What system are you guys using for cameras?

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Adam_Kearn@reddit

Hikvision NVR install the remote software on your computer to access it remotely

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jmbpiano@reddit

We ditched Hik a few years ago but when we still used it you couldn't run the native client without admin rights. (Trust me, I tried my darndest to shim it!) Have they fixed that?

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Sigseg-v@reddit

No. I ended up installing a cheap tablet with the DMSSHD app to avoid giving admin rights to all our salesclerks.

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Adam_Kearn@reddit

I believe I set our install script to grant “authenticated users” full access to the hikvision folder and that fixed it for me.

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BuildAfterHours@reddit

Axis cameras. Camera Station Pro or Milestone.

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atxweirdo@reddit

The ones I had had a bunch of vulnerabilities

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jeagerkinght@reddit

Axis cameras managed in Milestone here, not bad. Milestone seems to hate running on a VM though, something to keep in mind

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Assuming you run corporate, running Milestone manager in a VM is perfectly fine for managing multiple recording servers. Due to the video processing overhead, the Recording servers should only run on bare metal though.

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Duck_Diddler@reddit

Milestone is so bad on VMs.

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mr_data_lore@reddit

Mind if I ask what problems you've had running Milestone in a VM. I'm working with a vendor on a project where I intend to put Milestone on a VM and wonder if I'm setting myself up for problems. My plan was to start off virtual and then decide later whether to migrate to dedicated physical hardware if needed.

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BMWHead@reddit

I implement Milestone XProtect for about 10 years now,, used to teach the Milestone integrator clases as a 3rd party trainer so I'd say I have some experience on this topic! Ran various setups including their federated solutions and failovers on Hyper-V, Proxmox and VMWare, you should be good as long as you specced your VM's with the right resources and storage types. if you have any questions let me know!

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lothow@reddit

Our Milestone has been running on a VM for 8 or 9 years and it's ok for the most part. One thing is it'll drop a feed and you have to bounce the camera. That's not often but once every 6 months or so

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Xfgjwpkqmx@reddit

Yes, we get the exact same issue too - Axis on virtualised Milestone here.

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gamebrigada@reddit

Milestone heavily relies on hardware acceleration for H264/H265 decoding. If you want to use the web viewer, or use Milestone as a proxy, or have specific types of streams, you will see absolutely awful performance. You'll want to add an accelerator to the VM.

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jeagerkinght@reddit

Our experience is that its very slow to respond to input. We don't seem to have any problems with playback or anything, but trying to manage the server through the manager program installed on the server seems to take forever.

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BuildAfterHours@reddit

I have been running multiple sites on hypervisors since 2006 without any issue. Affords the ability to failover to another host. Archive to a Synology NAS and that NAS is replicated to 2nd NAS. Keeps from needing so much storage on the host. That type of archival flexibility is why I prefer xProtect over Camera Station, but the all in one solutions from Axis are rock solid as well and I use them on smaller projects.

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hd4life@reddit

Miletstone on dedicated physical hardware here.

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bythepowerofboobs@reddit

We use Camera Station. I'm considering moving our Axis cameras over to Genetec now that Axis is moving to a subscription pricing model, which would interface with our door access systems. Anyone made that move?

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BuildAfterHours@reddit

Ah, I use Axis door control as well. Rock solid. I am IT and can install and manage all of this without a 3rd party integrator or support. I can’t stand security vendors that don’t even know what a VLAN is.

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bythepowerofboobs@reddit

We've always installed and maintained our own door access and camera systems too.

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BuildAfterHours@reddit

Excellent username!

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Funlovinghater@reddit

Yep. Just bought multiple of their S1296 servers, consolidating all of my cameras to those and its easy peasy.

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Own_Error_007@reddit

NX Witness.

