Hello,
I want to add a survilliance camera to my home.
Any recommended camera to work with home assistant?
Any ONVIF/RTSP camera will likely work with HA.
Branding is a personal preference. If you don’t mind Chinese parts, I really like Reolink. They have a great price point and a pretty darn good camera selection too. I’ve always gotten very good response from their support team as well. They have camera lineups (battery powered usually) that don’t have any ONVIF/RTSP stream so just make sure you look out for that.
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Thanks.
What do you think about foscam?
I’m looking for a poe cam
Haven’t used Foscam. Reolink has PoE cams, that’s what I prefer ( though I do have some of their wireless). They even have cams that are wifi, yet can be powered by PoE (weird setup I can’t imagine).
I also have a Duhau and a Hikvision. While both are nice cams (despite the origination of the internals), I still prefer the price point and service of the Reolink. I have an Amcrest doorbell, which is the best doorbell I can find with RTSP, but unfortunately (unfortunate because I like to buy American) the company seems to suck. Not to mention they are using the same parts as Duhau.
I have used Reolink, Foscam, and Amcrest POE cameras. All have similar specs, but by far I found the best integrated with HA are Amcrest. I decommission Foscam and Reolink last year and replaced them with 6 Amcrest.
I have these at my place:
Absolutely brilliant. I’m just waiting for HA to provide support for the 2-way audio so the one at my front door can become an intercom.
I looked at Hikvision and IMO, they are the best cameras out there. But just had a hard time with the cost, specially since I already had to ditch the foscams and reolinks. Is the integration with HA solid?
I use the ONVIF integration for them. It’s great. I also get all the binary_sensors for motion detection, line crossing etc come through.
Can you explain what makes Amcrest superior? I’d be a hard convert since I found their doorbell to be less than spectacular. I had to go through an RMA which was months in process and extremely painful, and the new doorbell didn’t work any better. It cannot withstand temperatures lower than 35ish degrees F without needing to be reset the next morning.
I have Hikvision cameras, they’re excellent in build quality and performance. Not entirely cheap, but well worth the price. I use the generic camera integration for the video and the hikvision integration for smart events. I just locked them into their own subnet without internet access, because you know, Chinese government and all.
I have 6 cameras and they are all Foscam.
I find them pretty good for the money.
If you are looking at Hikvision, also have a search around for HiLook - I have a few of their 4mp domes and they are great.
As far as I know HiLook is just a sub-brand of Hikvision, but when I was buying the HiLook ones were about a 1/3 cheaper than the Hikvision alternative.
After the Foscam cameras, I now have 7 Reolink cameras and I am very satisfied with them. The quality is really good, but keep in mind that their battery powered cameras don’t have ONVIF/RTSP streaming, avoid them.
Do you think is it really unsafe to use Chinese cams as i read in many places?
I think at this juncture in history, there’s no avoiding Chinese manufactured parts in just about anything electronic. Do I believe them to be an eminent threat to me? Probably not. None the less, I prefer to support local distributors and manufactures over the CCP with my money.
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I would not say that the cameras are just superior. For the most part, all cameras in that price range have similar features. The integration with HA is superior based on my experience. Motion sensors are available as well as the ability to turn features on/off (motion sensing, motion recording, etc). Also, my Foscam cameras would go offline for no particular reason and I would have to reset them. Have not have that issue with Amcrest. Again, perhaps the integration with Foscam/Reolink has improved, but at the time it did not work properly for me.
That said, if I was going to do it again from scratch, and only needed 1 or 2 cameras, I would go with Hikvision based on the reviews I have read.
I won’t say their superior but
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low light was so good I was confused when looking out window and could hardly see and looking in camera and look like sun was out. In country with no lights, turned off IR since low light is that good.
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I had some cheap $30 cam with UI that didn’t allow configuration. Amcrest has great UI
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4K cam for $50. I’ll do that every day of week. My wife (no techie in the least)…commented “what you do to cameras cuz they look much better…that’s after change from 2k cam but still…image is great.
Really amcrest, Duhua and few other are same cam rebranded but after trying several models these POE are great
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Ah, ya, I have IR caster all over my yard so that’s a non-issue for me.
I ordered this reolink to experiment with:
