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thats for some new version they released recently. Most of us have the original wifi or the poe. I love my poe one with no issues. Also this is an advanced doorbell not for your grandma. You need you can really fine tune detection like mask-off things you dont want to be triggered etc.
Without WiFi is a great first step. If you are doing all the cabling, and looking for more of closed ecosystem- highly recommend you look at the Ubiquiti line up. They have doorbells, all kinds of cameras, sirens, and etc. All with amazing software, no subscriptions. If you are more of a nerd, you can buy a Reolink PoE doorbell + any traditional IP cams (Reolink, Dahua, Uniview, Hikvision- avoid Lorex etc) + your own mini PC plus external storage. You would setup Frigate or [Scrypted NVR](https://demo.scrypted.app) . Scrypted has a $40 annual license (4 cams included, $10 per additional cam). But it has amazing AI features, on par or better than the Ubiquiti Unifi NVR stuff.
I would recommend the Reolink doorbell (not battery). There is also the Amcrest AD410, but most have jumped onto the Reolink once it was released. Reason being is it isn't locked down, you can add it other NVRs, software (i.e. Blue Iris), or your own NVR stack (Scrypted NVR - AI face recognition etc). All your own storage. Not that expensive to do imo- mini PC $180 + NAS/external storage $250.
Yes I am. The battery one only records motion, and only works with the Reolink app. It doesn't do proper 24/7 recording. You will end up locked in. You can put an sd card into either, and access the recordings through the Reolink app. The way I suggested, you would build your own Network Video Recorder. Buy your own storage. But with that you get a lot more freedom. Hope that makes sense.
Just to make sure. The battery one is what I advised against. The Non battery just uses the power from your regular doorbell- not hard to install. Apologies- throughout this thing I didn't read your last sentence. If you don't have the connections, then yeah... Only other thing I could recommend is running Ethernet to the doorbell, but that required running the wire :P
> From what I can tell, nearly all wired video doorbells have a built-in battery that you can’t replace, The Reolink PoE doorbell I have does not have an internal battery. I believe its the same case for the Unifi doorbell too.
Reolink Doorbell specifically the PoE version if you can run ethernet to the door, if not they have Wi-Fi version that can be wired to an existing doorbell transformer.
Reolink and Dahua/Amcrest. I'm using both, and they both work well as cameras and with HA. Make sure to watch these videos too: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-51DG-VULPom8Ud6vdf56Oeq51yA2xlp There are a couple of videos on there about what to look for when shopping and setting up cameras. You also get pretty good, real views of what the cameras can do in different light situations. Personally, I think putting security cameras on Wi-Fi makes no sense except for circumstances when running wire is completely impractical. If you own the house, and you can source the correct tools, it's relatively simple but very time-consuming and tiring if it's hot out. It's worth it if you care about security. > Any suggestions or feedback on my VLAN plan would be great. Putting security cameras on a separate VLAN is pretty standard practice. For your doorbell camera, I highly suggest Reolink because they are one of the few that offer a PoE doorbell. I had an Amcrest AD100 before, and it worked well, but it was unreliable over Wi-Fi even with a relatively strong home network. A repeater might've helped, but if I was going to do a repeater, I would've much rather set up a proper second or third Wi-Fi AP. At that point, it would've been just as much work to run Ethernet to the doorbell for me.
Sorry, I'm in the US but, Reolink and amcrest is what I use. Amcrest for all my wired security cameras, and reolink for my doorbell. If you care about the app, and direct HA integration, Reolink is probably your best choice in the inexpensive fully local market. Amcrest doesn't have a direct integration into HA, but they're nearly all rebranded Dahua so you can sometimes use the Dahua integration or in some cases need to find a way to load the original Dahua firmware onto the cameras. The second part seems to be getting more difficult with the more recent amcrest cameras. > 5mp+ is better Not sure where you saw this, but it's not always the case. The higher the resolution, the smaller the pixels to pick up light. Some cameras do make up for this with larger sensors, but not always. Generally, I feel like 5MP is more than enough for most situations. If you need to get clear images of people's faces or license plates, put the camera lower to the ground and get one with a longer focal length. If you want something more like the apple ecosystem, where things just work, and there's interoperability with multiple other systems from the same manufatcurer check out Ubiquiti. You get a ton of cool, enterprise grade features, but the cost is way higher, especially if you don't already have unifi hardware.
We have a Reolink PoE doorbell and I have it in Home Assistant and Unifi Protect.
I use the Reolink integration and Frigate with HA for live camera feeds on my dashboards and things like pop-ups when someone rings the doorbell. I use Unifi Protect as a separate recording system. Lots of ways to slice and dice it. Edit: I also have Hikvision ptz cameras in both systems. PTZ controls via ONVIF work better in Frigate than UProtect in my opinion.
Go with Reolink POE. Wifi jammers or flipper zero can't do anything to it.
I use this Reolink poe doorbell for around 1.5y. It was great, but picture quality degraded over time. Might be that it was exposed to too much sun
I live with the bad picture quality and wait that Reolink is launching a new Poe doorbell
I use one of these through home assistant and use the reolink app as well. It definitely works.
Native app is perfect. No sub needed for that, there are ways to make it work with your own hosting but I have used the app so far and it works like a charm
Rankings by Use Case
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Best for Privacy and data sovereignty

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