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GremlinNZ@reddit

Using as well. Slowly replacing Dahua NVR with virtualised NX Witness

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RalphKramden69FL@reddit

Unifi

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Familiar-Newspaper23@reddit

Avigilon with a mix of avigilon, axis, Samsung/techwin cameras. We paid a zillion bucks but I believe that was in large part the reseller. We also have access control and some hvac with them and every single thing needs a new physical server…and each of those servers are like quad cores with 8G of ram but then cost $40k anyways. Avigilon seems fine, though our admins dont really like the interface. But I don’t know that there’s something with a better interface out there (i dont think it’s too bad personally). One thing I’m unsure of is the best way to add storage to it which I need to do, without buying their zillion dollar server. I believe we can pass a NAS through iSCSI but I haven’t tried it yet. I just need to learn the software myself better. Looked at verkada recently but with storage on the device and then having it upload to the cloud, I just don’t like that.

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dizzy_zebra44@reddit

Axis and Hanwha cameras. Genetec Security Centre for monitoring. We pay about $5K/year for 100 devices on-prem. You don’t have to pay, but you do if you want ongoing updates/support.

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MattAdmin444@reddit

Video Insight with i-Pro cameras. The i-Pro cameras (and the generic version that I'm forgetting the name of) come with the license on Video Insight so that's useful. For the site that's not on it yet (Eagle Eye/subscription) we may consider Unifi but there's a decent chance we're going to stick with Video Insight.

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AUSSIExELITE@reddit

We use Avigilon across the board. They’re pretty expensive but it’s a proper scalable and enterprise solution that I’ve grown to like more than I’d thought. Learning curve is a bit steep I will admit though.

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ShittyITSpecialist@reddit

Do you use their cloud native cameras or a cloud connector? There arent many cloud native models and from the ones we got, it seems their resolution is lower than expected. Maybe I just need to tweak some settings somewhere, but occasionally they get really sharp.

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Angelworks42@reddit

Yeah we use that as well mainly for card access stuff but also managing around 400 cameras.

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Maro1947@reddit

Pretty much industry standard "Don't want to pay for licencing" is code for "need a new sportscar on the company"

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GenericRedditor12345@reddit

It’s pretty solid but the application performance can be a bit rough at times, especially their mobile app. Otherwise solid permissions structure.

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-RYknow@reddit

We use avigilon across all our buildings. They are pretty good. I use unifi at home, I really like their stuff, too.

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Leg0z@reddit

We currently have Avigilons deployed. They're pretty solid BUT our original provider abandoned us and Avigilon refuses to speak to us for support or even ordering a new camera. We must go through a 3rd party. And all of our local providers are absolute shit. Because of that, we will be swapping them out for something different in our next camera project.

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flyguydip@reddit

At my old place we used Avigilon for many many years. We got the whole system from Simplex. The guy in charge of that system never even once shopped around. Turns out a local 3rd party security company could sell everything in our security/access control system for at least 30% less. After realizing how much money we wasted for about 15 years, we were super happy to find a much cheaper option. We had our local Telco do the cable pulling and camera installation though because they were super cheap. Other than purchasing, we didn't need the 3rd party for anything else. We did all the configuring/setup stuff ourselves. At my new employer, we do everything in house and buy cameras wherever we can find them cheap and manage them with dwspectrum. It feels like a huge step down in quality but it does everything we need at a fraction of the price.

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Laser_Fish@reddit

I worked for a place that had avigilon cameras. We had them spec out one camera in particular that would read license plates in a specific location where we had people trespassing. We bought exactly what we needed. A week later we had an event where we needed license plates and found that the camera wasn't working as advertised (couldn't read the plates). They upgraded the camera for free. That said a lot for me. Now who knows, that was almost 10 years ago. They might suck now

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masheduppotato@reddit

+1 for Avigilon. Love their product. Managed a clients cameras and NVRs for 4 years and never had any complaints with their software or support.

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PMSysadmin@reddit

Unifi

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Key_Counter_454@reddit

Currently running Milestone but moving to Genetec. We have door access, license plate readers, gate arms, that are all attached to these system.

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SxMDu@reddit

How is Milestone experience?

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Key_Counter_454@reddit

It's been good. It takes a massive footprint of servers in a virtual environment.

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loupgarou21@reddit

Genetec, I've also used Wisenet Wave in the past, which worked decently. I also have used Unifi Protect, and Unifi Video before that. It works decently for a cheap solution.

