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Unifi G4 Doorbell Pro [0] is a great self-hosted option. I've been very happy with mine over the last year, but I was already bought into the unifi ecosystem wi

Unifi G4 Doorbell Pro [0] is a great self-hosted option. I've been very happy with mine over the last year, but I was already bought into the unifi ecosystem with a UDM Pro SE and U6 mesh APs. 0: https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/cameras-doorbells/collections/pro-store-doorbells-chimes/products/uvc-g4-doorbell-pro https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/cameras-doorbells/collec...

IT4MD 1y ago
I just installed mine (last weekend) and use a Unifi stack at home. 100% recommended alternative.
nerdsniper 1y ago
Alternatively, the Reolink Doorbell cameras for anyone who doesn't want to be on the Unifi/Ubiquiti platform. Also I believe all these cameras provide a generic RTSP feed which can be consumed by any computer running Frigate[0], an open-source NVR/AI platform. 0: https://frigate.video https://frigate.video (Reolink, Unifi/Ubiquiti, and Frigate are all good solutions for anyone who is not interested in supporting the proliferation of a police-state)
- jdyer9 1y ago
  If it matters to you, Reolink is a Chinese owned company. Not passing judgement one way or another, but if avoiding Unifi over the remote incident matters, I could see this factoring in as well.
  - WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
    > If it matters to you, Reolink is a Chinese owned company. It does matter to me. Because I am an American, my greatest risks (actual and theoretical) are from American entities. Conversely, China has little actual power to negatively impact my life. I am most comfortable (and arguably safer) with Chinese gear.
  - davkan 1y ago
    Separate vlans for iot devices with strict firewall rules is generally enough to mitigate the threat of most iot devices phoning home i think. We’re already in the territory of hobbyists who should be able to manage that with these suggestions like ubiquity and frigate.
mway 1y ago
Unfortunate that there's no stock except for the PoE variant. I wonder if it's because the G6 is (afaict) launching in Q4? I guess we'll just have to hold tight for now.
zrail 1y ago
I have a Unifi Protect system and am generally pretty happy with it. The biggest problem I have is similar in spirit to the Ring problem: remote access is required to get push alerts from the mobile app. Unifi had an issue at the end of 2023 where users could access consoles they didn't own through remote access: https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/15/ubiquiti_camera_privacy/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/15/ubiquiti_camera_priva... If I (or more specifically my spouse) could work the mobile app without SSO I'd be thoroughly satisfied. As it stands I have some regrets.
- vanc_cefepime 1y ago
  I have the same UI protect system w 7 cameras. After that incident, I made it local only. I like Unifi gear, but I became super paranoid after that incident. After some digging around, I found homebridge [0] (with the homebridge-unifi-protect plugin by hjdhjd [1]) which fixed that for me by tying the UI Protect system into Apple's HomeKit ecosystem (which also leverages the homekit secure video that keeps alerts/motion/snapshots on iCloud). Now all our devices are able to have it popup alerts for motions, packages, etc. It's not perfect, but this way I'm able to get alerts without tying in to Unifi's SSO system. I also still like to open the UI Protect app when I'm not on the local network to sometimes archive videos, view cameras, mess with one of the new UI PTZ cameras, so I have backup access options, including Tailscale. Tailscale doesn't give me the alerts I want, but lets me access the app as if I were still at home. I also have it tied in with HomeAssistant and recently began playing around with go2rtc. I'm a super-newb when it comes to all this but 2022 is when I began getting fed up with all these privacy nightmares and began to teach myself selfhosting, docker, etc so I can mitigate all this. Unfortunately, I'm the only one who knows how to tinker and keep all this updated. However, I do have documentation for my wife how to access everything and start fresh to make it easier on her by using UI's SSO way so it "just works" as they say in the Macintosh World, when I'm no longer around. [0] https://homebridge.io/ https://homebridge.io/ [1] https://github.com/hjdhjd/homebridge-unifi-protect#readme https://github.com/hjdhjd/homebridge-unifi-protect#readme
  - zrail 1y ago
    That's a really interesting setup, thanks for the links! I'm pretty deep into Home Assistant but that plugin looks amazing.

