Man, I have a reolink doorbell camera. I had a unifi-cam docker application providing it to my unvr as a g3. When I saw your last video, I thought I had to use the AI module. I went ahead and added third party support and it showed up. Pretty neat, but all this is in vein though since I am going to replace the doorbell with a unifi doorbell as this one has considerable lag. Thanks for the information!
Want me interests is what is possible when a Ptz camera in patrol mode an an ai port. Does it detect motion, when it moves position or not, what about events etc. A video about this topic would be great.
this actually simplifies things if i were to adopt since our policy is no-audio surveillance or recording, but havent seen AI Port support audio controls over the camera
I have done a similar setup as yours -- unifi NVR and a combination of Amcrest/Reolink cameras. I also have them managed by our synology system. However, I noticed that the playback performance of the Unifi NVR with the 3rd party cameras was atrocious -- often failing to load past events. This could have been an early version of the unifi support (this was about a month ago), but I decided to hold off until the feature set was more mature. I'm hopeful for to see this mature.
I have 9x Hikvision cameras 5x are 4MP and 4x are 2MP. How do you specify which stream and therefore which quality is being displayed in live view and is being recorded by Protect? Currently in my Hikvision app, the SD view is displayed in live view (which I can change to HD) and the HD view is being recorded to the NVR. Thanks
So technically, AI port is just a device which takes an input rtsp stream, process AI stuff on it and spits out another rtsp stream for unifi nvr (or maybe just process and spits out the metadata containing AI events info). And it can be in any location in your network (doesn't have to be directly connected to the camera). So, this functionality could have been easily integrated into the NVR itself if they just added that AI processing chip into it. Or it could potentially be selfhosted too.
The key problem with third party support is despite third party advanced adoption, if the cameras are on a different subnet, either they can't be adopted at all or the connection is unstable. I have three Unifi cameras on a vlan and they have no issues at all. I have different models of Reolink cameras and they work fine with protect on the main lan. They fail advanced adoption or don't work at all on the vlan where the protect cameras do work. Most people have their protect cameras on a dedicated vlan and 3rd party cameras are broken on a vlan
@@avesedl5262 Ok, that worked...kinda. For whatever reason, my RLC-820a which is a 4k camera adopted right away but never truly connected with the "..." in the lower left. My RLC-520 cameras did adopt with the port number and BIG THANKS for that one. However, the on screen preview is 4x3 with 640x480 resolution which is the low resolution stream of the camera and quite annoying. When I have protect download footage, it turns out to be the 2560x1440 resolution as expected which is good. The 640x480 4x3 on the actual camera viewing screen for Protect is baffling.
Appreciate the detailed breakdown! I need some advice: My OKX wallet holds some USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). Could you explain how to move them to Binance?
Not sexy but I have 8 cameras of which 3 are wireless and outside: Amazon Blink. Dirt cheap, totally reliable. The CR123 batteries last 2 years or longer. Only downside is their yearly fee.
Not interested in the AI Port device, at that price, to cover so few cameras. Adding 2 cameras means it's $100/camera... at that price, in many instances it's not that much more to just replace the camera. (Higher end cameras cost more, sure, but adding $100 to the high price kinda makes it worse. Sadly, UniFi's support for third party cameras is pretty limited, even among HikVision and Amcrest. You need a pretty recent model with up to date firmware... older HikVision firmware doesn't support the specific mode UniFi needs to get past the authentication stage (even though the cameras still function very well and have decent specs). And even with brand new up to date Amcrest models, many have issues streaming live video in the web portal, although they seem to be fine in the mobile app, due to "encoding" issues. On the other hand, it seems to do fine with simple RTSP streams from the cheapest wifi cameras, like the $16 Tapo C110.