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severedgoat_01@reddit

UniFi with Protect all the way. We also have some access controls set up and integrated with Protect. It's pretty slick

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chompy_jr@reddit

If you don't mind my asking, how large is your installation? UniFi looks cool, but ubiquity support can be a challenge and my guess is that this is an amazing solution for a single location with a handful of cams and a few doors. However, if you're running this solution in multiple buildings with 100's of doors and 1000's of cams, I'd love to hear how you landed on this vendor as well as any unexpected events during your rollout.

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chompy_jr@reddit

For those of you using Verkada, is their stuff any good yet? They have always had great swag but tbh I always felt like their sales teams were comprised of rejects from used car lots or gyms and their training consisted of repeated forced viewing of glengary glennross. Recently a colleague recommended them. Is it worth a demo?

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SmoothMcBeats@reddit

Nope. Cameras in the cloud is just a terrible idea. You don't own the video, they do. Not to mention... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-09/hackers-expose-tesla-jails-in-breach-of-150-000-security-cams https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/295m-penalty-and-permanent-injunction-resolves-lawsuit-against-verkada-inc-alleged-unlawful

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chompy_jr@reddit

This is super helpful. Thank you.

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SmoothMcBeats@reddit

Certain things the cloud is good for, but security, especially physical, is not one of them. You're welcome.

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Limeasaurus@reddit

Unifi Protect. We'll be approaching 400 cameras soon. It's been great.

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tsutton@reddit

Keen to know the backend for this (switches, storage, etc) Feel free to reply here or PM me. Thanks.

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Limeasaurus@reddit

Currently running UniFi OS in a VM. Mixture of UniFi Pro Max 24 and 16 switches. We also have a few flex Poe and flex 2.5 Poe switches. Mixture of ENVR and EnVR Core with 16TB drives in the ENVR and 24TB drives in the ENVR core.

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tsutton@reddit

Thank you. We currently use Milestone and the subscription is getting expensive, so I am thinking of a long term plans.

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BatemansChainsaw@reddit

How do you manage video archival and backups?

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Limeasaurus@reddit

We have roughly 5 weeks of high quality video and 4 weeks of lower quality video. If an incident occurs there is a feature called case manager where a report is made. The system saves the video files and notes. We also export the case (notes and video) to Google Drive.

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voltagejim@reddit

We have ExacqVision with mostly Axis cameras. Unforutnatly when the system was put in under the previous person in my position, they cheaped out and did not want to pay the camera company to put the cameras on their own network, and so they just put them on the data network that all the other PC's use. So now we have constant laggy live camera feeds. Also, ExacqVision charges you tons of licensing every year, and I heard that the Axis camera system has none of that. Higher ups like the Exacq client interface so i have not gotten them to approve getting off the current system.

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massiv3troll@reddit

We unfortunately have exacqvision. I'm not impressed.

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voltagejim@reddit

yep, I constantly get complaints from users. One main complaint I get from them is that if you have several cameras in your grid, and some have different resolutions, then you get a grid where some cameras might fill the entire square they are in, while others give you black bars on tops or sides. Also

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Limeasaurus@reddit

It comes down to the substream aspect ratios. Some cameras don't offer compatible ratios that fit the box.

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SxMDu@reddit

What does it man? Are you saying that the grid box with camera feed uses the lower quality substream to display live stream and when the camera doesn't support the required aspect ratio we see this issue?

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Limeasaurus@reddit

Yea, this is somewhat common. You’ll have grid that supports say 720x380 sub stream but the camera closest sub stream option is 720x420 which results in side black bars because the image has to shrink to fill the vertical space.

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WHAT_IS_SHAME@reddit

I inherited a 10+ year old install of ExacqVision a few years ago and it was honestly jarring coming from a Genetec environment. We’ve migrated to Wisenet Wave since then and it’s a surprisingly good upgrade with pretty cheap licensing. I think it helps that we’re using Hanwha cameras though.

