NVRs - really don't understand

Most NVRs I have seen seem to concentrate on PoE cameras.

I have mostly wifi cams of various brands (wyze dafang hacked/ring standup cams/ring floodlight/reolink battery cams) with just the one reolink poe cam.

I like the idea of getting the majority of these on an NVR for simplicity of use and control. I expect the battery cam is an issue as it has limited functionality regarding connectivity and only responds when motion is detected or I access it directly through the app.

However, I was wondering if the others could be pulled into a NVR. The issue I have is that online there are very confusing accounts of how ip cams can be integrated. Some have switch adapters that require long cable lengths to attach to PoE ports. That is not an option. Others have details of seemingly complex initialising and ip address changes.

I cannot see if this is feasible. Is a simple wifi connection setup possible and what NVRs would people recommend (I am on a tightish budget so not top of the range please).

You might consider looking at Frigate. It was designed with HA specifically in mind. It can interface with any cam as long as it does ONVIF / RTSP

Frigate itself is shipped primarily as a container (or HA Add-on). So, you’ll be mostly looking at where you can get enough disk attached and have a decent number of CPU to dedicate to it since it’s pretty much impossible to get a Coral stick to help with the object detection.

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IP based NVRs are just a network appliance. As long as they support generic camera streaming protocols (RTSP, ONVIF), they can access any camera that is on your network, regardless of the physical connection. The PoE ports that some provide are just for convenience. They’re just a built-in PoE router. You don’t have to use them.

That said, most NVRs will require your camera to send a continuous stream. Cameras that constantly connect and disconnect from the network (like battery powered motion activated Wifi cams) are far from ideal and may not work correctly depending on the NVR. Continuously streaming wifi is not a problem though (of course using continuous data streams over 2.4GHz wifi is a terrible idea, but that’s unrelated).

FWIW, I have a Hikvision NVR. I use mostly PoE cameras, but I have a wifi one too that only runs when I’m on vacation. It works very well though.

POE has nothing to do with NVRs. They are mutually exclusive technologies. I have many POE devices that are not cameras, and many cameras which are not POE.

That said, I’m using Blue Iris and Deepstack. I’ve had a few bumps along the way with various versions of both HA and Blue Iris, but at the present moment, both are working quite well together. Using deepstack for object recognition, I have it configured so that if any of my exterior cameras detect a person after sunset, HA turns on all my floodlights. Works great!

The only requirements of a camera to use it with an NVR is that it provides an RTSP stream. There’s lots of noise made about ONVIF as well, but I really don’t understand all the nuances and won’t pretend to.

That said, the post above about “continuous data streams over 2.4ghz wifi is a terrible idea”… That’s simply false - at least, not without several qualifiers. I mean, if you’ve got some cheap, consumer-grade wifi that uses mesh extenders (think NetGear, Linksys, etc), then sure - you’re probably going to have a really hard time.

If you have a bit better network - something with a WLAN controller and multiple APs that are all wired, it’s not an issue. I’m using Ubiquiti with half a dozen wired APs to cover my house and yard, and have 8 2.4GHZ wifi Ubiquiti cameras at present, and will likely add more. I also have 4 POE cameras (Amcrest). Everything works great.

To give you an idea as to utilization, in the previous rolling 24-hour period my wifi cameras have generated the following amount of traffic:

41GB 24GB 42GB 26GB 37GB 23GB 26GB 25GB.

For even the busiest camera, the math says that’s only 500KB/s. Again - depending on your network equipment, number of radios, and some other variables, this is not anything to remotely be concerned about.

Not saying it “will work” for everyone, but the point is that it CAN work. As always, YMMV.

ETA: I run Blue Iris, Deepstack, and Plex all on a single Intel NUC with 16GB RAM. Works great. I added a 2TB drive to it for immediate storage, and have it offloading to a NAS for longer-term storage.

And one more experience for the mix… I use a Synology DiskStation (DS) NAS to host everything. Synology disk stations come with software packages “free” to use from Synology, including Surveillance Station. I quoted “free” because it comes with license for two cameras. Each camera after that will cost you a one-time $50 license, but then you own it permanently… it’s not a subscription.

I won’t get too much into Synology DS devices, but can if you want me to. But the bottom line is that a DS is a NAS, but so much more… I use it to not only host Surveillance Station (NVR), but use the same device to host a virtual machine for Home Assistant.

I am not familiar with the ins and outs of the options already listed in replies, and I’m in no position to say that what I use is somehow better… I don’t know if it is or isn’t. But I will say I love my setup. In Home Assistant, I just put each camera to a card, and am able to view them that way. But with most cameras supporting multiple streams, there is no conflict in viewing them through Home Assistant, but recording them through Surveillance Station.

So, others have already done a great job of explaining the fact that WiFi vs. PoE doesn’t really make a difference. That said, I think the only real requirement for Surveillance Station (or any other NVR?) is that you reserve the IPs for the individual cams… if the IP changes, the NVR doesn’t know where to look for the camera.

Surveillance Station doesn’t care at all if it’s WiFi or PoE… like other replies, I use both in my solution. I will say that Surveillance Station updates their supported cameras very often, and make it pretty easy, because when you add another camera, it’s often that you’re just choosing make and model, and it does 80% of the work for you. Then, you have options to only record when there’s movement, or record 24x7, or even just record certain times of the day. The nice thing about doing it right on the Synology DS NAS is that the storage is right there. I have all cams recording 24x7, and purging the oldest video after 50GB each. So my space used for video storage is very easily calculated, and based on intensity of movement (trees, etc.), I typically get about 1.5 to 2 weeks of video history.

Again, just another option.

-C