IT4MD 1y ago

I just installed mine (last weekend) and use a Unifi stack at home. 100% recommended alternative.

nerdsniper 1y ago

Alternatively, the Reolink Doorbell cameras for anyone who doesn't want to be on the Unifi/Ubiquiti platform. Also I believe all these cameras provide a generic RTSP feed which can be consumed by any computer running Frigate[0], an open-source NVR/AI platform. 0: https://frigate.video https://frigate.video (Reolink, Unifi/Ubiquiti, and Frigate are all good solutions for anyone who is not interested in supporting the proliferation of a police-state)

jdyer9 1y ago
If it matters to you, Reolink is a Chinese owned company. Not passing judgement one way or another, but if avoiding Unifi over the remote incident matters, I could see this factoring in as well.
- WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
  > If it matters to you, Reolink is a Chinese owned company. It does matter to me. Because I am an American, my greatest risks (actual and theoretical) are from American entities. Conversely, China has little actual power to negatively impact my life. I am most comfortable (and arguably safer) with Chinese gear.
- davkan 1y ago
  Separate vlans for iot devices with strict firewall rules is generally enough to mitigate the threat of most iot devices phoning home i think. We’re already in the territory of hobbyists who should be able to manage that with these suggestions like ubiquity and frigate.

mway 1y ago

Unfortunate that there's no stock except for the PoE variant. I wonder if it's because the G6 is (afaict) launching in Q4? I guess we'll just have to hold tight for now.

zrail 1y ago

I have a Unifi Protect system and am generally pretty happy with it. The biggest problem I have is similar in spirit to the Ring problem: remote access is required to get push alerts from the mobile app. Unifi had an issue at the end of 2023 where users could access consoles they didn't own through remote access: https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/15/ubiquiti_camera_privacy/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/15/ubiquiti_camera_priva... If I (or more specifically my spouse) could work the mobile app without SSO I'd be thoroughly satisfied. As it stands I have some regrets.

vanc_cefepime 1y ago
I have the same UI protect system w 7 cameras. After that incident, I made it local only. I like Unifi gear, but I became super paranoid after that incident. After some digging around, I found homebridge [0] (with the homebridge-unifi-protect plugin by hjdhjd [1]) which fixed that for me by tying the UI Protect system into Apple's HomeKit ecosystem (which also leverages the homekit secure video that keeps alerts/motion/snapshots on iCloud). Now all our devices are able to have it popup alerts for motions, packages, etc. It's not perfect, but this way I'm able to get alerts without tying in to Unifi's SSO system. I also still like to open the UI Protect app when I'm not on the local network to sometimes archive videos, view cameras, mess with one of the new UI PTZ cameras, so I have backup access options, including Tailscale. Tailscale doesn't give me the alerts I want, but lets me access the app as if I were still at home. I also have it tied in with HomeAssistant and recently began playing around with go2rtc. I'm a super-newb when it comes to all this but 2022 is when I began getting fed up with all these privacy nightmares and began to teach myself selfhosting, docker, etc so I can mitigate all this. Unfortunately, I'm the only one who knows how to tinker and keep all this updated. However, I do have documentation for my wife how to access everything and start fresh to make it easier on her by using UI's SSO way so it "just works" as they say in the Macintosh World, when I'm no longer around. [0] https://homebridge.io/ https://homebridge.io/ [1] https://github.com/hjdhjd/homebridge-unifi-protect#readme https://github.com/hjdhjd/homebridge-unifi-protect#readme
- zrail 1y ago
  That's a really interesting setup, thanks for the links! I'm pretty deep into Home Assistant but that plugin looks amazing.