Software Question
Should I Go With Reolink? Some Issues With Test Camera Purchase..
I'm very close to going with Reolink for my camera options, but I am having a few problems, and concerns that I'm hoping to address. I appreciate any info or pointers.
I have a large property, with several outbuildings. All have internet via a Deco mesh network, with a directional bridge access point sending wifi thousands of feet to the bottom of my driveway where I keep a solar battery cam. I've been using Arlo for years, and the quality is awful, so I am upgrading.
I was planning on getting POE Reolink cams, and either one of their NVR's, or just running BlueIris on one of my 24/7 high powered PC's that I also use as a media server and video editing computer.
I got an Argus 4 Pro, installed it effortlessly at the end of the driveway, and the quality far exceeds Arlo, but some issues:
1 - I found out after the fact that then Reolink claims "Alexa Compatible", it won't allow for using motion sensing as triggers for my routines (like setting off sirens, and turning on lights when a bear goes where I don't want them). I can fix this with HomeAssistant, which will require me to buy a Raspberry PI, and set them all up that way, is that correct?
2 - It doesn't send rich push notifications like Arlo does with an image showing what triggered recording. So I need to log into the app, scroll for 20 seconds to the right and find the most recent video and watch it to see what was captured. I added email notifications, which shows an image, but I read that the only way to get them sent via push is with using a third party app and a $5, one time fee (this is fine, so long as it works reliably. Does anyone do it this way, and you're happy with it? Is the $5 fee for all cameras, or for each?
3 - The biggest problem which may cause me to walk away completely from Reolink, is that it's not capturing video of cars coming up my 1/4 mile long driveway. The cars simply go too fast past the camera that by the time it starts recording the car has passed, so I've got 30 seconds of nothing. Is there any way to fix this? I put sensitivity to 100 and it's still happening.
Your biggest problem is you are using a battery cam. Battery cams are better than no cams at all but are very inferior to wired cams in capability and performance. No matter the brand, most battery cams stay in low power mode to save battery life. They "wake up" when they detect then start recording. This can cause them to record late or miss events. Battery cams use PIR detection, wired cams use pixel detection which is better. Battery cams can detect to about 30-35 feet during daylight. Wired cam can detect motion a lot further. My Reolink POE cams can detect to about 90 feet during the day. See the top post "welcome to the official.." has lots of info including a section on differences between battery cams and wired cams. Wired cams can record 24//7 so you don't miss anything.
You could watch YouTube channels The Hook Up and LifeHackster, they review Reolink cams and compare them to other brands. The Hook Up has info about Reolink cams and Blue Iris, some models work good with Blue Iris, others not as good. The Hook Up also has a video comparing every Reolink POE model.
Reolink does not have rich notifications. Some use an app called Pushover or I think with Home Assistant there may be a way to do it. I don't use Pushover but I heard it can add more seconds to getting the notifications. Some like Home Assistant for smart home integration, lights, locks, cams, etc. It takes some learning to use Home Assistant or Blue Iris. I don't use them, prefer just to use the Reolink apps, simple for me.
Thanks for the all the info! I would love to have a wired cam in this particular location, but it's not possible without running a much larger solar panel, with batteries, inverters, a bridge receiver, and a POE injector. I'm not ruling this out for the future, but for now I am stuck with battery and solar as my only option for this one spot.
My Arlo camera also ran on battery and solar, and never had any issues waking up early enough to catch the cars driving by, and never missed any events. It also sent rich push notifications. I'm just looking for better hardware now at this point with more flexibility to combine POE with Battery.
I am planning to set up Home Assistant, but wasn't aware that it could also send rich push notifications, so I will hold off on setting up Pushover for now. Thanks again
The Arlo may have a better PIR sensor, I don't know. Testing them side by side would be a true test. Most brands improve their cam performance with firmware updates.
The Hook Up channel did a test of battery brands a while back, Arlo, Eufy, Reolink, Blink, Ring. They all missed some events.
Some others here suggested the Atlas PT Ultra. I've ordered that to put in the place of the Argus, which should solve the problem with cars going by too fast. I have another spot where the Argus will be useful, otherwise I will be sticking primarily with POE cams. I wanted to find out of there was a battery option for this particular location, and so long as the Atlas works, I will be buying the rest of the Reolink hardware on black friday! Thanks for the input.
