The cost is just insane though. $4-$500 for a camera that I can get equivalent specs for $50-100.
I'm guessing you're thinking Reolink or other Chinese ultra-commodity cam. It's fine, it's just in a different product class and ecosystem - and that's where enterprises fit in, they want that support+ecosystem and not DIYing.
Reolink CX820 8MP $129 https://reolink.com/product/cx820/
Unifi G6 8MP ~$300 https://techspecs.ui.com/unifi/physical-security/uvc-g6-dome...
Avigilon H6A 8MP ~$1200 https://www.avigilon.com/security-cameras/h6a-dome
I think they're definitely not Avigilon, Genetec, Verkada, but we run a few hundred UI cams in some edge areas. It works, esp if you don't demand orchestration.
I do that with my Unifi Protect doorbell. RTSP streams. Google Coral. Frigate. Scales very well. Do ML on low quality stream. Look/save the high quality stream. You do it all centralized, and you can put the camera(s) on a seperate VLAN. They don't even need internet access. If you run them over PoE twisted pair, the attacker would need physical access to perform MITM. Wireless, one should assume the camera is insecure (e.g. KRACK).
The purpose of my comment had only been pointing out those features don't come onboard a $100 cam.
I have the same popular setup (Frigate) although I just use ONNX on an 11th-gen Intel CPU instead of a Coral (unless you are trying to do something fundamentally goofy like use a Raspberry Pi as an NVR, Coral doesn't really perform better than even a several-generations-old iGPU or iNPU).
This is the typical OSS story: you can duct tape a giant leaning tower of janky stuff (Frigate + go2rtc + HomeAssistant + various connectors + some kind of VPN/proxy solution for away-from-home access) together and get something that's fairly close to the commercial solution, where you click a button. The open source solution is fun and more customizable in highly niche ways (you can bring your own image recognition models and tagging, adjust the resolution and encoding for everything in infinite detail, and so on) and the commercial solution is easy and works. Chose your path.
I will say I've liked the Frigate stack, though. I'm making some recognition tweaks for recognizing animals on my property, the software works well enough, and I do like having a really, truly on-prem solution for this specific thing.
It works similar, but requires some effort to get working (if you already self-host its peanuts think Frigate plus reverse proxy and I also use Wireguard to have it available from outside). My home connection is fiber 1 gbit, but with DSL (only 30 mbit upload) it worked fine, too.
Since I want to decrease my reliance on US cloud, I like to self-host. I also still rely on Unifi APs and the doorbell. Right now I wouldn't spend money on building a self-hosted server, given prices.
I should mention I use iGPU via SR-IOV on a VM. The Google Coral sits in the device unused.
I also immediately copy the stream to an offsite backup. This way, if I get coerced to destroy my doorbell feed, I will happily oblige.
As others have pointed out they are supported for a long time. I have some earlier generations cameras that are going on 7 years of updates. Not only are you barely getting maybe a year of firmware updates at the $50-100 range but there's no comparison on the quality of the optics, sensor and overall hardware at that price differential.
Ubiquiti has done some shitty things over the years but Ubiquiti isn't competing against the $50-100 market. They're competing against the Axis and Panasonic quality builds. You've definitely got it backwards here.
And while, yes, you can get a decent camera from Reolink and the like at a good price it isn't surrounded by an exceptionally mature and well supported ecosystem that has yet to nickel and dime its customers with half ass SaaS and paid for features.
This comment couldn't be further from the reality of Ubiquiti's lineup in comparison.
What's the comparison at $50-100?