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UniFi-Video Products End of Life Announcement
- exabrial 6y agoI'm totally confused... so it's not the cameras themselves? They just aren't offering cloud managed cameras, correct?
- graton 6y agoThe software will be EOL on 1-Jan-2021, but you can keep running it if you want to. As I intend to as mine is kept inside my home network, running in a container, and not exposed the the world. They are killing of their cloud based service on 1-Jan-2021.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- noodlesUK 6y agoThe cameras are the same. The UniFi video controller is an older relatively flexible NVR software which can be deployed on any hardware. The UniFi protect controller is tied to UniFi NVR hardware such as the cloud key, is pretty slick but not very flexible.
- bithavoc 6y agoIs a Dream Machine Pro a UniFi NVR protect hardware controller or do we need to acquire the dedicated NVR hardware linked in that page in order to use Protect?
- noodlesUK 6y agoA dream machine pro will run protect. I have a cloud key gen2+ with a 5tb drive that I installed and it works great.
- unixfg 6y agoProtect is their 'hybrid cloud' product. Authentication and remote access are managed by their servers, but the videos are stored locally. My guess is they managed to re-implement enough features in Protect that, after years of neglect, they could officially kill Video. It's still not feature complete :-/
- paranoidrobot 6y agoFrom what I've heard, the biggest drawback is that if you have more than a handful of cameras that you want to record in reasonably high definition, then none of Ubiquiti's hardware can keep up.
- graton 6y agoWell the Cloudkey Gen 2 Plus [1] can record up to 20 cameras. Their new Unifi Protect Network Video Recorder [2] is supposed to do 50. [1] https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-protect/products/unifi-cloudkey-gen2-plus https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-protect/products/unif... [2] https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-protect/products/unifi-protect-nvr https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-protect/products/unif...
- unixfg 6y agoTheir solution before they had bigger/faster devices was to run multiple appliances. The other pretty big problems are no backup solution, video exports limited to 10 minute clips, cloud account and Internet mandatory (at least for initial setup). What drives me bonkers is no support for valid SSL certificates because they don't want you to have to worry about that or something. It breaks the protect app when you don't use their snakeoil default. I'd still be using Unifi Video, but they broke the iOS app for like a whole year so it was use protect or switch over to something that took in RTSP from the cams.
- dotBen 6y agoWhat's going on here is Ubiquiti want to sell you a hardware+software combination (Unifi-Protect) rather than provide a free software NVR (Unifi-Video) which could run via a container on 3rd party hardware/cloud/etc. This is part of a trend towards a higher TCO for their products. However as a long-time owner of Ubiquiti network and security camera equipment I have to say I welcome the move as it has resulted in higher quality products. On the security camera front, Unifi-Protect still represents the best one-time Cap-Ex rather option rather than Op-Ex options such as Ring and Google Nest who charge monthly for camera cloud storage, etc.
- njovin 6y agoI recently started getting into home automation and was appalled to learn that Nest no longer provides an API to access my own devices. What’s the point of a “smart” system if you’re completely limited to what functionality a single vendor wants to allow? I got rid of my Nest and got an Ecobee. Their APIs are confusing IMO and missing some basic functionality but it’s workable for my needs.
- ac29 6y agoNest is transitioning to a different API, not getting rid of it completely. Individuals can sign up for access here: https://developers.google.com/nest/device-access https://developers.google.com/nest/device-access
- russell_h 6y agoAccording to that page the API for individuals won’t exist until late 2020.
- toast0 6y agoNest (Google) gotten rid of their API and are promissing to have a new API real soon now. It may not have the full features of the old API, the messaging hasn't been consistent, but they had suggested that APIs could be read only, which is limiting. Meanwhile, they've added agressive captchas to the website, and are switching our their undocumented json api for an undocumented protobuf api. Unfortunately, they seem to be the only smart thermostat that supports separate aux heat and emergency heat wires. I don't know for sure if my HVAC system actually treats those differently, but it's wired for it, and the previous system had it, so I'd want to retain that. (But please correct me if there's a better choice... I'm tired of not being able to use the hardware I bought to do what I want it to do; single stage heat pump, with 7 wires: common (c), power (r), heat pump (o), fan (g), heat/cool (y), aux heat (w2), and emergency heat (*). Bonus points if the replacement has a big mounting bracket, cause the nest one just barely covers missed paint ;)
- vvanders 6y agoPretty torn on this one. Really wish I could host Unifi-Protect on prem with my own hardware. Most of their dedicated hardware doesn't even offer raid or decent backup solutions. It's really a shame because everything else UBNT does is pretty awesome but this one feels pretty shitty.
