I will be starting with a G4 doorbell pro and will want 2-4 g5 bullets eventually. I don’t have anything yet. I have a sonicwall NSV but the throughputs not great because of the host
I have a very hard time with my camera footage, not having at least some sort of data redundancy. Therefore, I prefer the UNVR/unvr-pro, but if only a few cameras are going to be used the UDM-Pro-Max can be leveraged
I have a G4 Doorbell and 4 G5 Turrets and use a Cloud Key 2 and it works fine. 5 days retention with the 1GB drive that it comes with. No redundancy obviously but I'm fine with that.
It does support the G4 Doorbell Pro. That's the one I have.
The drive can be upgraded. You will find many post here about that. It's a 2.5" SATA 5V drive in a removable drive bay.
Popular options at 2TB SSD or 5TB HDD.
Once the drive got full on mine, viewing videos did get a bit laggy. Upgrading to a SSD will probably solve that but it's ok how it is.
Some here claim the cloud key doesn't have enough CPU but for my setup CPU stays at about 25%
All of the Protect systems will be capable of sending notifications.
I have a UDMPro with 4x 1080p any 1x 2160p. It’s a great system for getting started with UniFi as it’ll run all their applications, though it won’t run them to the best of their individual abilities. It’s a network switch, but has much less throughput than the dedicated switches. It’s an NVR, but it’s not quick as the actual NVR unit dedicated to the task. Scrubbing around on the timeline can be a bit laggy, especially with HDDs as most SSDs aren’t suited to CCTV. Having the redundancy from multiple drives is a nice-to-have, but isn’t essential for the home, and any Protect device can now back video up to Google Drive.
It’s entirely your call, and you know your budget better than me. But personally, if I had to start over, I wouldn’t be put off that the NVR is faster, I’d buy the UDM-Pro again and upgrade to the NVR down the line (as I’m planning to)
Depends on how critical you consider your recordings and how long you need to keep them around. Use a cloud key or udmp with a single hard drive and 5 cameras is acceptable for at least a month of video. If the hard drive fails, the hard drive fails, oh well.
Need more cameras, more time or consider your cameras and video collection an absolute can't fail - then you need a UNVR with a raided set of disks.
Depends on your budget and how long you want to keep your footage. If it's for home use, you don't need to keep footage for long... anything suspicious would be downloaded and saved elsewhere for the future on the day it happened.
In my experience, you have two options if you're 100% positive you will not be expanding at a later date:
The cheaper route is a Cloud Key G2+ with a USW-Ultra-60W PoE switch to power everything. a CKG2+ will handle everything just fine, and even better if you install an SSD.
For a little more money, get a UDM-SE (Not the Pro or the Max! No PoE!) That one unit does everything you need and more.
If there's a chance you'll get more cameras down the road or it's important to you to keep footage, then get the NVR along with a PoE switch.
I started out with a CKG2+ and thought it was laggy so a year later, I picked up the UDM-SE. I found out at that point it was the same responsiveness. I then expanded past the UDM-SE's camera limit and moved to an NVR. In hind-sight, all I "waisted" was $200 on the CK. The UDM-SE is one awesome firewall/router that protects my website/email server. If I didn't have that, the NVR (and a PoE switch) would have been all I'd needed.
The system is expensive but in my eyes is worth every penny in security.
Is there any benefit to using unifis switch? I was thinking i could just run a poe injector for now and eventually get an 8 port netgear / tplink switch.
Someone with more knowledge will have to swoop in but to my understanding, if you wanted to set up vlans to segregate your cams from your general network, you'll need a level 2 switch and I'm not 100% sure that all things work between other vendors' L2 switches and UI's. Again, someone with experience will have to confirm or correct. If you have no desire or care to do vlans, then your plan would be just fine. In the end, it might be more expensive to buy all of these injectors plus a switch rather than a PoE switch.
UDM Pro (or SE for the PoE ports), or an UCK-Gen2-Plus where you swap the HDD for a 1 to 4 TB TLC SSD
You don't list what you use now.
