Last year I picked up some Dahua cameras from Andy with the plan to set up some monitoring on our farm, there's been a spate of farm thefts locally in recent years. Life got in the way and I've only recently started looking at it again. As I run some simple Home Assistant stuff, I investigated Frigate but that would need new hardware for the processing and several hundred quid spent on a new mini PC & Coral.
I run a unifi networking setup with a UDMPro, 24 port poe switch and a bunch of access points (250 year old house with 60cm solid stone walls) and started considering Unify Protect as being a simple way to add cameras. Now that Protect accepts onvif cameras, I plugged in the Dahua's and they worked very well. I threw a spare 2Tb drive in the UDMpro bay and it 'just worked'. There's no alerts or motion detection but it's shown me that the system works for zero additional outlay.
Knowing that, I've been thinking about what I really want from the system. Some cameras would just be for monitoring, like looking to see what the chickens are doing or the dogs in the garden etc, and I don't really need to record that. What would be really useful is to have recording only really start with motion detection so that I could record who comes to the door or what vehicles come down the drive.
I don't need AI facial recognition or number plate recognition but if I could record a vehicle coming and going with enough detail to read a number plate if required, that would be great. Keeping the recording to just the motion, with the option to send me alerts when it's detected would mean a drive would only have the things I want to look at rather than hours of nothing going on.
As Protect can't offer any of that with the Dahua onvif cameras I have, would something like the Ubiquiti G5 Ultra do that without any other equipment? One of those at the front door and one on the gatepost on the drive would probably give me everything I need for about £200. I could throw a larger hard drive in the UDMpro cheaply enough if needed.
I run a unifi networking setup with a UDMPro, 24 port poe switch and a bunch of access points (250 year old house with 60cm solid stone walls) and started considering Unify Protect as being a simple way to add cameras. Now that Protect accepts onvif cameras, I plugged in the Dahua's and they worked very well. I threw a spare 2Tb drive in the UDMpro bay and it 'just worked'. There's no alerts or motion detection but it's shown me that the system works for zero additional outlay.
Knowing that, I've been thinking about what I really want from the system. Some cameras would just be for monitoring, like looking to see what the chickens are doing or the dogs in the garden etc, and I don't really need to record that. What would be really useful is to have recording only really start with motion detection so that I could record who comes to the door or what vehicles come down the drive.
I don't need AI facial recognition or number plate recognition but if I could record a vehicle coming and going with enough detail to read a number plate if required, that would be great. Keeping the recording to just the motion, with the option to send me alerts when it's detected would mean a drive would only have the things I want to look at rather than hours of nothing going on.
As Protect can't offer any of that with the Dahua onvif cameras I have, would something like the Ubiquiti G5 Ultra do that without any other equipment? One of those at the front door and one on the gatepost on the drive would probably give me everything I need for about £200. I could throw a larger hard drive in the UDMpro cheaply enough if needed.