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Harl0

Harl0

Harl0

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Joined
23 Oct 2012
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213
Hi everyone

I am planning to revamp my home network to cater for IP Cameras and VLANs.

Please see below diagrams which represent my current and proposed solutions respectively.

Current
https://app.lucidchart.com/publicSegments/view/e642f107-0008-4bd2-8681-bb100be41e27/image.jpeg

Proposed
https://app.lucidchart.com/publicSegments/view/7e48d407-eeea-4d63-86d2-0c5c801a934f/image.jpeg

Design Considersation
Due to wanting to run IP Cameras hardwired to view the front, back, side and internal room, I figured running the PoE Switch in the loft would be best?

There is a single RJ45 connection in the office (upstairs). The Cat5e cable originates next to the modem point, and is run externally to the first floor.

I am currently torn between the UDMP and UDM. If I go down the UDM route, I need to purchase a separate NVR. If I go down the UDMP route, I need at least one AP.

The IoT devices include Philips Hue, Hive, Arlo etc which I could in theory run from the loft, fingers crossed the signal reaches the receivers for these devices!

We may also be moving house soon, but the solution should remain the same.

I have gravitated to the Ubiquity gear as they seem well regarded and the ecosytem looks robust.

Let me know what you think.

Cheers!
 
If you want a UniFi system then please do your research thoroughly. The UDM Pro has significant issues and although UniFi Protect is sold as a working system its really alpha/beta at best.

The UDM is fine and I would suggest you get a completely separate camera system to UniFi. The cameras are extortionately expensive and only work with other UniFi gear so if Ubiquiti stop selling Protect you’ll need to get something else anyway.

Personally, I’d be looking at a UDM for the network and a Dahua/Hikvision PoE NVR at which point you don’t need VLANs because you can just put the NVR on a completely different subnet.
 
I have just put a UDM in, after researching it met my requirements and more

I have various VLANS set up, easy to do once you know how

I was also advised by a different retailer to avoid unifi protect and they sell unifi so @WJA96 advice to me was good
 
@WJA96
I've been using UniFi Protect for some time now and funnily enough it's given me the least issues out of all Ubiquiti solutions i've used, i've found it to be great. I'd be interested to know why consider it to be more "beta" than the usual for Ubiquti.

Other points are spot on mind.
 
WJA96 said:
If you want a UniFi system then please do your research thoroughly. The UDM Pro has significant issues and although UniFi Protect is sold as a working system its really alpha/beta at best.

The UDM is fine and I would suggest you get a completely separate camera system to UniFi. The cameras are extortionately expensive and only work with other UniFi gear so if Ubiquiti stop selling Protect you’ll need to get something else anyway.

Personally, I’d be looking at a UDM for the network and a Dahua/Hikvision PoE NVR at which point you don’t need VLANs because you can just put the NVR on a completely different subnet.
Click to expand...

Would you happen to have any recommendations for a system suitable for 5 cameras initially? They will be used to cover the outside of the house. I’d like to be able to access the cameras remotely, and push backups to Cloud storage.

I’ve taken a look through the forums and it seems a Synology NVR1218 and h265 rated cameras are the way to go?

I’ve got a budget of around £600
 
Last edited:
Yaayuh! said:
@WJA96
I've been using UniFi Protect for some time now and funnily enough it's given me the least issues out of all Ubiquiti solutions i've used, i've found it to be great. I'd be interested to know why consider it to be more "beta" than the usual for Ubiquti.

Other points are spot on mind.
Click to expand...

It’s just buggy. Failures to stay up for long periods, failures to communicate with cameras, recording failures, app failures. It’s just not ready for prime time.
 
WJA96 said:
It’s just buggy. Failures to stay up for long periods, failures to communicate with cameras, recording failures, app failures. It’s just not ready for prime time.
Click to expand...

That’s not so good to hear. I’ve literally had no issues with mine with 5 cameras. The only annoyance in fact was when the cloud access failed and the app didn’t connect local, which was stupid. But they changed that a couple of months back.
Flawless since, for me.
 
Harl0 said:
Would you happen to have any recommendations for a system suitable for 5 cameras initially? They will be used to cover the outside of the house. I’d like to be able to access the cameras remotely, and push backups to Cloud storage.

I’ve taken a look through the forums and it seems a Synology NVR1218 and h265 rated cameras are the way to go?

I’ve got a budget of around £600
Click to expand...

£600 for 5 cameras and a recorder is going to be impossible from Dahua or Hikvision. Just that NVR-218 with 5 camera licences will be almost half your budget. And a 2-3Tb HDD is going to swallow up another 75-ish. Which leaves you £50/camera. Maybe have a look at Reolink?

