This is exactly what we are all hoping they add to Protect that would make it a serious contender to Blue Iris. Unfortunately for now you can’t do ONVIF triggers just yet.
HUGE RUMOR: Unifi Protect will support ONVIF cameras (like from HIK/Dahua)
- Thread starter steve1225
- Start date
I see. Not sure if Unify will do that considering they now sell a dedicated AI box per line. I’ll continue to use Protect as a backup system for now as it does have some nice live view features,
I'm not even sure Unify knows where they are going in the future with the Protect system. Obviously they are trying their best to monitize it but sometimes those efforts can backfire if you try to hem people into an ecosystem that's too expensive/restrictive (early Apple was a good example of this) or another better solution comes out on the market. For now even just being able to record 24/7 and view cameras live remotely is a huge step forward for Ubiquiti.
That would be my concern about going all in - at any point they could decide to go in a different direction and then you are stuck.
This is a good and valid point, but the problem is, unifi protect doesn't have any competition right now. They check off a lot of boxes that nobody else can.
Their iphone app is great, the remote connectivity option (if you want it) is great, the way you manage and view cameras, is great.
I know things are changing for hikvision, dahua, empiretech, IC realtime, etc... cameras, but being able to only make changes in a legacy browser (IE) is a problem. This isn't so much of an issue with newer cameras with the updated web GUI, but the legacy cameras that I still have to deal with because people aren't upgrading as their current systems work fine (for now).
I hear you both @dt-cam and @wittaj you're absolutely right. For now we just have to take it at face value and assume that could be the total extent of their ONVIF integration. I have tons of folks asking me for security system recommendations and it's really hard because there's no real clear gold standard system yet even if price isn't a concern. It will be really interesting to see where this goes in the next few years but for now I'm going to at least experiment a bit with the Unify Protect setup and run it in tandem with BI and see how I like it with the hope they may do a bit more ONVIF integration in the future.
If price isn't a concern and they don't need anything specific like POS integration, for example, I would recommend unifi protect with AI cameras (AI in the model number) and an AI key. I would also recommend dedicated hardware like the UNVR or UNVR pro.
Unifi protect now offers continuous archiving so you can set detections, rules, etc and the video will automatically be offloaded to the 'archived' device. I'm currently testing this with specific detections (face) and sending that video to the NAS. So far it is working well.
If they have specific requirements, for example, monitor rotation/tours, multiple video clients running on a dedicated PC, for a monitoring station/security guard/etc then I would not recommend protect.
This is exactly what I've been recommending to the "spare no expense" folks because it's a ton of setup time and I really don't want to be babysitting their VPN and Blue Iris setup everytime they have an issue. The Unify stuff does just work and they love to be able to get alerts on their cell phones. The user interface is great and it's about as close to the Apple experience as you can get right now with a security camera system. On the negative side unfortunately the Unify cameras (even the AI ones) defienitely are not as good as the ones from Dahua image wise (especially at night). Ideally if we could somehow get a merging of those two systems I think you'd have your gold standard.
You can buy an AI Port, pair it with a better camera and it will send detections to the UI Key, but this isn't scalable, imo, w/o spending a lot of money.
The AI ports are like $200 each plus they look clunky as heck and they seem to be constantly sold out. I may try that for a few cameras (if the AI ports come back in stock) just to see how well it performs but I can’t see selling that as a solution to someone. Hopefully they will polish up the AI part so you can get 10:1 or maybe 20:1 ratios of cameras per device then you might have something. Crossing my fingers it will be available in a 1U form factor to fit a rack.
They don't have to be inline with the camera, they just need access to the network.
The AI Key is a rackmount solution, the AI Port is not. However, I would only do this for 1-2 cameras, not really much more since it won't make sense from a financial perspective.
AI Key pairs with all Protect cameras that support smart detections, including:
- G4 Series
- G5 Series
- AI Series
- Cameras connected via AI Port
The AI Key deployment is good though.
AI Port is obviously just inline somewhere on the camera feed but it’s a 1:1 ratio so not a pretty install as numbers of cameras grow.
https://images.svc.ui.com/?u=https:...4-0d3c-42cb-be02-357c7ac428bd.png&q=75&w=3840
Last edited:
The AI Port is NOT inline (yes, it can be, but it doesn't need to be). I'm not sure if you are reading my posts or not. I have an AI Port and an AI Key and I'm using the AI Key with unifi cameras and I'm using an AI Port with a 3rd party camera that sends the detections to the AI Key and it is not inline. The 3rd party camera and AI Port are not even connected to the same network switch, in my scenario.
It is a 1:1 ratio, today, but they are going to change that. Did you see the link I posted earlier? They state that on the help page I posted the link to.
Got a bit sidetracked but wanted to continue the conversation. No, haven’t been reading all your other posts and yes, I did see the FAQ.
