I know a few people around here are running Home Assistant and the like. I'm keen to put in a few cameras, preferably not cloud connected but that can connect to Home Assistant. I'm planning on adding object detection via coral.

I'm thinking cameras powered by PoE. Anyone got suggestions for outdoor cameras?

What about a switch that outputs PoE and doesn't cost thousands? Maybe something like this? Though I don't seem to see good bang for buck switches where they are all PoE, they seem to just do half of the ports PoE though 8 PoE ports seems like it would be plenty.

And on another note, any suggestions for a network level VPN client? That is, for connecting the home nenetwork to an external VPN server (one that handles hundreds of Mbps, preferably wireguard). Is something like this appropriate? It's CPU is only 1Ghz so I worry it will be slow.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I have a poe managed ubiquity switch and use reolink Poe cameras and reolinks Poe doorbell. Home assistant has great support for reolink; It's also local. I have home assistant save the streams on motion detection to a network mounted drive in home assistant

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Just to second this - I've upgraded all but one camera to Reolink RLC-810A a few years back and they're rock solid. All offline (no internet, but connected to Home Assistant on a separate LAN), all powered by a cheap unmanaged PoE switch from PB Tech. (Edit: this one).

They're recording 24/7 to their local memory, but I almost entirely use them via Home Assistant's ability to pull a JPEG directly from the camera (because it takes a fraction of a second at 4k vs the unbearable pain of waiting >10s for video to buffer even at SD resolution).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Oh wow, it's a PoE switch where it's all PoE, instead of only half!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

That's awesome, looks like PB Tech have a huge range of Reolink!

But with choice comes more questions 😆. PoE means you don't need separate power for the camera. But it looks like they sell solar powered wifi ones. Is there a benefit of using PoE instead of wifi+solar?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Well worth running Poe if you can. Poe can also power some wifi access points(I use ubiquity sps I bought cheap on trademr), so you can hide them in your roof space.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

It just sounds like so much work 😆. How does the actual running of PoE work? Do I measure the distance at say 18m then buy a 20m cable to use, or am I buying a big roll, cutting it to size, and adding the plug on the end? (And if the latter, how do I do that?)

Do I have to be careful about which cable I get to make sure it supports PoE, or can I grab any cat5 or cat6?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The solar/battery models don't run 24/7 - you can trigger them remotely (so you can check the live feed whenever) or they can trigger with motion. Still perfectly useful for a bunch of use cases (e.g. just checking if you closed something, or installed somewhere that motion sensing is reliable like a low-traffic corridor) but not super useful for, say, a front door.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Oh that's super useful to know, thanks!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

From what I've encountered, that CPU will probably be just fine unless it's doing a lot of other stuff too.

I've also noticed that PoE switches that aren't crippled sme how are rare as hens teeth for consumer grade gear. I.e. only some ports, or only support one of the protocols,or are themselves really picky about supply voltage.

My only recommendation is to take the time to figure it all out: and if a fact is omitted assume the worst.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Thanks for the reply!

From what I’ve encountered, that CPU will probably be just fine unless it’s doing a lot of other stuff too.

I had a bit more of a search around, and it seems this specific UXG-Lite is giving people speeds around 30 or 40Mbps. For a whole of network VPN, that's nowhere near fast enough! I'm looking for 200Mbps, preferably more.

This one claims 393Mbps with wireguard. I was earlier reading that you should look for a dedicated VPN box not a wifi/all in one thing but this seems to be pretty good value for money if it works. I don't need the wifi as I have a couple of mesh access points but I'll take it if it's there.

I was looking at Ubiquiti as the wifi mesh is an Amplifi one but searching around it seems all the Ubiquiti gateways have really bad VPN performance.

I’ve also noticed that PoE switches that aren’t crippled sme how are rare as hens teeth for consumer grade gear. I.e. only some ports, or only support one of the protocols,or are themselves really picky about supply voltage.

My only recommendation is to take the time to figure it all out: and if a fact is omitted assume the worst.

I'm not sure I have the knowledge to figure it all out 😆. How will I know if it's going to be picky about voltage? What PoE protocols should I be looking for, I didn't realise there were options 😆