The cheapest Dahua I would recommend should be
Dahua DH-IPC-HFW3549T1-AS-PV with the
Dahua DHI-NVR4108HS-8P-4KS2 Lite NVR which would Be £850 and then you still need a HDD so a 2Tb Surveillance HDD is going to be £70 or so at which point it’s over £900 and that assumes you don’t need any mounting brackets, cables or connectors.

Did you still have the £600 budget for the UniFi Protect kit? That would be even more.
 
WJA96 said:

£600 for 5 cameras and a recorder is going to be impossible from Dahua or Hikvision. Just that NVR-218 with 5 camera licences will be almost half your budget. And a 2-3Tb HDD is going to swallow up another 75-ish. Which leaves you £50/camera. Maybe have a look at Reolink?

The cheapest Dahua I would recommend should be
Dahua DH-IPC-HFW3549T1-AS-PV with the
Dahua DHI-NVR4108HS-8P-4KS2 Lite NVR which would Be £850 and then you still need a HDD so a 2Tb Surveillance HDD is going to be £70 or so at which point it’s over £900 and that assumes you don’t need any mounting brackets, cables or connectors.

Did you still have the £600 budget for the UniFi Protect kit? That would be even more.
Click to expand...

The initial budget of £600 was purely for the CCVT solution - I can increase this, but I'd like to keep the costs under £1k if possible. I guess I could start with a couple of cameras and build out as required.

I'd rather start off with the most suitable gear for my needs and add to it later than skimp on costs now and regret it later.
 
Harl0 said:
The initial budget of £600 was purely for the CCVT solution - I can increase this, but I'd like to keep the costs under £1k if possible. I guess I could start with a couple of cameras and build out as required.

I'd rather start off with the most suitable gear for my needs and add to it later than skimp on costs now and regret it later.
Click to expand...

I think that's the right way to go personally. And I wouldn't change my recommendation as a result. The Dahua recorder will do everything the NVR-1218 will and has the advantage it it's PoE++ so it will power any camera, including the powerful PTZs if you ever want to go that way.
 
WJA96 said:
I think that's the right way to go personally. And I wouldn't change my recommendation as a result. The Dahua recorder will do everything the NVR-1218 will and has the advantage it it's PoE++ so it will power any camera, including the powerful PTZs if you ever want to go that way.
Click to expand...

This is great information, thank you!

Just out of interest, why that particular Dahua camera?
 
Harl0 said:
This is great information, thank you!

Just out of interest, why that particular Dahua camera?
Click to expand...

It’s the best camera on the market at the moment. It has excellent daytime performance, it has full colour night time performance because it generates it’s own daylight at night. It’s a simple intruder alarm (if you want to use that) and it has heaps of processing power so you get very few false alerts when you set it correctly.
 
WJA96 said:
It’s the best camera on the market at the moment. It has excellent daytime performance, it has full colour night time performance because it generates it’s own daylight at night. It’s a simple intruder alarm (if you want to use that) and it has heaps of processing power so you get very few false alerts when you set it correctly.
Click to expand...

Ok great, thanks!

Do you know if your recommendation comes in dome format - I've had a look but Dahua dont make it easy to find this out.

Do you also happen to have a recommendation suitable for an internal camera?
 
Harl0 said:
Ok great, thanks!

Do you know if your recommendation comes in dome format - I've had a look but Dahua dont make it easy to find this out.

Do you also happen to have a recommendation suitable for an internal camera?
Click to expand...

They do it as a turret, but just be aware that it compromises the illumination of the image at night so I tend not to use it unless someone is desperate for a smaller camera. Internally, I’m assuming you dint want the night illumination so you’re looking for an IR camera? In that case pretty much anything would do because IR reflections are much less of an issue indoors at night. Probably something like IPC-HDW2531TMP-AS-S2-280 (2.8mm) or IPC-HDW2531TMP-AS-S2-360 (3.6mm). They’re pretty cheap (~£70ish).
 
WJA96 said:
They do it as a turret, but just be aware that it compromises the illumination of the image at night so I tend not to use it unless someone is desperate for a smaller camera. Internally, I’m assuming you dint want the night illumination so you’re looking for an IR camera? In that case pretty much anything would do because IR reflections are much less of an issue indoors at night. Probably something like IPC-HDW2531TMP-AS-S2-280 (2.8mm) or IPC-HDW2531TMP-AS-S2-360 (3.6mm). They’re pretty cheap (~£70ish).
Click to expand...

Thanks again for the info!

I don’t suppose you’ve a recommendation for cabling to run externally to the cameras do you? Do you think I should use a patch panel?
 
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