Hey guys,
I've absolutely had it with my Ring camera and doorbell, ive started using a network wide VPN and they are just too unreliable and expensive to continue - let alone actively blocking IPs from VPNs which I didnt know about and think is ridiculous.
I have looked in to Reolink cameras because I've seen someone talking about them before on lemmy, question is:
Have any of you used Reolink cameras and NVR in your setup and how well does it integrate / whats your opinion on the cameras themselves?
I've had two wireless solar cameras for a few years now, and a doorbell one for a year. The main reason I picked Reolink was because it wasn't tied to a cloud or account, it's just on the local network for me to use as I want. Pros are that they are still working, both cameras and solar panels. It doesn't take much to keep them charged up. They can't compare to a wired higher resolution, but I wasn't going to try and do all that for just monitoring an area. I did end up getting a repeater for the network as sometimes the connection would be bad or drop since they are near the edge of the network router range, and that seemed to help. The doorbell is much more reliable and fast, being wired.
Cons - they're wireless, so there is lag both in logging on and in framerate. I moved one of them from one place to another and had to find a spot for the solar, discovering that during fall when the sun dropped but before the leaves fall there was a shadow, so I had to maintain the charge manually for a few week, which wasn't a big deal with a battery bank. Only other complaint might be that the detection software isn't perfect, especially for animals. We've set up a Blink camera (previously used inside a birdhouse) to watch some stray cats that the one Reolink kept totally missing even though it's right in view.
But overall I think they're quality, and I imagine based on the doorbell one that the higher end wired ones are probably pretty good.