I guess my issue is if I have 15 Dahua cameras I want to add, then either the AI Ports go inline or you need another 15 ports on a switch somewhere to accept them all. Then you also have to consider network traffic loads. If these things are the inline AI triggers for recording then only what they pass through goes to the UNVR but if they are located elsewhere then all the cameras are sending thier feeds across the network and the AI Ports are resending that traffic again over to the UNVR. I guess for me it just doesn’t make much sense unless you just have like maybe 4-5 cameras max you’re dealing with.
I’m definitely sceptical of claims for future development because Ubiquiti has burned people in the past on over promising and under delivering. That said I do hope these will be able to handle more than a 1:1 ratio but even better would be to develop an AI key or AI server specific to 3rd party cameras. Even if it was crazy expensive, if it worked really well it would be worth it.
I already stated that I don't think it is scalable, but that's just my opinion.
Any system you get is going to have limitations, that's just a fact. You (generally speaking) need to decide what you want. You can't have the best system, the best remote experience and the best phone app with all the analytics built in and have it be affordable for a home or small business. That's reality.
I used blue iris for a long time and I paid for the pro version, BI isn't perfect and they have a small team behind them. I don't see any succession planning for that system, but maybe I'm wrong. BI is dated. It has a lot of bells and whistles, no denying that, but I feel that it is dated and there are too many knobs to turn, but if you want that granular control, then BI is the right system for you (again, generally speaking).
What I'd like to see from all options in the home/small business market are updates to hardware and software, do your best to keep up, it creates competition and it keeps your company in the game.
Scalable is a good word for the day! I am using BI along with the Ubiquity Dream Machine Pro SE. it’s got 8TB of backup. I don’t recall seeing this mentioned in any of the specs. How many cameras can the Unify system handle if they are generic 2K-4K ONVIF streams?
I have roughly 18 cameras in my system and BI does a good job of capturing and analyzing the data. In parallel I am capturing some of these streams (5) in the Protect app in a continuous recording. Even without triggers the system is easy to see a quick recap of a past days events. The ability to remotely scroll through the timeline is so much better than BI.
I’m considering adding more streams to the Unify system. Just not sure if there is a point where I’m asking more than the system is capable of handling. Has anyone pushed the Ubiquity Protect system to the point it breaks?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I have roughly 18 cameras in my system and BI does a good job of capturing and analyzing the data. In parallel I am capturing some of these streams (5) in the Protect app in a continuous recording. Even without triggers the system is easy to see a quick recap of a past days events. The ability to remotely scroll through the timeline is so much better than BI.
I’m considering adding more streams to the Unify system. Just not sure if there is a point where I’m asking more than the system is capable of handling. Has anyone pushed the Ubiquity Protect system to the point it breaks?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
First off, it is ubiquiti and unifi, but I see you are on a phone and auto correct is probably not helping, here.
Unifi protect shows you the camera capacity in the upper left of the main protect page. I have a protect install running on a UDM Pro SE, same as you, with 8 cameras. 2 are unifi cameras and the other 6 are hikvision cameras. I plan on adding an AI Port to this network to test with one of the 3rd party cameras. The main VMS in play is a desktop computer running avigialon. Ironically, I tried BI on this computer, first, with 16 hikvision cameras installed and the CPU spiked immediately. Yes, I have a compatible CPU and when I read about how to fix the CPU issue there were way too man things I had to do....lower settings, create sub streams, etc. I decided to try avigilon on the same PC BI was running on and I believe I had a free trial with avigilon for 7 or 14 days and the CPU barley spiked above 20-30% so I contacted a dealer and licensed avigilon, it wasn't cheap, but they also have great POS integration, which was also needed. I was also using a paid/pro version of BI so there shouldn't have been any software limitations on the BI side.
I don't plan on fully switching to unifi at this location, but since I am running a UDM I wanted to test protect. Avigilon records 24/7 (which is what I want) and shows me motion with the non avigilon cameras, unifi doesn't show motion. Also, avigilon has a great timeline/playback viewer, one of the best, if not the best timeline I've seen.
Take a look at the main unifi protect screen, it will show you camera capacity and show you which cameras are hd, 2k and 4k via colors.
Thanks and yes on a phone.
My BI also tended to spike. I ended up turning off all camera based alerts and I did enable sub streaming. H264 base encoding.
Code project AI is running to capture motion and a LPR dedicated camera as well. Now spikes briefly but nothing like before. Idles at about 10% of capacity on PC.
Will look into that Alternative as it sounds nice.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
My BI also tended to spike. I ended up turning off all camera based alerts and I did enable sub streaming. H264 base encoding.
Code project AI is running to capture motion and a LPR dedicated camera as well. Now spikes briefly but nothing like before. Idles at about 10% of capacity on PC.
Will look into that Alternative as it sounds nice.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk