Last weeks thread here

Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!

This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.

It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:

  • Something interesting that happened to you
  • Something humourous that happened to you
  • Something frustrating that happened to you
  • A quick question
  • A request for recommendations
  • Pictures of your pet
  • A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
  • Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)

So how’s it going?

  • kurikai@lemmy.world
    3·
    4 months ago

    I have a poe managed ubiquity switch and use reolink Poe cameras and reolinks Poe doorbell. Home assistant has great support for reolink; It’s also local. I have home assistant save the streams on motion detection to a network mounted drive in home assistant

    • Panq@lemmy.nz
      3·
      4 months ago

      Just to second this - I’ve upgraded all but one camera to Reolink RLC-810A a few years back and they’re rock solid. All offline (no internet, but connected to Home Assistant on a separate LAN), all powered by a cheap unmanaged PoE switch from PB Tech. (Edit: this one).

      They’re recording 24/7 to their local memory, but I almost entirely use them via Home Assistant’s ability to pull a JPEG directly from the camera (because it takes a fraction of a second at 4k vs the unbearable pain of waiting >10s for video to buffer even at SD resolution).

      • Dave@lemmy.nzOPM
        1·
        4 months ago

        Oh wow, it’s a PoE switch where it’s all PoE, instead of only half!

    • Dave@lemmy.nzOPM
      2·
      4 months ago

      That’s awesome, looks like PB Tech have a huge range of Reolink!

      But with choice comes more questions 😆. PoE means you don’t need separate power for the camera. But it looks like they sell solar powered wifi ones. Is there a benefit of using PoE instead of wifi+solar?

      • kurikai@lemmy.world
        4·
        4 months ago

        Well worth running Poe if you can. Poe can also power some wifi access points(I use ubiquity sps I bought cheap on trademr), so you can hide them in your roof space.

        • Dave@lemmy.nzOPM
          2·
          4 months ago

          It just sounds like so much work 😆. How does the actual running of PoE work? Do I measure the distance at say 18m then buy a 20m cable to use, or am I buying a big roll, cutting it to size, and adding the plug on the end? (And if the latter, how do I do that?)

          Do I have to be careful about which cable I get to make sure it supports PoE, or can I grab any cat5 or cat6?

      • Panq@lemmy.nz
        3·
        4 months ago

        The solar/battery models don’t run 24/7 - you can trigger them remotely (so you can check the live feed whenever) or they can trigger with motion. Still perfectly useful for a bunch of use cases (e.g. just checking if you closed something, or installed somewhere that motion sensing is reliable like a low-traffic corridor) but not super useful for, say, a front door.