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voltagejim@reddit

yeah the number one thing I am trying to fix is the camera lag. I am havig the camera company work with the MSP that does our networking now to seperate the camera network from the data network

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VioletiOT@reddit

As others have mentioned, Domotz is perfect for this. We have great camera monitoring features and are super affordable. (i.e. free visibility for all devices and then just $1.50 per device/month. Free trial details are [here](https://portal.domotz.com/webapp/signup/?utm_source=Community&utm_medium=Reddit&utm_campaign=Reddit) we are over on r/domotz if any questions at all.

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GreenBurningPhoenix@reddit

Milestone.

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SxMDu@reddit

What are pros and cons of Milestone?

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imfalliblek@reddit

Avigilon. Milestone is a pain in the ass.

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SxMDu@reddit

Why Milestone was pita?

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redstarduggan@reddit

Anyone using Unifi in a manufacturing environment?

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Hi_Im_Rowdy@reddit

Previous occupation did, 150 ish cameras. Worked really well!

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scott0482@reddit

Synology Surveillance Station with Vivotek cameras. Been using this combo for something like 15 years. Setup a customer with 40 locations all centrally managed. Had certain models of Synology die and certain models chewed through hard drives. But overall a solid and reliable solution. Vivotek camera range goes from very affordable to very high end. Also you can record both locally and to Synology C2 cloud.

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oliland1@reddit

Unifi is pretty damn good! And very inexpensive.

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dustojnikhummer@reddit

Do they require the Unifi NVR or can they be hooked up to Synology Surveillance Station, Frigate etc?

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David-Gallium@reddit

I want to add that Unifi is getting pretty good at single site, or a handful of sites. They've got no clear pathway to hundreds of sites and tens of thousands of cameras. Which is where Verkada are at their strongest. Lot of unifi glazing out there, it can be a good product, but it's very much a premium home and small business solution.

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BatemansChainsaw@reddit

I'm clearly not in government but outside of them what single entity uses "hundreds of sites" and "tens of thousands of cameras"?

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David-Gallium@reddit

You'd be surprised. In a previous life I did camera installs. We had several customers in this category and none were government. Retailers are a big one. Especially high value retailers like hardware stores. 4 cameras per aisle, 20 aisles per store, 180 stores and there's your ten thousand device count pretty quickly. Logistics/trucking companies, datacentres, factories etc can have 10:1 ratio of cameras to employees pretty easily. The moment you're monitoring more then just entrance/exit the number can balloon. We never dealt with them but I did see specs for one of two major supermarkets in Australia. Device count was heading north past 175,000. They would be considered second-tier by US standards. Walmart are 10x bigger from memory.

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BatemansChainsaw@reddit

I really need to think a little more before typing because now it's forehead slappingly obvious. Can we blame caffeine this time?

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cogiskart@reddit

They do though? They have vantage point for multi NVR as well as Physical security via Fabrics if you wanna tonnes of Protect sites, it's pretty slick.

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David-Gallium@reddit

Vantage point is okay, but obviously has that 5 site limit. Fabric is a a great step forward as an admin tool but doesn't do much for the users who need to view those cameras. Scenario example, if you have a regional manager with access to 25 sites you're going to be able to give them a single login to 5 vantage points. It works from an SSO perspective but it's awkward. In Verkada (or Meraki) land there's none of this to consider, the scale story is much cleaner. You can search across every camera in your org, which is something Fabric/Vantage point aren't there yet with.

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sillypunt@reddit

I currently have 20 something sites on my fabric site manager

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cogiskart@reddit

I think they fixed this with Protect 7.1, where you have way more camera access and control via fabric.

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David-Gallium@reddit

Problem with this industry is the real risk of being out of date by 2 weeks. 7.1 sure looks better and certainly negates a lot of the scale probelm.

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Drew707@reddit

Verkada is dumb expensive, though, compared to Ubiquiti.

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FireLucid@reddit

The free lunch when you go to listen to their pitch was pretty good though :D

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Arudinne@reddit

Sure, they're not a fit for every company, but no product is. But just because it's no expandable to 10,000 sites doesn't mean its a bad product - it just isn't fit for someone in that market. My company has roughly 1000 employees, but 60% of our workforce is entirely remote, so the two offices aren't big and we recently downsized one of them. Works perfect for us.

