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Comment by tomchuk | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been very happy with Ubiquiti’s Unifi Protect doorbell. It does mean having to buy into their whole ecosystem, but I was already most of the way there when I added the doorbell and a couple 4k cameras.

Recording to a local device does mean you have to consider things like power/network outages if you want remote access and recording to continue during those events. I’ve got all my network gear and the doorbell transformer running off a UPS to cover the time between a power outage and my whole-home generator kicking in. I’ve also got an LTE modem to fail over to on my Dream Machine Pro (Router/network controller/video storage).

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I have the Unifi Protect doorbell and like it a lot.

But the big decision point is whether you want to get stuck in the Unifi Protect walled garden. A lot of people understandably don't want that.

Back in the days of Unifi Video, you could create your own NVR using Unifi's software, but you can't with Unifi Protect. I've already outgrown my Unifi Cloud Key Gen 2+ (which is only doing NVR duties). Scrubbing through footage in a browser or mobile device can be a royal pain.

If you have a significant number of cameras, you need to invest in one of the more powerful Unifi NVRs to get better performance.

Just convinced a neighbor to ditch Ring for the UniFi Protect ecosystem. They’ve been happy with it. I’m also happy to not have my neighbor donate my MAC addresses, face and voice to Amazon inadvertently.

Until UI gets acquired by a megaco, which I suspect is what they're trying to do with their recent reduction of personnel and costs.

I wouldn't be surprised if one of the FAANGs acquires them. They have a fairly popular home line now with Amplifi, and that seems to be their main/only focus, now that almost all of the EdgeOS engineers are reportedly gone.

Wasn't Ubiquiti shown to have a number of backdoors in past couple years?

Yes, that is true, but all of them are built on top of their cloud integration which is optional. If you did not utilize their cloud integration and disable remote administration (it's off by default), you are basically equally at risk as any other "Linux" box on the Internet based on the versions of software running on the device.

And you are free to grab the rtsp and do what ever you want to. Most systems like home assistant and co will happily integrate with that.

Did you just lay out a clear blueprint of your security system in the internet? Hope you agree that s not a good idea.

Security through obscurity hasn't been a good idea for a while either, to be fair

At least he has one.. you could jimmy open my front door and walk in without any electronics recording you

Full disclosure though, if you do that while my wife and kid are home I will stab you

I’ve divulged my camera & network setup. Sure, you could use that info to sneak up to my house, turn the gas off to my generator, cut the power, wait 3h for the batteries in my UPS to run out….

Or you could walk up and smash a window wearing a balaclava.

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