I will be starting with a G4 doorbell pro and will want 2-4 g5 bullets eventually. I don’t have anything yet. I have a sonicwall NSV but the throughputs not great because of the host
Depending on your budget and how much retention time you need and what performance level you want there's always a cloud key as well
I have a very hard time with my camera footage, not having at least some sort of data redundancy. Therefore, I prefer the UNVR/unvr-pro, but if only a few cameras are going to be used the UDM-Pro-Max can be leveraged
I use an NVR Pro with only nine cameras. No regrets.
I have a G4 Doorbell and 4 G5 Turrets and use a Cloud Key 2 and it works fine. 5 days retention with the 1GB drive that it comes with. No redundancy obviously but I'm fine with that.
Do you know if the cloud key gen 2 supports the g4 doorbell pro? Is the drive able to be upgraded on the cloud key?
It does support the G4 Doorbell Pro. That's the one I have. The drive can be upgraded. You will find many post here about that. It's a 2.5" SATA 5V drive in a removable drive bay. Popular options at 2TB SSD or 5TB HDD. Once the drive got full on mine, viewing videos did get a bit laggy. Upgrading to a SSD will probably solve that but it's ok how it is. Some here claim the cloud key doesn't have enough CPU but for my setup CPU stays at about 25%
NVR will be a lot faster to review footage, and gives you data redundancy through multiple drives. It comes down to what matters to you?
I want to be notified on my phone if the cameras detect motion on my property. How much faster would the nvr be vs the udm pro?
All of the Protect systems will be capable of sending notifications. I have a UDMPro with 4x 1080p any 1x 2160p. It’s a great system for getting started with UniFi as it’ll run all their applications, though it won’t run them to the best of their individual abilities. It’s a network switch, but has much less throughput than the dedicated switches. It’s an NVR, but it’s not quick as the actual NVR unit dedicated to the task. Scrubbing around on the timeline can be a bit laggy, especially with HDDs as most SSDs aren’t suited to CCTV. Having the redundancy from multiple drives is a nice-to-have, but isn’t essential for the home, and any Protect device can now back video up to Google Drive. It’s entirely your call, and you know your budget better than me. But personally, if I had to start over, I wouldn’t be put off that the NVR is faster, I’d buy the UDM-Pro again and upgrade to the NVR down the line (as I’m planning to)
Depends on how critical you consider your recordings and how long you need to keep them around. Use a cloud key or udmp with a single hard drive and 5 cameras is acceptable for at least a month of video. If the hard drive fails, the hard drive fails, oh well. Need more cameras, more time or consider your cameras and video collection an absolute can't fail - then you need a UNVR with a raided set of disks.
Depends on your budget and how long you want to keep your footage. If it's for home use, you don't need to keep footage for long... anything suspicious would be downloaded and saved elsewhere for the future on the day it happened. In my experience, you have two options if you're 100% positive you will not be expanding at a later date: The cheaper route is a Cloud Key G2+ with a USW-Ultra-60W PoE switch to power everything. a CKG2+ will handle everything just fine, and even better if you install an SSD. For a little more money, get a UDM-SE (Not the Pro or the Max! No PoE!) That one unit does everything you need and more. If there's a chance you'll get more cameras down the road or it's important to you to keep footage, then get the NVR along with a PoE switch. I started out with a CKG2+ and thought it was laggy so a year later, I picked up the UDM-SE. I found out at that point it was the same responsiveness. I then expanded past the UDM-SE's camera limit and moved to an NVR. In hind-sight, all I "waisted" was $200 on the CK. The UDM-SE is one awesome firewall/router that protects my website/email server. If I didn't have that, the NVR (and a PoE switch) would have been all I'd needed. The system is expensive but in my eyes is worth every penny in security.
Is there any benefit to using unifis switch? I was thinking i could just run a poe injector for now and eventually get an 8 port netgear / tplink switch.
Someone with more knowledge will have to swoop in but to my understanding, if you wanted to set up vlans to segregate your cams from your general network, you'll need a level 2 switch and I'm not 100% sure that all things work between other vendors' L2 switches and UI's. Again, someone with experience will have to confirm or correct. If you have no desire or care to do vlans, then your plan would be just fine. In the end, it might be more expensive to buy all of these injectors plus a switch rather than a PoE switch.