The ai Port will be getting a feature where you can apply it to five unified cameras at once and I think three of a different brand and two of a different brand at once but you at least be able to do five even if I cameras at once whether they're wireless or wired but that's coming in another update
I tend to agree with Tom. We are currently running 100+ cameras through mulitple BlueIris enabled Windows servers. It was mainly a stop gap until I could replace it with new technology (most of the camera heads are 480p analog at best). It works fine, but is showing its age a bit. Think of BI as the kind of system you can endlessly tweak and Unifi as more of an appliance that just works.
I'm running BI at home and work on VMs with little to no issues. However IT is my full-time job, so I'm able to tackle the nitty-gritty stuff when needed. That's certainly not for everyone.
As someone just trying to get started with NAS/NVR and cameras, I think Synology and Ubiquiti are bastards for trying to get you “all-in” on their ecosystem. You should be able to take advantage of any standard features of any camera brand!
This isnt really accurate for Ubiquiti. There cameras doing the processing ON the camera. This is different from many other brands who do the processing on the NVR. Its not that unifi is locking you out of third party features the other cams support it's that the NVR doesn't have the hardware and software to do it.
Adding to @tangodown2721, a related issue is that there are no standard APIs for the AI functionality. There is no practical way for one vendor to support the non-standard functionality of all other vendors.
@@tangodown2721 Conversely, though, and for that same reason, UniFi cameras won't work with 3rd party NVRs, except via RTSP streams, which is not great.
Synology Surveillance Station doesn't try to lock you onto their ecosystem at all. It supports tons of 3rd party cameras from all the major manufacturers plus most ONVIF cameras. And it can do events based on the camera's own detections.
@@xephael3485ONVIF is needed for the cameras to send motion detection events, sync time, and change encoding settings through the NVR... It's pretty disappointing that Ubiquti's solution seems really half-baked (at least based on this video). Other manufacturers like Hikvision and Uniview have been working perfectly with third-party cameras for years. There's no excuse why Ubiquiti can't get it right.
Honestly, for the average home user BLINK is the much better and much cheaper solution. The wireless cameras are super reliable and the batteries last 2 years or longer. Who wants to run POE cables all over the house? And pay like 5 times more than the Blink equivalent? Downside is the $100 or so fee for unlimited camera storage.
Battery-operated, Wi-Fi cameras serve a specific need. But it is a bit presumptuous to claim it fulfills all needs of all homeowners. If you aren't trolling, please be advised that many homeowners have a strong desire for fully-local video storage without any cloud connection at all. This is regardless of fees or not. Based on that criteria alone, the majority of Wi-Fi consumer cameras are a non-starter. And I "buried the lead" - BLINK and all similar cameras have no ability for continuous recording. AI be damned, there is no more reliable video recording history than the safety of continuous recording. AI can be used for alerts, notifications, and faster search, but without continuous recording, you have no ability to go back and find sometimes crucial video history that clip-only camera / camera systems miss.
That's disappointing to hear. You'd think from their promo video that Ubiquiti had added decent third-party support, but it seems like they just wanted to tick a box and call it a day.
@7:01 Lol "Synology and their third party", I think you meant UniFi but we do all know what you meant. Good video.
Frigate as a standalone NVR is working great here.
Interesting to see that PTZ control is available for the one Amcrest camera. Sadly, it isn’t yet available for my ACTi B912.
Man, I have a reolink doorbell camera. I had a unifi-cam docker application providing it to my unvr as a g3. When I saw your last video, I thought I had to use the AI module. I went ahead and added third party support and it showed up. Pretty neat, but all this is in vein though since I am going to replace the doorbell with a unifi doorbell as this one has considerable lag.
Thanks for the information!
Want me interests is what is possible when a Ptz camera in patrol mode an an ai port. Does it detect motion, when it moves position or not, what about events etc. A video about this topic would be great.
In my last testing, 3rd party cameras didn't support audio recording, only video. Does the AI port change that?
this actually simplifies things if i were to adopt since our policy is no-audio surveillance or recording, but havent seen AI Port support audio controls over the camera
I have done a similar setup as yours -- unifi NVR and a combination of Amcrest/Reolink cameras. I also have them managed by our synology system. However, I noticed that the playback performance of the Unifi NVR with the 3rd party cameras was atrocious -- often failing to load past events. This could have been an early version of the unifi support (this was about a month ago), but I decided to hold off until the feature set was more mature. I'm hopeful for to see this mature.