- m0dest 6y agoThe combination of video streaming, bring-your-own-hardware, and closed source is just really difficult to get right. For every customer who has a good experience, there are three others who have some kind of persistent issue. There's just no way to deliver appliance-like reliability for a video server without controlling the hardware and OS.
- vvanders 6y agoIsn't that what cloudkey/dream machine covers though? The people who provision the types of systems we're talking about are the same that are familiar with how to spec server hardware. I had no problem with unifi-video, in fact I had better reliability via ZFS zraid then what the dream machine supports with a single disk.
- noodlesUK 6y agoThe most frustrating part of protect to me isn’t that it only runs on their hardware, but that there’s no way of making the system even a little bit redundant. You can’t back up the system, you can’t stream motion events over the internet etc. It’s very annoying. The only way to get video out of the system is to save clips to a PC with the web app. I know there was some effort to RE the proprietary video storage format, but I don’t know where it went. Otherwise it’s fantastic...
- def8cefe 6y agoYou can get RTSP feeds off the cameras.
- gonesilent 6y agoYup setup rtsp per camera and stream into AWS.
- def8cefe 6y agoYes, or on-premises. You could use whatever NVR software you want.
- m0dest 6y agoThe actual title of the article is "UniFi-Video Products End of Life Announcement". That's very different from this headline. Ubiquiti is very much still in the video business. They're just deprecating the previous generation, which has been a long time coming.
- syshum 6y agoYou definition of "long time" and mine are very different. Security camera life cycle is measured in manymany years (min of 5 if not 10+). This move is very sudden for people that have invested thousands of dollars into a security platform only to be told you have 5 months before we leave out out in the cold Not a good look for UI. I was thinking about using UI protect for myself. But their treatment of UI video customers has me rethinking that
- henriquez 6y agoThey have been saying the older Video products are deprecated for over a year now, and it’s not like they’ll suddenly stop working either. The nice thing about those cameras is the self-hosting. Nothing changes there, so what’s the problem?
- syshum 6y agoThey have been talking out of both sides of their mouth to to ensure UniFi Video NVR customers would keep buying camera's They have been saying the UniFi Video NVR would be supported for security released until Protect provided the same feature set, then they would give amble notice to transition Protect does not have the same feature set, nor is 5mos ample time for transition As far as "nothing stops working" Well things will stop working, remote access for example Further as one person on the Ubnt site asks "How long will the keep the mobile app in the app stores" if they remove it from the iPhone store and a user upgrades their phone they will have no way to install the app again. That is just 2 of the huge list of issues that this move brings
- dang 6y agoOk, we've changed to the article title. Submitted title was "Ubiquiti Video Products: End of Life Announcement".
- karlshea 6y agoI love Ubiquiti, but that's because I'm a home user. I'd never deploy them for a customer. It was obvious Protect was going to be the only solution going forward as soon as they announced it years ago. I can't fathom the surprise by anyone in that thread, because this is what they do with all of their products. They announce the replacement, lie about not phasing out the current product, and then two years later phase it out anyways. This happens every single time and should not be a shock when it happens. Next up is probably EdgeOS. That might be different just because a lot of ISPs use it, but they keep pushing UNMS and some of their new products require it (see their EA store).
- locusm 6y agoI've used EdgeMax and lots of their AP's on customer sites, amazing bang for buck. That said, Ive read future Edge devices are UNMS only. Unifi video always felt like an entry level product for home users only.
- specto 6y agoWait really? UNMS only would devalue EdgeMax routers in a huge way...
