After a recent incident at my house, I plan on pushing up my timeline on getting a few cameras that will be hosted locally. I currently have a Synology DS220+ that is operating as a general/media storage but have a NAS build about 75% done that I am still trying to decide which OS to run on it.
I’ve searched for a few months now and was going to go with a few 4k Hikvision cameras until I saw they had ties to the CCP. Came across Reolink’s products and while I like them in general, I’d like to see if there are any non-Chinese cameras that the community could recommend.
FWIW, I generally don’t care if a product is Chinese or not, but something about supporting companies that help the CCP just strikes a nerve in me.
I would just buy the Synology Cameras if that is a concern you have. Their cameras are certified and rated for operating in US government installations.
And they come with Synology licenses so you don’t need to spend the money there.
Alternatively my go-to are Axis (Swedish) which are also dearer (like Synology!) but you get what you pay for which is typically no phoning-home to .CN and a nice built-in webserver and all the functionality that entails. Some (all?) of the Ubiquiti cameras can also be picked up by Synology Surveillance Station.
There are tons of options used or new. For laughs I picked up an Axis P5522-E PTZ camera from fleabay for £40 IIRC.
That one was discontinued 2020 and I guess it was relatively cheap as it came without their network adapter plug/socket combo or the mounting plate so mounting it will require some creativity. However the optical zoom is amazing and it’ll probably be a wildlife monitor / fun cam when I get around to mounting it end of the garden.
Edit: in case it helps you make up your mind here are my notes on using Ubiquit cams with Syno Surveillance Station:
Some Ubiquiti cameras CAN be added to Synology’s Surveillance Station.
This is done by selecting “User-Define” as the camara model and adding the RTSP URL. The URL from Unifi Protect must be modified thus:
As of May 2022:
Home>Protect>Unifi Devices>(select camera)>Settings>Advanced>(toggle which resolution you want)>and then you will get a link such as:
I’ve begun replacement of all of our HikVisions at work because of ongoing sanctions, inability to get spares/firmware and of course the ties to .CN. Prior to that, we isolated the cams on their own vlan and made sure they could not get to the Internet.
A term to keep an eye open for is ONVIF. ONVIF (Open Network Video Interface Forum) is an open standard that defines a common protocol for IP cameras and video surveillance devices. If the DVR you run is ONVIF compatible, it makes your life so much easier to find cams that will work with it.
I know it’s not really what you asked about but, if you don’t mind sailing high seas and wearing eye patch there is an Xpenology project you can look into. Basically you can run Synology software on almost any hardware you want. There is even a way to run DVA3221 variants of software.
That’s NVR with 16 built-in camera licenses and you can do AI detection stuff locally. For AI you need Nvidia 1650 otherwise you can just use it like a regular Synology and Surveillance station. Some people even did GPU passthrough and ran their Xpenology inside VM.
Just to sneak a small thing into this thread. What you’re looking for are TAA (Trade Agreement Act) complaint cameras. Not sure how many would advertise that, but if you see “TAA Complaint” on the product then you should be fine.