I need recommendation for good wifi cameras for indoor and outdoor (and potentially door bell, door lock, flood lights, and garage door opener).

[tangent]

5k to go through multiple areas of solid concrete to get cables where they'd need to go.

I can’t run Ethernet. And power line won’t work in my house.

Yes. If you’re asking to try to help me run Ethernet, I assure you it’s not an option. I’ve had professionals come. They can do it but it’ll cost way more than I want to spend.

Perhaps you need to rethink where you think the cables need to go. It's likely you could put some cameras on the garage and record to an NVR or computer that's mounted inside the garage. When you get someone to bid something like this you have to be a bit careful. A lack the knowledge or imagination to do it in a more practical way and might lead someone to give you an 'I don't want this fucking job' price (which is better than someone drastically underestimating what's involved).

I'm fairly confident your roof isn't made of concrete and that if nothing else some conduit could be used outside the building. Do you have any kind of attic?

As for powerline protocols like Home Plug AV2 or G.hn, I'm curious why you seem so confident they won't work? How well they work varies a lot, but generally the list of reasons it might not work AT ALL is fairly short and there are relatively simple solutions to most of those problems. There are also options like MoCa that use existing coax cable.

You can buy a big hammer drill that would have no problem drilling through several feet of concrete for a couple hundred bucks.

If you have so much concrete, you're going to have a terrible time getting wifi to work reliably enough to use many cameras.

 

[mat200]

Perhaps you need to rethink where you think the cables need to go. It's likely you could put some cameras on the garage and record to an NVR or computer that's mounted inside the garage. When you get someone to bid something like this you have to be a bit careful. A lack the knowledge or imagination to do it in a more practical way and might lead someone to give you an 'I don't want this fucking job' price.

I'm fairly confident your roof isn't made of concrete and that if nothing else some conduit could be used outside the building. Do you have any kind of attic?

As for powerline protocols like Home Plug AV2 or g.HN, I'm curious why you seem so confident they won't work? How well it works varies a lot, but generally the list of reasons it might not work at all is fairly short and there are relatively simple solutions to most of those problems. There are also options like MoCa that use existing coax cable.

You can buy a big hammer drill that would have no problem drilling through several feet of concrete for a couple hundred bucks.

If you have so much concrete, you're going to have a terrible time getting wifi to work reliably enough to use many cameras.

Hi @Anchal Nigam

@tangent has some solid advice here.

If your attached garage is by the front of the house, I would use it as the "NVR network" room .. one hole out on each side of the garage door for 3 cat5e cables to 2-3 cameras on each side of the garage door. That will give you decent coverage of your driveway and hopefully front door approach.

 

[AlwaysSomething]

I started off my journey with Ring and Wyze and will never go back (cloud only, no local options when I had them, wouldn't work if internet was down, subscription costs, etc.)

Next step was going local storage and no subscriptions (still using WIFI but now learning about POE).

I bought Amcrest, Reolink, and a few other highly purchased cameras from Amazon when first getting cameras and not understanding much. It was a mix of POE and WIFI. Since then I've learned a lot from this community and have started replacing cameras with better ones when I can and POE as well.

Even for my indoor cameras that I used to watch my pets and appliances, WIFI will miss those special moments (Murphy's Law). I know you've made it clear you want WIFI so here's what I can offer with that (even though as everyone else stated it's not good).

I will say Amcrest is better than Reolink. The only Reolink products I still use are their Doorbells which are great and most on this forum will agree (there is at least 1-2 main threads on them). I have both the Wifi and POE versions of the doorbells for different locations/needs. Both great.

If you are going to use Blue Iris and don't care about the camera's proprietary apps then I would say Amcrest is good (lower end Dahua) and works well with Blue Iris. Amcrest has their own app but I don't use it anymore. Oh and with any Apps (I've tried many) you are going to constantly be playing with the Firewall rules (it's crazy how many different IPs and ports they use). The Amcrest cameras are also adjustable (ie: shutter speed, FPS, etc.). Those adjustments are key when it comes to motion. Reolink didn't have them for the cameras I had.

I also have still some Tapo (TP-Link) cameras that are REALLY cheap (inexpensive). There are some threads on here about them as well (C110 I think is the popular one). They are not bad but also have no adjustments (ie: shutter speed, FPS, etc.). I kept them for trying to "catch" those "special moments" but they tend to blur on motion. If you want to capture motion then upgrade to the Amcrest (shutter speed is key). If you only care about stills (ie: house is still standing as you mentioned) then Tapo might work. I still have some for items that don't have motion (ie: wood stove thermometers, thermostats - I don't want anything "smart" in my house, etc.)

Also, Andy (EmpireTech) is a vendor on here that offers good cameras (rebranded Dahua). I just found this indoor WIFI camera he has and plan to buy to replace at least one of my old Amcrest:

EmpireTech H4C 4MP Indoor Fixed-focal Wi-Fi Network PT Camera

1/2.8" 4Megapixel CMOS. | Max. 25/30fps@4M. | H.265 encoding. | Human detection. | Wi-Fi. | Two-way Talk. | Sound alarm.

empiretech01.com

Nice thing about this camera (and the Amcrest) is they still have an ethernet port so if you are having problems you can test if it's the camera or the WIFI (it's usually the WIFI).

One more thing, if you want to also save to SD Card (as a backup) then you can with the Amcrest (and EmpireTech) but cannot with the Tapo. The Tapo has an available SD card slot for storage but you cannot use it if you turn on the streaming (Blue Iris, Frigate, etc.). Found that out after purchasing.

Hope that helps a little with WIFI cameras... even though they still are not recommended.