I have 9x Hikvision cameras 5x are 4MP and 4x are 2MP. How do you specify which stream and therefore which quality is being displayed in live view and is being recorded by Protect? Currently in my Hikvision app, the SD view is displayed in live view (which I can change to HD) and the HD view is being recorded to the NVR. Thanks
It does not appear to have that option either.
None of the Onvif cameras I have work reliably in protect. They say offline every 10 seconds.
I have had IP cameras with a Linux system and also unreliable. Amazon Blink is foolproof.
So technically, AI port is just a device which takes an input rtsp stream, process AI stuff on it and spits out another rtsp stream for unifi nvr (or maybe just process and spits out the metadata containing AI events info).
And it can be in any location in your network (doesn't have to be directly connected to the camera).
So, this functionality could have been easily integrated into the NVR itself if they just added that AI processing chip into it. Or it could potentially be selfhosted too.
The key problem with third party support is despite third party advanced adoption, if the cameras are on a different subnet, either they can't be adopted at all or the connection is unstable. I have three Unifi cameras on a vlan and they have no issues at all. I have different models of Reolink cameras and they work fine with protect on the main lan. They fail advanced adoption or don't work at all on the vlan where the protect cameras do work. Most people have their protect cameras on a dedicated vlan and 3rd party cameras are broken on a vlan
Try give it the port number for advance adoption. ie: (your cameras ip):8000 for reolink.
@@avesedl5262 Ok, that worked...kinda. For whatever reason, my RLC-820a which is a 4k camera adopted right away but never truly connected with the "..." in the lower left. My RLC-520 cameras did adopt with the port number and BIG THANKS for that one. However, the on screen preview is 4x3 with 640x480 resolution which is the low resolution stream of the camera and quite annoying. When I have protect download footage, it turns out to be the 2560x1440 resolution as expected which is good. The 640x480 4x3 on the actual camera viewing screen for Protect is baffling.
Appreciate the detailed breakdown! I need some advice: My OKX wallet holds some USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). Could you explain how to move them to Binance?
Is there a list anywhere that gives the best bang for buck when you include the AI port cost?
My Unifi ai camera's do show people, face and so on detected during playback, but not a percentage how sure the ai is. Protect 5.1.85 on Unifi nvr.
Is there any good alternative for a small buisness with acces from a app with local footage storage like unifi?
Synology Surveillance station is another option.
Blue iris
Reolink
Not sexy but I have 8 cameras of which 3 are wireless and outside: Amazon Blink. Dirt cheap, totally reliable. The CR123 batteries last 2 years or longer. Only downside is their yearly fee.
Not interested in the AI Port device, at that price, to cover so few cameras. Adding 2 cameras means it's $100/camera... at that price, in many instances it's not that much more to just replace the camera. (Higher end cameras cost more, sure, but adding $100 to the high price kinda makes it worse.
Sadly, UniFi's support for third party cameras is pretty limited, even among HikVision and Amcrest. You need a pretty recent model with up to date firmware... older HikVision firmware doesn't support the specific mode UniFi needs to get past the authentication stage (even though the cameras still function very well and have decent specs). And even with brand new up to date Amcrest models, many have issues streaming live video in the web portal, although they seem to be fine in the mobile app, due to "encoding" issues. On the other hand, it seems to do fine with simple RTSP streams from the cheapest wifi cameras, like the $16 Tapo C110.
Scrypted on a Mac Mini works well
The ai Port will be getting a feature where you can apply it to five unified cameras at once and I think three of a different brand and two of a different brand at once but you at least be able to do five even if I cameras at once whether they're wireless or wired but that's coming in another update
Amcrest is relabeled HikVision last I checked
Its sad because I have Hik PTZ and I cant control them
I believe they're relabeled Dahua, not HikVision
scratch that, after readopting it works :)
I might be crazy but for $200 to add these features to an existing camera is freaking amazing. But I have zero experience with this stuff.
