Alexa + Unifi Protect streams are unreliable, only work on some devices

Hey there everyone! I’ve just started journeying to Home Assistant from Scrypted (Which I journeyed to from Homebridge haha). Scrypted has a free Alexa/Google Home integration that I was using to show my Unifi Protect cameras in both platforms, but Home Assistant does things so well I wanted to give it a shot and started paying for Home Assistant Cloud.

I set up Protect this evening and the cameras stream no problem. I also got them working in Google Assistant just fine, and also in HomeKit using the HomeKit Bridge plugin. However, Alexa is another story. With Scrypted, they just worked, and they were pretty quick too. With Home Assistant, they’re quite slow to load, and even weirder, they only load on some of my Alexa devices. I have an Echo Show 5 that it loads just fine on, but my Echo Hub does not work whatsoever. It just says “Waiting for Home Assistant…” and times out.

Does anyone know any workarounds here? I’d hate to have to go back to Scrypted for the cameras, especially since I’m working on moving off of it entirely (I also use it for Ring for my cameras and security system for HomeKit, but MQTT is a beast I’m not ready to tackle yet). Thank you!

The workaround, honestly, is to stop using ubiquiti cameras. There are MUCH better quality cameras available for FAR less money.

I know that’s not what you want to hear, but as someone that’s gone down that road myself, I speak from experience.

If, otoh, you want to double down instead of taking my friendly advice, pm me if you want to buy some ubiquiti cameras and doorbells on the cheap. Lol