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David-Gallium@reddit

Absolutely agree there's no one size fits all for this market and as you've touched on employee count isn't a great indicator. I think OP really left out a key fact which is how many devices in play and in what kind of environment. Without that it's honestly hard to say.

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Leading_Highway_4771@reddit

Yeah they work well for us. I *would* say that if you're using them for surveillance or history, any of them are fine. If you're looking for alerting though then you might want to focus on their AI-enabled ones. Ours mostly work well, but we had to upgrade a few where the sun would shine through a skylight, or headlights come through some windows and notify at annoying times.

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BatemansChainsaw@reddit

before they were labeled "AI" they were using the phrase "smart detection". I don't think much has changed on the back-end but the system has improved and works well in airgapped (non-internet) networks!

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guzhogi@reddit

I don’t deal with cameras personally, but I wonder what Cisco’s Meraki cameras are like. But it’s Meraki, so I’m sure it’s pricey and subscription based as heck

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akp1988@reddit

I can confirm, it's so expensive. Subscriptions cost more than an entirely new Hikvision setup over 3 years.

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malls_balls@reddit

no real PTZ options with Meraki either

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IllThrowYourAway@reddit

I’m years removed from remembering the pricing but I loved the quality These days I am UniFi

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FineAd6098@reddit

Hanwha Vision (Samsung), Camera's are good but personally i really hate the NVR's and software stack. Could probably be better but installed before i got here and still not properly 'finished'. I had unifi at the last place and also use it at my home and personal business

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pueblokc@reddit

Unifi protect

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Buddy_Kryyst@reddit

We have verkada they are horrible. Trying to get away from them to pretty much anything else at this point.

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Warm_Aspect_4079@reddit

Curious why you feel they're bad. Was it just the pricing and subscription model? I trialed them several years ago and the quality was good. The interface was easy to use for the less technical folks. Did not get to spend time with it long-term, though. Granted, I was looking to replace a very outdated system, so pretty much anything would look better

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SmoothMcBeats@reddit

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/295m-penalty-and-permanent-injunction-resolves-lawsuit-against-verkada-inc-alleged-unlawful https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-09/hackers-expose-tesla-jails-in-breach-of-150-000-security-cams

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Buddy_Kryyst@reddit

Pricing is crazy and maybe we've just had bad luck but we've got cheap $158 cameras from amazon that we put in up in one branch that have been far more reliable than the ones Verkada provides. They are dying all the time.

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llDemonll@reddit

We have Verkada and love it. Nearly no involvement from IT on a daily basis. We’ve had a couple RMAs over the years but nothing more. Over 100 cameras in service.

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ItRequiredAUsername@reddit

+1 for Verkada. We have over 1,000 cameras deployed globally and about 30 sites with access control, with about a 2 year queue of offices wanting them. We Do the initial setup in the portal, create the Security group in Azure and provision via SCIM. When a user account is termed, viola, access is automatically shutoff with no input from IT. About 90% of users use the app for access. In the rare case they don't, we just ask Service Delivery to grab a fob from inventory and let us know the number. We have had a few RMAs over the years, but they all stem from crap installers. One installer We got rid of installed indoor cameras outdoors in Houston, and another forgot to install the weather seal around an intercom at a rolling gate in Florida.

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SmoothMcBeats@reddit

Axis cameras.. milestone main in vm, physical camera servers in each building so if links are cut, they keep recording.

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bluecrocsRcomfy@reddit

Ubiquiti camera and NVR.

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gr8tjorb@reddit

800 cameras on wisenet wave running Hanwa and axis cameras on non virtualized 10 server cluster no san. We were milestone virtualized with San before that, very much enjoying wave over milestone.

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ronin_cse@reddit

Effectively nothing because I refuse to let cameras be IT’s responsibility and the other departments don't have enough of an attention span to actually pursue the project.

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englandgreen@reddit

Unifi Protect and Unifi Access. Cameras, NVR and badge access.

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mickymac1@reddit

We have around 85 cameras at work. Used to use milestone, but Windows is a bit of a dog with that much data writing to it 24x7. We migrated over to Synology Survelliance Station a around 6 years ago and over all the staff are much happier with it. It doesn't support some of the more enhanced AI features that some other solutions have, however it gets the job done pretty cheaply. We primarily use it with Hikvision cameras, however have used D-Link's and Axis in the past with it and haven't had any problems.