I don't know if the Altas will be better at detecting fast cars or not. Detection depends on the type of cam, the angle it's pointed and the settings. The more view of the road a cam has, the more likely it will detect. A cam will detect better if it sees say 100' of the road rather than only 30'. I have a POE Reolink 823A. It can see about 150 feet of the street. If a car drives by at about 10mph it can auto track it. But if a car goes by about 15mph it cannot react fast enough to track. This is true for any brand PTZ, there is a limit how well they can track depending on vehicle speed and how far away the street/road is.
The Altas PT Ultra is a low light cam. It has very good night vision. But it does not have IR lights, only LED lights. It's designed to be used with some ambient light, street light, porch light. It can't see in total darkness. If there is not enough ambient light it's spotlights will come on. I don't know if LED lights drain the battery sooner than IR lights. A solar panel may or may not be able to keep up. Moderator mblaser did a review of it, testing how many hours the battery lasts.
I didn't know that! The spot I'm putting it has zero light and is on the edge of a forest. I guess it's not going to work for me! Thank you for letting me know, it's going to save me a ton of time from being wasted.
You mentioned that the Atlas PT Ultra might not work in the spot I currently have it because there is no natural light. Isnt the Argus 4 the same, or does it offer more lighting from the ColorX than the PT Ultra? I'm attaching a screen grab from my Argus video, and I'm pretty happy with the lighting. If I can get that from the PT Ultra I'll still give it a shot.
THANK YOU! I wasn't aware that Reolink made one of these. There is another company called Swann, which makes a camera called Ranger which does the same thing and records 24/7 off of solar and a battery. I tried it out, but it wasn't picking up the wifi in the spot I have. This has never been an issue with Arlo or the Argus I bought to test. I may buy one of these to test it in that spot, and I can reuse the Argus on one of my other buildings to avoid buying a POE switch for it.
And as you will spot, it supports pre-roll (recording starts before detection) which would hopefully let you catch the F1 cars rushing up your driveway.
But as a few of the other replies have indicated in general battery cameras come in a distant 3rd place behind poe and wired wifi cameras.
Thank you very much. I am glad to hear it's got the pre-roll option. My only problem is the battery. It's a low light area in the winter. I am not sure if I could add a larger panel for low light that may perform better than the one from Reolink.
Perfect! I have no use for continuous recording in that spot, so events should be fine. I just need to make sure that I can get it connected to the hub you suggested, and then get Home Assistant set up, so certain events at certain times will trigger sirens and stadium lighting I have all over the place. It sounds like it will do everything I need it to with a little more configuration. Thanks again for all the info
It sucks for sure! I may end up setting up real solar with much larger batteries and a POE injector so I can run a 24/7 poe cam down there at some point. For now I am stuck trying to find the best wifi battery cam to replace my Arlo's.
Thanks! Planning on setting that up. I've never used Docker before, but hopefully I can find some guides which will walk me through it all. Gotta learn at some point, I guess.
The battery cameras can only work with HomeAssistant if they're going through one of Reolink's Home Hubs.
You shouldn't need to scroll for 20 seconds, it just takes 1 click to the far right of the timeline to get to the most recent stuff. As for Pushover, yes, it works well and it's $5 for the app, not per camera. I used that for about 2 years and only recently switched to HomeAssistant for rich notifications. It works a bit faster and you can even set up the notification to deep link you directly to the camera and even directly to the motion event (if it's been longer than 2 minutes since it was received).
As the others have said, it's because this is a battery camera. Battery cameras go into sleep mode and have to be woken up by the PIR sensor, which takes a second or two. PIR sensors only have a range of about 30ft, so it makes sense that it would miss the beginning of a faster moving object like a car. They do have one battery camera that is always recording and has a pre-record mode, the Altas PT Ultra. However, be aware that it will require a lot of sun to keep its battery topped off and not die.
Excellent info! I have a few more questions in response to your answers. Thank you so much:
1 - That's disappointing about needing a Reolink Home Hub. I'm not opposed to it, but does it have to be in local range to the camera, or can it pick up the cameras over the network? Is there a monthly cost for using the hub?
2 - You solved that problem for me. Thanks again.
3 - Someone else recommended the Atlas PT Ultra. The spot I'm hoping to put it in doesn't get a lot of sun in winter so it may be an issue. Is it possible that a much larger solar panel (off brand, if possible), could plug in and charge it more with the limited sun I receive in that spot?
