Ubiquiti IP Cameras

[karloz]

Hi folks,

I have a client in the manufacturing sector that has just acquired another business, so this will add a second facility to their company. The new site is about an hours drive away and has circa 50 staff (the majority of which I expect to be machine operators). I'm due to head over to their new site in the next week or so, as the owner would like me to install a WiFi network (they don't currently have one?!), and some IP based CCTV. From what I understand the company already has a maintenance contract with an IT company, which I expect to be phased out and hopefully taken over by myself. As yet though, until I get to site, I don't know anything about their IT setup at all - so bear with me.

I do know that the site isn't huge, in the region of 1000sq/m, so WiFi shouldn't be too much of a hassle and I'm initially planning on using the trusted Ubiquiti Unifi hardware, which hasn't let me down yet.

I don't know that much about the Unifi IP Camera's though. I'm probably only looking at between 3 and 5 cameras to start off with, and was wondering if anyone could give me some feedback on the units? I remember reading a while back on here that there were some teething problems with the kit - it would be interesting to see how these have developed over the past 6-12 months.

Finally, is anyone using the Surveillance Station on the Synology NAS to record footage? I have a TrendNET and an old Y-Cam at home that work fine with the Synology, just wondering whether you can add the Ubiquiti's straight in?

Cheers,

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Colleague of mine installed a few Pro models at a client of his, loved it.
Getting some of these new 2nd gen models for our office shortly..
from what I've read on their forums.....current gen UVC models do not support the Synology as an NVR.

 

[pceinc]

I've installed several different IP cameras over the years. I started out with Axis which is a very high quality camera. I just installed my first Ubiquiti UVC in my home for testing. $200 when I ordered it in November. Now appears to be $140.

1) The camera size is nice. The mount could be better. It's is not multi-directional on all 3 axis.
2) Image quality is okay for 720p camera.
3) The cloud console is what you would expect from Ubiquiti. It took me a while to get everything tweaked the way I wanted, recording schedule, etc.. The recording can be set to go to a NAS but the console must run from a PC. The playback of images is decent as well. I looked at the dedicated NVR they offer. It's a small HD and I could not find anywhere that it was upgradable.

I just finished installing a new model from my go to Korean dealer in my home yesterday. 4 total. All support 1600x1280 30fps and have variable bit rate and frame rate for both live stream and recording. They attach to a dedicated NVR which takes 2 hard drives. The cost of the cameras was $85 each and another $340 for an NVR with no hard drive. The NVR has a built in 8 port POE switch and will accept up to 32 cameras. This is not a super high quality IP camera system and does not compare to the quality of Phillips or Axis cameras. However, for the money, if a camera died, I would just replace it. Phillips and Axis cameras start at 3x what I paid for the Korean brand. The features of the NVR are plenty. The one thing I can say about the Korean brand is they have security monitoring in mind. You can tell Ubiquiti is new to the market.

Would I buy another Ubiquiti camera or sell them to client? Probably not. I have sold the Korean brand IP cameras to clients and they love them. I've not had one fail without some other factor at play such as surge.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What are the Korean brands you're getting? Hikvision or Dahua?

 

[pceinc]

I buy from Unix CCTV in NY. They have several offices across the country but carry a very wide variety of CCTV hardware and tools. Their first brand of IP camera was Prime. They sell several new brands and seem to ramping up the IP line. The last set I bought were listed as IP Power. Interestingly enough, the first brand I bought which is marked as Prime was also sold under Level One via D&H. Albeit a little more expensive. They were just re-branded from who ever manufactured them. I installed some of them at client about a year ago. Put in a 16 channel NVR but only installed 5 cameras. They wanted to add 8 cameras in November. When I tried to order them, Unix said they no longer carried them. I searched all over the place then remembered they were sold as Level One via D&H. Not knowing what the model number cross reference was, I ended up ordered 3 sets of cameras before I got the ones that worked with the NVR I had in place. All the new cameras use the Onvif standard so NVR/camera compatibility should be easier to work out going forward.

 

[karloz]

Thanks for the info guys. As it will be quite a small CCTV installation, I might give the Ubiquiti cameras a try. It would be nice to standardize the networking hardware as much as possible.