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calculatetech@reddit

Synology. Brilliantly simple and new AI features are astounding.

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omgitzrick@reddit

Ubiquiti cameras + UNVR/UniFi Protect

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guywhoaskquestions@reddit

Synology VMS

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TerrificVixen5693@reddit

Cheap ass air gapped Hikvisions.

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FireLucid@reddit

We have mabye 200 of these across our locations. Using Luxriot for the NVRs, no real complaints.

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W0lfButter@reddit

I use them, and they very rarely fail. Mostly just the nvrs that I have trouble with.

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jmbpiano@reddit

The day we shut off our Hik NVR was one of the happiest days of my career.

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new_vr@reddit

I’m using them with synology as the nvr

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cookerz30@reddit

Until I get the budget to update, this is exactly what I've inherited at my current and last employer.

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TerrificVixen5693@reddit

Yep. We had one we couldn’t get into because the password was not documented, so we bought an identical replacement and put in place.

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Sw33tkill3r@reddit

One time I reset a hikvision as the password was not known. It never came back online. I was supposed to do this for every camera (2 dozen or so). I did not touch the rest.

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Sea-Anywhere-799@reddit

They are stopping support in the U.S.though no?

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cardinal1977@reddit

Video Insight with Panasonic/iPro cameras. But the cam license once and you're done. I like the AI motion detection and analytics. Verkada is on our black list. Domain is blocked, significant blocks of phone numbers are blocked. Snail mail attempts are return to sender. If they dared show up, I'd have them tresspassed. Dishonest and unscrupulous sales people. I'll never do business with them.

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Dzov@reddit

Cool cool. We must be the only place running those banned Chinese cameras. Best part is we have like 200 of them.

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PrezzNotSure@reddit

We're a SnapOne reseller, so Luma or Unifi

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newtrawn@reddit

Lorex :(

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zanzertem@reddit

Hugs from a fellow Lorex sufferer. Replacing it soon though!

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greenscoobie86@reddit

Yeah same here. Lorex really sucks with their horrible mobile app support and remote management.

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benuntu@reddit

Unifi. I've rolled this out to about 15 sites over the past year and they've worked well. They offer a lot of options for cameras ranging from $130-2,000 each depending on what you want. I've put up mostly their G6 Turret and G6 Pro Turret models, and a handful of the G6 PTZ. Easy to install and deploy, with construction being pretty good. No subscription needed, and you can just add users by email to each NVR. They get an invite to create a Unifi account and are then able to log into the NVR and view video camera feeds that you specify.

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e7c2@reddit

do you use a UDM Pro as an nvr, or something else? I last used unifi cameras when the NVR was software based, maybe 10 years ago

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Limeasaurus@reddit

It depends on the amount of cameras. Search UniFi capacity calculator. You can come various cams and storage needs. I recommend keeping it less than 60% of capacity because cams are always added later and sometimes features are added that may require more processing power. We’re using a mix of ENVR and ENVR core for our 380 cams.

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benuntu@reddit

I have one UDM Pro, but only used that because it was already in place. It's fine, but I prefer their normal NVR or NVR Pro units. More often than not, I get requests after the first installation to add more cameras, so having the extra bays for more hard drives is convenient. I also like to be able to separate the gateway/firewall duties from video recording, but again that's mostly preference. Plenty of people run a UDM Pro or NVR Instant and it works for them.

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Lower_Bar5210@reddit

Does multi-site scale well? We have maybe 275 sites

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benuntu@reddit

I can't speak to that many sites as I only have 15 with one more in the queue. But an MSP I work with sometimes has almost 100. With Fabrics and some other updates over the past year, it's become much easier to manage multiple sites and regions.

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Western_Gamification@reddit

Yeah, we use them aswell. Only thing that's lacking for me is device groups an giving user acess to a group. There are tags, but that isn't used in user management.