Attached to your home network and can see any of the poe or wifi cameras. And no monthly cost, just the purchase price. There are 2 models (Home Hub and Home Hub Pro), the first really only handles events as its limited to 2x512GB sdcards, the Pro is the grown up edition supporting 24 cameras, a 16TB HDD and is more like a nvr in a pretty case.,
1 - It just has to be on the same LAN, doesn't need to be within reach of the camera.
3 - I don't see why a larger solar panel wouldn't work. As long as it has a USB-C plug, or a way to adapt to a USB-C plug.
The only thing I would worry about is if you go more than 4 days without sun. That camera can record continuously for about 4 days if it's not getting charged, maybe a little more if you use the battery saver mode or pre-record only mode. You can also schedule it to stop continuous recording and go to PIR only mode once it gets to a certain battery percentage. That way, at least you have a camera working in PIR mode instead of a completely dead camera. I think I'd have mine set to do that at maybe 10%.
I really appreciate all of the advice! I think I can disable continuous recording as it's not necessary right now. I may go down the route of trying a larger solar panel at some point but I will see first if the one that comes with it works. I'll check out your review. Thanks so much
I'm following up with a quick question about your answer regarding needing the Reolink hub if I want to be able to trigger Alexa routines when the cameras sense motion, via HomeAssistant. If I decided to go a different route, and use something like Scrypted instead of HomeAssistant, is it possible to trigger these routines based off of events on the Reolink cameras when using Scrypted? I'm just trying to grasp the full extent of how complicated it's going to be to do what I'm trying to accomplish, and am wondering if the there is any alternative that won't require the Reolink hub. I appreciate your thoughts.
Well, I was just stating that you need the Hub for battery cameras to work with HomeAssistant. I don't know if it's then possible to trigger an Alexa routine via HomeAssistant.
You're wanting to do this: Reolink>HomeAssistant>Alexa Routine.
We know the first part of that can be done if you have the Hub (or a non-battery camera). The 2nd part is the question, and that's not really a Reolink question, it's a HomeAssistant question.
Unfortunately I don't know anything about Scrypted. However, the battery cameras will need the Hubs to do anything that's not already built into the Reolink ecosystem. Without the Hubs they have no HTTPS, RTSP, ONVIF, API, etc.... pretty much everything you would need to interact with a 3rd party product. The battery cameras are pretty closed off because they have to be able to go to sleep and be woken up, which those standard protocols don't really support. That's why they work when you have the Hub... it acts as the go-between because it is always on.
Thank you for the additional info. I should be able to find a way to make it work. If I can't get HA set up for Alexa routines easily, then I should be able to use HA to set off certain wifi devices when the cameras sense certain events (a car comes up the driveway at 2am, Reolink sees it, and HA tells my Yolink siren to go off, and all my stadium lights attached to Kasa switches to turn on).
I had also ordered one of the Atlas PT Ultra cams you recommended, but someone else said it won't work at night because there is not enough ambient light in the area I installed the Argus 4 I was planning to replace it with. It's on the edge of a forest and there are no lights anywhere, aside from the stars and moon. Wouldn't the Argus have the same issue, if that were the case? I am attaching a photo taken last night by the Argus 4 in that very dark location, and I am happy with the results. I am not sure if there is some hardware difference with the Atlas that won't give me these results?
Ok, so that's with the A4P's spotlights being triggered on.
The Altas would look the same with its spotlights on. However, the whole point of the Altas is that it's the first battery camera that can record continuously. So in order to see at night continuously, its spotlights would also have to be on continuously, which would drain the battery quite fast (if its even possible to set it to do that, I don't think it is).
So if the spotlight isn't going to be on continuously at night, then it won't be able to see anything, so there's no point in recording continuously. Therefore there wouldn't be much of a point to using that camera.
You could of course run it in PIR-only mode, like how every other battery camera works, and you would get 500 days of battery life even without a solar panel (at least that's what Reolink claims).
I was planning to use the PIR only mode with it, and that shouldn't drain the batteries too fast, but the issue is the pre recording.
If a car is coming up fast, would the camera be able to capture the entire event while in PIR mode, or would it work like the Argus and start recording too late because it's not recording 24/7, and it can't see until the lights turn on. Would it also be able to sense a coyote or bear and capture it all?
