m working on my servers.
So i’m moving to one of the new unifi doorbell lites until I find a better solution, or bite the bullet and buy a higher end one.
Perhaps I just go back to a basic doorbell, plus a separate camera and intercom system but orchestrate it with HA manually, but again, I want this to be separate from HA so it can work at any time, so it’s unifi for now.
Have you thought about moving your HA off your server and onto a miniPC? I know you weren’t really looking for advice but that seems like the move to me tbh, doesn’t take long to migrate and it might clear up a lot of headaches.
Everyone in this thread is complaining about their short-lived UniFi devices, meanwhile I have two dream machines (the original WiFi 5 sol’n, not the rack mounted variant) that have had zero issues and are still running 24/7. I guess I should count my stars. (They replaced multiple failed netgear routers).
Same here. I went through 3 Netgear’s and a Linksys in as many years and said no more. Moved to Ubiquiti and haven’t looked back. My current dream machine of two years replaced a still working but older/slower cloud gateway of 5 yrs with AC Pro’s and now a WiFi 7 AP. The last NetGear I replaced cost more than the Cloud Gateway + AC Pro. And the latter was way faster with better coverage.
Everyone’s got different luck with computer gear though. I know I’ve had bad luck with things other people rave about, so choices are great to have.
I’ve learned it really depends on the device. It’s completely a mixed bag, and that’s why I can’t trust it. Half the time it lasts over a decade, the other half less than a year.
For example, I got their “Enterprise” Switch 8 PoE with 2 SFP+ ports. I plugged it in in my garage, where it was 50 degrees (F) at the time, and it overheated. I googled it, apparently the SFP ports simply overheat. Turns out while it has a fan, it doesn’t turn on and simply overheats because they “Didn’t want a noisy fan on someone’s desk”. Which… uh, doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work. Their enterprise term means nothing.
That being said, my rackmount switches have been solid, oldest one is 10 years old. However that unknown makes it hard to justify purchasing new equipment.
IIRC they had a whole generation of switches that overheated like crazy.
On the other hand, I kind of want one of my nano-HDs to die so I can justify an upgrade to wifi 7.
Reolink, aqara, or amcrest would be my rec.
I never even thought about Aqara, I have a lot of their things already. Do I need an NVR or something with that?
They have a paid cloud storage, but you can also store locally. I do recommend an NVR though, frigate or shinobi are pretty good options there
Got frigate set up, more mature than I expected!
I bought a Ubiquity router once because a friend was raving about it. It crapped out on me after maybe 6 months? Will never buy their hardware again.
I’m using a Reolink doorbell camera and am happy with it so far. Had it for about two years.
How do you use Reolink? I’ve heard other people mention it, meaning do you need an NVR, or HomeAssistant, does it work in Unifi, curious how you use it
You don’t need an NVR. The camera supports a microSD card to store footage. It also supports FTP upload.
HomeAssistant isn’t required. It is supported and I do have it configured.
I have next to no recollection of how UniFi works so I can’t speak to that. Mine is connected to a 2.4GHz WiFi network. IIRC that’s all it supports. Might be different with newer models.
It also supports HTTP(S)/RTMP/RTSP/ONVIF streaming. Though I tend to just use the app (and I’m particular about installing apps) as I find it quite usable.
I have a reolink doorbell, running local-only. It records to my Synology nas, and is integrated with home assistant for ring notifications. But it took quite a bit of work to get it set up in home assistant, and I’m not quite happy with it yet… Need to tweak some more.
While I’m not thrilled with some of my UniFi hardware, I would kill to get 4 years out of a doorbell. that’s pretty good.
That’s weird. I have never had a doorbell fail. My current doorbell is a 1990’s system that goes to mini crt displays in the house. Kind of like this
It’s over 25 years old.
I also have several noname IP cameras around the outside and they’ve never failed. One is almost 10 years old now.
Really?? Is that all? Best I can think is that the transformer doesn’t really protect the device at all, I’m guessing there was a surge at some point
I’m not sure if it’s the electrician’s ineptitude (especially these cookie cutter homes, around me I have ryan and toll brothers, one time I was installing one and the wires FELL out of the door frame) or Mother Nature getting to the electronics outside or maybe a bit of both. Don’t do indoor cameras so can’t speak to that aspect.
My first doorbell from them died pretty quick two, ended up getting the poe one and its been pretty good, hopefully keeps going for a lot more. The chime sucks though. They just came out with some loud speaker that is supposed to also work with the doorbell but pretty pricey
I just picked up a Reolink, great privacy so far. I haven’t set up Home Assistant yet, but I’ve read it’s not great.