Per camera.
May as well just buy a unifi camera at that price.
I've always wished for that
More stuff don't work than does, they seem to have their own idea of what ONVIF is supposed to be.
I'm torn between Unify and Blue Iris. Be nice to see a compare and contrast in the nitty gritty between the two for 2025.
I avoid Blue Iris because it requires Windows which I don't think is a great platform for any NVR.
I tend to agree with Tom. We are currently running 100+ cameras through mulitple BlueIris enabled Windows servers. It was mainly a stop gap until I could replace it with new technology (most of the camera heads are 480p analog at best). It works fine, but is showing its age a bit. Think of BI as the kind of system you can endlessly tweak and Unifi as more of an appliance that just works.
Frigate
I'm running BI at home and work on VMs with little to no issues. However IT is my full-time job, so I'm able to tackle the nitty-gritty stuff when needed. That's certainly not for everyone.
You got me fucked up if I’m paying for a Ai port 🤣🤣 per camera I got 14, blue iris/coral Ai accelerator/codeprojectAi pfsense router I’m good 👍
As someone just trying to get started with NAS/NVR and cameras, I think Synology and Ubiquiti are bastards for trying to get you “all-in” on their ecosystem. You should be able to take advantage of any standard features of any camera brand!
This isnt really accurate for Ubiquiti. There cameras doing the processing ON the camera. This is different from many other brands who do the processing on the NVR. Its not that unifi is locking you out of third party features the other cams support it's that the NVR doesn't have the hardware and software to do it.
Adding to @tangodown2721, a related issue is that there are no standard APIs for the AI functionality.
There is no practical way for one vendor to support the non-standard functionality of all other vendors.
@@tangodown2721 Conversely, though, and for that same reason, UniFi cameras won't work with 3rd party NVRs, except via RTSP streams, which is not great.
Synology Surveillance Station doesn't try to lock you onto their ecosystem at all. It supports tons of 3rd party cameras from all the major manufacturers plus most ONVIF cameras. And it can do events based on the camera's own detections.
If the ai port would be 100$ i would ge t it for my cameras
Great video! ONVIF is the interoperability protocol for different manufacturers cameras can communicate
ONVIF is not really needed at all... Just RTSP H.264/H.265
@@xephael3485ONVIF is needed for the cameras to send motion detection events, sync time, and change encoding settings through the NVR... It's pretty disappointing that Ubiquti's solution seems really half-baked (at least based on this video).
Other manufacturers like Hikvision and Uniview have been working perfectly with third-party cameras for years. There's no excuse why Ubiquiti can't get it right.
hell hath frozen over lol
Honestly, for the average home user BLINK is the much better and much cheaper solution. The wireless cameras are super reliable and the batteries last 2 years or longer. Who wants to run POE cables all over the house? And pay like 5 times more than the Blink equivalent? Downside is the $100 or so fee for unlimited camera storage.
Battery-operated, Wi-Fi cameras serve a specific need. But it is a bit presumptuous to claim it fulfills all needs of all homeowners.
If you aren't trolling, please be advised that many homeowners have a strong desire for fully-local video storage without any cloud connection at all. This is regardless of fees or not. Based on that criteria alone, the majority of Wi-Fi consumer cameras are a non-starter.
And I "buried the lead" - BLINK and all similar cameras have no ability for continuous recording. AI be damned, there is no more reliable video recording history than the safety of continuous recording. AI can be used for alerts, notifications, and faster search, but without continuous recording, you have no ability to go back and find sometimes crucial video history that clip-only camera / camera systems miss.
I'll save you some time: It works like shit.
That's disappointing to hear. You'd think from their promo video that Ubiquiti had added decent third-party support, but it seems like they just wanted to tick a box and call it a day.