To expand on a previous poster asking about local only devices in general…
Has anyone found a reliable local only doorbell? I’ve been meaning to replace my Ring doorbell ever since Amazon bought them. I finally bought a Reolink WiFi doorbell and it looks great and was really easy to set up without Internet or their app, BUT…
It doesn’t work. Capture to FTP gives me nice clear images but the videos are corrupt, maybe truncated. I can’t even open them with VLC.
I tried installing an SD card and then moving the SD card to my laptop. The videos on there play for a few seconds and then freeze.
Reolink support hasn’t responded to any of my questions, which is another minus for them.
I did notice that the unit seems to run very hot. Did I just get a dud?
So are there any alternatives? Should I just try buying another of these? At least returns (Amazon, Walmart) are easy.
I’ve been using the Reolink Doorbell (POE) for the last few months. I use it with both local on board SD card recording and with Frigate. It’s been perfect and the Home Assistant integration is awesome too.
I haven’t tried the FTP feature but have with my other Reolink cameras and that worked as expected.
The Reolink subreddit /r/reolinkcam is great, an employee lurks there and is very helpful.
I may have a dud. We’ll see. I finally started getting responses yesterday. Seems their help desk system was upgraded and the email was broken?
I’ve heard good things of Amcrest doorbell cameras. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/amcrest/
That’s what I have, along with armcrest2mqtt for triggering things when the doorbell rings.
Usually don’t post Youtube channels, but “The Hook Up” did a good review on locally controlled doorbells: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XCu6L0xn4Y
I have the unifi protect stuff, I’ve been pretty happy, support has been okay at best. I host everything myself but I do think they use some of the info… there TandC are pretty thick
I used Unifi Video for a long time until they moved away from letting me run the NVR on my own VM/hardware in the Uniti Protect world.
Yeah I was real real pissed about that. I have hundreds of TB of storage but I can’t use any of it because they limited it to their shitty NVR
I’m using an Amcrest AD410 doorbell cam that I’ve firewalled off from connecting to the internet. I’m using it via Frigate in HA, but there’s a HA integration for Amcrest / Dahua as well.
Edit to add: I’ve been using mine for about a year. No issues at all, it’s warm to the touch not hot. Granted, I’m not doing any motion detection or anything on-camera.
I’m quite happy with my Doorbird D101S. You can use it with their app/cloud but you can configure it to work completely local.
Configuration can be a bit tricky to work out, but once it’s set up correctly it works flawless.
That is one expensive doorbell!