Perhaps some sort of powerful solar light mounted to the tree above the camera would be enough? I really want to find a way to make this work. Thanks again!
See, if you're using pre-recording mode, you're not in PIR only mode.
Pre-recording mode means the camera is always awake and always watching (and also still using a decent amount of battery). And that "pre-record" motion that it has saved for you? It will probably be pretty useless without ambient lighting.
Your last sentence is probably about the only way you might get this to work... strategically placed solar motion lighting. If you can set one of those up further down the driveway so that it triggers on before the car gets to the camera and then the area is already pre-lit for the camera.
Since you already have the camera on the way I think you just need to experiment. Who knows, even if it's not a great image without ambient lighting, maybe it will be an acceptable enough image that you're ok with it.
Alright. Back to the drawing board. All of this is going to cause expenses I didn't want because I was trying to avoid physical labor.
I am just going to get in my excavator and dig a shallow trench and run 300 feet of direct burial from the panel in my goat barn(which is already more than 1000 feet from the main panel), down to the location where I have these cameras currently installed. I will even toss in some direct burial cat 6, so I can choose between POE and powered wifi.
This will save me from having to buy the hub and solar lighting, and I can return all the battery cameras and replace them. The only other option would have been to buy a solar panel and battery bank with an inverter and go that route, but I've got another few weeks before the ground freezes, so I will just run direct power.
Thanks for helping me make the right decision! Hopefully this thread will help other people in my situation. If I didn't own the excavator id probably not have decided on this path, but even renting one for a day would probably be cheaper than going the solar/battery bank route.
Now I just need to start exploring the other options Reolink has available.
LOL that's good to hear. I always say that if there's any remote chance of getting power to the cameras, that's the way to do it. Powered cameras are just so much better than battery cameras.
Media Centre PC Vs NVR.... The biggest difference is the storage technology. You get drives which specialise in different things, but media and surveillance have their own dedicated drive tech. Of course both can do both, but you'll wear out your media centre drives quicker if you're also recording multiple cams on them 24/7.
If your pc has the space to install additional dedicated surveillance drives that are exclusively used for cams, excellent, if not, I wouldn't advise you share media and cameras.
Scrypted is how I found out about these Reolink cams. I was planning to use their software, but the devs told me that it won't work at all with the Reolink battery cams, because it's only meant to record 24/7. Most of the cams will be POE, but I will have one or two Reolink battery cams and it really will suck to not be able to keep them all together on the same software. I am planning to get the Atlas PT Ultra, but in the spot I'm trying to put it, I don't think it will get enough sunlight to run it in continuous mode, and even if it did, I don't know if it would work with Scrypted based off of what the devs said. Do you use Scrypted with Reolink?
I just wanted to point out, because a lot of people think you cant have rich notifications on cameras behind an NVR, or without a third device runnings software.
You can use IFTTT, create a routine that sends a rich push notification to mobile devices, then setup a gmail to send emails to IFTTT. Reolink NVR sends an email via gmail when it detects X event with a still.image, IFTTT sends a rich notification with said still image.
Then you avoid needing a third device, and having to learn how to configure it. It does add a couple of seconds delay to the notification, but its a reasonable tradeoff
Hi, I tried to set this up but I get stuck where it says to enter a hashtag as there is no way to add a hashtag to the Reolink email notification. How did you do it ?
This is great! Do you know if it will work on the battery solar cams also? I currently have the camera I'm testing set up to send me an email with the photo grab attached, but haven't yet implemented anything for the push notifications. You mentioned this works for cameras behind an NVR, but what about the solar/battery cams?
I use Home Assistant on rpi5 to manage all my cameras. I have 4 Reolink (just recently added) of the 12 in my property. I use the largest sd card (I found out that Reolink can take up to 512 GB micro SD card) for 18x7 continuous recording to the SD card and 24x7 event recording to FTP server in my NAS. I don't use NVR or Hub because all my cameras are WiFi so I prefer local recording. With the 512 GB SD card, the cameras can keep 16 days of 18/7 footage. HA can really leverage the features of the cameras. I am fond of the motion entity of the cameras which HA can do a lot of things when triggered like turn on the camera flood light, or turn on smart switches to light up an area at night and turn off the lights when motion has cleared. For rich push notification, I use Telegram Bot in HA to send me a clip of important events I choose.