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ADynes@reddit

Maybe I'm missing something but isn't that what roles are for? Sounds like 15 cameras and we give access to about 12 different people distributed across a different roles. Each roll has access to certain cameras. It seems to work just fine

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Western_Gamification@reddit

Yeah, but once you add a camera, you have to assign that cam to all roles that need it. If one could add a tag/group to the device, and add that tag/group tot the role, would be way less work. 15 cams and 12 people is a very small scale.

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ADynes@reddit

You're probably organizing your cameras different then us. Our cameras are organized by areas so if a camera is added it's usually just to one role in the same area. I.e. warehouse 1, warehouse 2, exterior, etc. Adding or replacing cameras really isn't a big deal. Granted tags would make it a lot easier

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benuntu@reddit

You can actually do this now(kinda) through Fabrics. Create a new role, specify which site, then select the cameras and what features they should have access to (livestream, playback, delete footage, etc.). Then assign that role to users.

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Western_Gamification@reddit

Yeah, I do that now. But I have to select all cameras seperately. On my scale (20 cams and half a dozen users), that's manageable. But I wouldn't want to do that with hundreds of xams and users.

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jamesmaxx@reddit

Verkada cameras and front door intercom system with built in camera.

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zpuddle@reddit

Unifi

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cheetahwilly@reddit

Axis Cameras + Genetec Security Center.

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sammy5678@reddit

I've been happy with Genetec. Cctv and ACS has been good to me on that platform.

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bodiez@reddit

synology surveillance for my shop. pay for a license per cam once and has just worked well. i’m sure there are much cheaper options but no subscription and easy to setup user permissions and external access (dscam app)

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Icy_Conference9095@reddit

Unifi cameras is what we're moving towards

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ZookeepergameSalty10@reddit

Avigilon unity is solid but they are slowly adopting more subscriptions. Unifi protect gets better every day and supports access control and phones if desired. Unifi has good track record of no hidden bs and being both pro consumer and pro prosumer. Stay away from ISS its a management nightmare from an end user stand point and its ai sucks imo. Everything i mentioned works with 3rd party onvif cameras so you can try to reuse existing hardware to save some money. I work for a security company and im a bit of a paranoid nerd so i got all kinds of opinions on the different systems ive worked with and use. Fyi i personally use unifi protect in my home and recommend it to everyone lately because its just solid and unifi has a lot of options for upgrade paths.

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gmc_5303@reddit

Amcrest garbage, on its own vlan with no internet access. Cheap and functional.

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waytoofarout@reddit

Wisenet Wave, hanwha/Samsung cameras

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afcujstrick@reddit

I'm sorry

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waytoofarout@reddit

Works like a charm. 600+ cameras. No complaints at all.

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thanatossassin@reddit

Arecont/Costars for the majority, most locations are on Exacqvision, but we're testing out Wisenet Wave on a few.

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demonjrules@reddit

Unifi. It's pretty incredible what they have done over the last few years. It's all pretty reasonably priced and subscription free.

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Expensive_Plant_9530@reddit

AXIS cameras and NVRs, running Camera Station Pro. We have separate NVRs for each location. We don’t have any real central management system (Camera Station is sort of centrally managed when you add multiple servers to the client but it’s not exactly the same). Overall very solid system. Cameras are nearly bullet proof. We had one location using Symphony instead, but that software was awful and so resource hungry.

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uberner@reddit

We have hundreds of Unifi cameras across our sites and have had no issues with them. They are cheap and reliable with both their NVR and cameras.

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xintonic@reddit

Same. Previous Camera vendor is salty.

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stumpymcgrumpy@reddit

As with most things in IT you get what you pay for. The question to ask is why do you have cameras? If they need to be there for legal and compliance reasons then you got to start building out your requirements from there. Storing low res crappy video is possible but if it intended to be able to be used in some sort of legal way or even to be able to review footage from a month ago is all part of understanding the requirements.

