I use Amcrest, mostly because the guy who makes frigate recommended them, and has affiliate links on his site. As a software developer myself, I have to say frigate (and HA) are two jewels of open source software and so I’m happy to support them however I can.
That being said, the cameras work well and are easy to integrate with both frigate and HA. They all try to phone home at first, but stop if you tell them to (I’ve confirmed this by monitoring the traffic on my dns servers).
I couldn’t find a privacy friendly wifi camera with a big enough battery to run continuously, so I ended up building my own with a solar panel, an inverter, and a 9ah lithium battery that sits on a fence post at the end of my driveway. It was a fun project, but I wish I could buy it.
Another small gripe is that the PTZ cameras from Amcrest all seem to be crazy expensive or have mixed reviews, so I’ve just held off on those for now.
Thanks for the feedback, I’ll keep them on my list. I wasn’t considering the PTZ cameras just the inexpensive turrets and plan on running them PoE so it looks like those issues won’t affect me!
I’ve owned a bunch of Foscam cameras, a sub-brand owned by Amcrest.
Amcrest and its Foscam sub-brand seem very interested in getting access to your cameras, have less capable and less convenient software, and the cameras themselves seem less well built than Reolink.
I bought a half a dozen V1 Wyze cams, and at least two of them have failed. I won’t touch that brand again. I also would never have used Wyze at all except for the exploit that allowed custom firmware installation for real local access and control.
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Amcrest gets recommended a lot but I have no personal experience with them
I use Amcrest, mostly because the guy who makes frigate recommended them, and has affiliate links on his site. As a software developer myself, I have to say frigate (and HA) are two jewels of open source software and so I’m happy to support them however I can.
That being said, the cameras work well and are easy to integrate with both frigate and HA. They all try to phone home at first, but stop if you tell them to (I’ve confirmed this by monitoring the traffic on my dns servers).
I couldn’t find a privacy friendly wifi camera with a big enough battery to run continuously, so I ended up building my own with a solar panel, an inverter, and a 9ah lithium battery that sits on a fence post at the end of my driveway. It was a fun project, but I wish I could buy it.
Another small gripe is that the PTZ cameras from Amcrest all seem to be crazy expensive or have mixed reviews, so I’ve just held off on those for now.
Thanks for the feedback, I’ll keep them on my list. I wasn’t considering the PTZ cameras just the inexpensive turrets and plan on running them PoE so it looks like those issues won’t affect me!
Bon voyage!
I’ve owned a bunch of Foscam cameras, a sub-brand owned by Amcrest.
Amcrest and its Foscam sub-brand seem very interested in getting access to your cameras, have less capable and less convenient software, and the cameras themselves seem less well built than Reolink.
I bought a half a dozen V1 Wyze cams, and at least two of them have failed. I won’t touch that brand again. I also would never have used Wyze at all except for the exploit that allowed custom firmware installation for real local access and control.
I thought Reolink cameras were just rebranded Amcrest…or is it just the chips and lenses?
I will be using them with Frigate so I’m not too worried about the janky software unless it affects how Frigate operates
Are you using an Amcrest IP4M-1041B, can you have a look at this? https://lemmy.world/post/16883143. Thank you.
Are you using an Amcrest IP4M-1041B, can you have a look at this? https://lemmy.world/post/16883143. Thank you.
Think you replied to the wrong person. I don’t like or recommend Amcrest.
Besides your take anything else against them?
Amcrest is all up in your business.
Yeah, but aren’t others as well? My ideia was to run them on an isolated VLAN without Internet access. What brand would you recommend instead.