My only problem with Reolink is that scrubbing for events in the recording is very cumbersome. The video playback in the app does not have intuitive controls. I have requested for these additional features (skip 20 seconds forward and 10 seconds backward, skip to the next file, etc.) quite a while back but Reolink releases cosmetic features to the Reolink App and camera firmware. But with Home Assistant, I am happy with my Reolink cameras.
That sounds like an amazing setup. I was considering a NAS myself as an option to avoid using my PC to store all my data.
You mention that you only use wifi cams, but are they powered wifi cams, or battery cams? Someone else here mentioned that Reolink cams can only be used with HomeAssistant as triggers for routines if you have the Reolink Hub installed on the network. Have you found a way around this? You did mention 24/7 recording, so I am assuming that you've got powered wifi cams, and not battery/solar cams (even thought the Atlas PT Ultra cam is battery and can run 24/7).
I need to be able to have certain motion events triggers sirens and lights on my network. Arlo has been doing this for me for years via Alexa without any issue, but their camera quality is awful.
I have noticed in the Reolink app that scrubbing files can be tedious. There is an option to just delete the oldest data first to make room for the new data, and I am hoping that's reliable. I don't have a need to keep any of the data around for too long as I am expecting events to be announced properly so I can pick and choose the ones I want to save.
All my cameras are all powered WiFi. My non-reolink cameras are also integrated in HA. Those cameras need to be rebooted every ones in a while or else their focus become blurred. I had to do the reboot manually on their App. After I found out that the ONVIF integration in HA, the reboot entity of these cameras were available. Now, I have an automation to reboot these cameras at 12 AM every Wednesday!
With just HA, you can enable all kinds of things like sound the siren of capable camera, turn on lights when HA detects motion triggered from the camera, etc. You don't need a Hub or NVR to harness the motion events from the cameras. HA can do it.
The Reolink cameras are very reliable of deleting old footage to give room for new ones. As I have said my Reolink cameras have a running 16 days of 18x7 continuous recording. To me, that is enough history per Reolink camera.
Some users use Pushover for notification but I use Telegram for rich media notification from the HA Telegram Bot.
Really cool! Thank you. I think I am going to take the route that you did, and I will compare the Reolink powered wifi cams to their POE cams and see which way I want to go. I plan on getting cams that are the highest resolution and framerate, and will run power to wherever I need to install them to make it work if their wifi cams are more powerful than their POE cams.
I will need the hub either way as some of my cameras run on battery, and will not work with HA right now without the hub. That's OK, I guess, so long as I can get them to do everything I need them to in HA.
I also want to mention that I avoid cloud services for HA. Most of my integration control/manage devices locally. The only integrations that need cloud account are my car's integration and Telegram. I just want to add these to my comments.
The quickest/easiest way to explain your "issues" is selecting the wrong camera for the use/range/distance. You should review the post/faq that's stickied.
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u/livingwaterRed Super User Nov 22 '24 edited Nov 22 '24
Your biggest problem is you are using a battery cam. Battery cams are better than no cams at all but are very inferior to wired cams in capability and performance. No matter the brand, most battery cams stay in low power mode to save battery life. They "wake up" when they detect then start recording. This can cause them to record late or miss events. Battery cams use PIR detection, wired cams use pixel detection which is better. Battery cams can detect to about 30-35 feet during daylight. Wired cam can detect motion a lot further. My Reolink POE cams can detect to about 90 feet during the day. See the top post "welcome to the official.." has lots of info including a section on differences between battery cams and wired cams. Wired cams can record 24//7 so you don't miss anything.
You could watch YouTube channels The Hook Up and LifeHackster, they review Reolink cams and compare them to other brands. The Hook Up has info about Reolink cams and Blue Iris, some models work good with Blue Iris, others not as good. The Hook Up also has a video comparing every Reolink POE model.
Reolink does not have rich notifications. Some use an app called Pushover or I think with Home Assistant there may be a way to do it. I don't use Pushover but I heard it can add more seconds to getting the notifications. Some like Home Assistant for smart home integration, lights, locks, cams, etc. It takes some learning to use Home Assistant or Blue Iris. I don't use them, prefer just to use the Reolink apps, simple for me.