- locusm 6y agoThis thread here - https://community.ui.com/questions/Introducing-the-all-new-UNMS-Product-Line-Starting-with-the-UNMS-Switch-Lite/56c20ac0-ff2d-4fa3-a71b-4ce59759b33a https://community.ui.com/questions/Introducing-the-all-new-U... Seem to avoid the question of having a fully featured CLI
- broknbottle 6y ago404s for me
- locusm 6y agoLooks like that link requires login. One of the UI people responded but it looks like Edgemax wont be further developed. ---------------- Hello everyone, Like mentioned earlier, the EdgeMAX product line will still be supported and can be managed from the UNMS Controller (now and in the future). The EdgeSwitch and EdgeRouter products also provide an extensive Command Line Interface. Hi @WISPConsult.com , We are planning on releasing many more WISP-focused UNMS hardware devices. The UNMS-S-Lite is only the first announced device that is part of an extensive line of products. Hi @ednlcna , It is also possible to use a self-hosted UNMS instance (on-premises or third-party Cloud provider). -Ben
- raesene9 6y agoIt's interesting to read down the comments on that announcement page. Sounds like a lot of service providers feel like they're getting burned on this move, as their customer are using the services that are about to be deprecated. Another example, if one were needed, about not building your business on someone else's platform, as it can be removed at any time.
- traskjd 6y agoIt's long been a bit strange that they had two products. I needed to upgrade onto Unifi Protect as I literally couldn't get the Video app to load, it would just instantly crash. Protect is nicer, however the app is also fairly buggy. It let's down the quality found elsewhere in their product suites. Since upgrading to Protect, and rolling out new hardware at a new home, I still need to manually kill the app every time I've used it on iOS. Otherwise it says it can't connect to my system. It'll always work the first time, it'll never work a second. It's frustrating, and hopefully moving from building two sub-par products, to focusing on one, will improve the experience for everyone.
- myrandomcomment 6y agoI have the same issue on IOS. It’s really annoying. I know okay, kill the app and restart it, but trying to get the non-tech family to do that is painful. The concept of closing an app on IOS just does not register (which overall is not a bad thing expect around issues like this).
- lloydjones 6y agoI invested in a UniFi video system (NVR + 3 cameras) in mid-2018. It feels quite disheartening that these are considered legacy (unsupported & abandoned) products already..
- pdx6 6y agoThe title was a little misleading earlier. They are only discontinuing their Unifi Video product, but all the camera hardware is still supported. I have a Protect and several cameras deployed and I originally ran Unifi Video. I think the Protect product is much better but migrating from Unifi Video blows -- you can't move over your video archives.
- lloydjones 6y agoYeah I got that actually (but thanks for clarifying). It's just a pain that the NVR is going to be left to die..
- kawsper 6y agoI own 1 camera from them and self-host on my own network behind a VPN, I want no cloud stuff near something as sensitive as cameras in my home. Ubiquiti have for me always felt like a hardware company that tried to do software, I'm sad I have to find other options than their NVR, but maybe that is the way forward.
- beezischillin 6y agoThis was to be expected, when they talked about deprecating Unifi Video about a year ago they explicitly said that it's not going to be updated so it was just a matter of time until the final EOL-ing.
- exhilaration 6y agoI've been planning to install cameras at home and was considering Ubiquiti or Synology. What do you folks recommend? I'm looking for something with local storage but still has a slick app.
- tw04 6y agoIf you want something that "just works" I would venture down the synology path but be prepared to spend $$$ on camera licenses for any sizeable installation. If you don't mind rolling your own, Blue Iris is probably the most extensible with the downside that it requires far more manual configuration.
- dayjobpork 6y agoI bought a 2nd hand hp i5 to run Blue Iris, poe switch and a couple of dahua cams. The set up was pretty straightforward, there is info on the insanely toxic ipcamtalk site on recommended Blue Iris settings. Basically you need an Intel CPU to support hardware encoding and use less power, and specific setting to save the vids without reencoding.
- annoyingnoob 6y agoIn my experience, Ubiquiti's software leaves something to be desired. Rather than move to their hardware I'll move to other software. I'll still use their gear, just not the NVR.
- Khaine 6y agoDisappointing from Ubiquiti. While I don't use their video products, I was a user of their networking gear, but given this and the lack of quality / bugs in recent releases, the key features that are still missing or barely functional, I will be looking to migrate.