[schwank]

I use UniFi devices throughout my home but the cameras (G3 specifically) are buggy and frequently disconnect, and don't auto reconnect. Basically useless.

Over the year end holidays I was traveling and set one up to monitor my front yard. There was actually an incident while I was gone and I remoted in to find the camera offline, totally missed it when it should have had perfect perspective. The police asked me for video and in this case I would have shared it, but alas could not. Sucks as I have the CloudKey box for video storage, but its very undependable in my experience.

[zrail]

This has not been my experience with mostly G4 pro hardwired PoE cameras. I have their G4 doorbell and did have similar problems until I upgraded its transformer and pointed an access point directly at it. Been smooth sailing ever since.

[arrosenberg]

This has been my experience. In a year of use I've had 0 problems with PoE cameras and maybe 2-3 disconnects on the doorbell over wifi.

[schwank]

Appreciate the feedback, glad to hear that I am an anomaly. The camera is on WiFi and I have a mesh network with multiple UniFi APs. Both get good signal where the camera is located. Even in the same room as the AP my max uptime is about 1 day before it disconnects.

[zrail]

I ended up making a dedicated 2.4GHz-only SSID for my wifi cameras, which seems to have helped. I think forcing them to 2.4GHz, at least for my house RF situation, was the thing that helped the most.

[surfsvammel]

That is not my experience with them at all. I have about 10 G3 cameras. They have never been any problem at all. Nothing.

My cloud key however, have killed a couple of drives over the years though.

[hot_gril]

What concerns me isn't so much that the camera was down but that you didn't know it was down. Does it not alert you of that?

[schwank]

No. At least not by default. I don't believe in pervasive surveillance however so I only really use it when away from home for extended periods.

[hot_gril]

Hmm, there's no good reason the system shouldn't alert you of that by default. It's like if my Heroku jobs crashed and nothing told me.

[Axsuul]

Would you not recommend UniFi then? Will you be migrating to another system?

[zrail]

I have a smallish Protect system (UNVR, four G4 Pros, one doorbell, two G3 Instants).

The positives are that it pretty much just works. The mobile app is excellent, the web app on the UNVR is fine, and it has full spousal approval factor.

I have had very few issues with the system, primarily just the doorbell was unreliable until I upgraded the transformer and put an access point right next to it. I had an issue with the NVR right before it went out of warranty and I fixed it by replacing the internal USB drive with an SSD.

The negatives are that it's more costly than other options, Ubiquiti has had perennial stock problems over the last few years, and you're locked into their ecosystem. The NVR won't work with generic cameras and you can't run the software on your own hardware.

It's also possible that, if you have their remote access proxy set up (required for mobile app), you could be subject to the same warrant issues as with Ring.

[schwank]

The Access Points, PoE switch, and firewall work fine. My only dissatisfaction has been the G3 camera. As others have stated its a big investment so not moving off the ecosystem today. However when its time to upgrade everything I will certainly shop around.