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David-Gallium@reddit

You might want to be sure that you execs don't want "Verkada without the subscription", because it basically doesn't exist. You convert your existing Verkada cameras in place to an on-prem solution. Just make sure to enable RTSP and export the URLs before you license lapses. Milesite, BlueIris, NXWitness, Synology etc can all ingest the camera streams and provide you with a video platform. But it just does video, recording and playback. That's it. If you want verkada-like alerting and analytics it's getting harder to do this without a subscription license. You can put something together with a NVR product, and camera analytics plugins. It'll be work but can get most of the functionality. Or you can use Unifi, but it has a scale ceiling of a handful of sites. It's worth asking the question, how many cameras?

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waddlesticks@reddit

Verkada is already pretty well priced as well. We are moving off milestone to it and it will pay itself of on a year (we are doing access through it as well so Gallagher will go) I'd be pushing the execs back that it's practically the best deal they can really get for money at the moment and the cost to move eats into people's salary to make sure the new system is running correctly and when issues occur they have to stop projects to work on it compared to using verkada support.

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smpreston162@reddit

Unifi

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KillingTime1212@reddit

Avigilon unity version eight on refurbished Dell R740xd servers

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atomic_jarhead@reddit

We evaluated Verkada and ended up with Rhombus. It’s been pretty good for several years now.

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cozza1313@reddit

Unifi - highly recommended

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jfernandezr76@reddit

Vigi by TP-Link. It's awesome.

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Cryptocaned@reddit

Unifi cameras and the protect app.

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techw1z@reddit

just get a bunch of reolink cameras and lock them in a VLAN without internet access. frigate or blueiris as NVR stay away from unifi unless you want random people to get admin access to your whole video surveillance system, already happened at least twice.

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GhostandVodka@reddit

axis cameras and genetec

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FreelyRoaming@reddit

Avigilon Unity

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pdp10@reddit

> verkada but the execs dont want to pay for subscriptions anymore 1. Choose cloud cameras that also require planning for upload bandwidth. 1. Decide that you don't like subscriptions. Did you know that those cost money? Forever?! 1. Profit?

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Frothyleet@reddit

> Choose cloud cameras that also require planning for upload bandwidth. Just as a little FYI because I helped a customer start implementing Verkada a couple of years ago and I came in hot with concerns about upstream bandwidth at some of their locations - it's basically a non-issue during standard operation. Verkada, and I would guess other cloud-camera solutions might behave similar, basically only uploads thumbnails during normal operation. I can't remember the exact math but at one site it was going to be <1mbps for a set of 20 cameras. Otherwise, the full res imagery is just stored locally on the cameras themselves, and is only streamed if a user goes to access the live stream or recordings. So in that case the conversation was something like "you're actually fine with this temporary LTE connection for right now, but your LP guys will have the unintentional ability to bring the store network to its knees unless we throttle the security VLAN".

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pdp10@reddit

Thanks; I didn't know that. There are substantial advantages, and substantial disadvantages, so that setup.

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Frothyleet@reddit

Yeah I made a note of it in case I ever turn to a life of crime, might as well grab the cameras when I'm doing heists in case they're using a system that works like that! Although in seriousness, they explicitly require their implementers to physically protect the cameras (like, put 'em up high or reinforce them), presumably for that threat model.

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pdp10@reddit

I'd be less concerned about heists than about losing evidence [if the building burns down](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KISFht7mQV0) or a scissor lift smashes the camera. Tradeoffs, but we usually have bandwidth to burn on the LAN/MAN and want to mirror to another building, without going to the cloud.

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Smart-Document2709@reddit

Hunwah…. they’re good stuff, reliable license, free and no subscriptions.

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somecallmetim3@reddit

Kind of an aside but we have a use case where we need to take photos and save them to a network location. Anyone know of a camera that can upload wirelessly to a sMB share? I have tried some of the old SD flash cards that have built in wifi but can't seem to get it to auto send you still need to use an app.

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Frothyleet@reddit

That's something you'd probably need to accomplish with a mobile app, and since most every mobile device has a camera nowadays anyway...

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FastFredNL@reddit

We have a regular consumer cam in the serverroom with an app on our phones. I forgot the brand. We get a notification when noise get's to loud and we can also check for any status lights on our servers. We also have PRTG but this is just as a extra. As for security camera's on the outside of the building I also forgot the brand, but they are Chinese and the manufacturer is 30% owned by the Chinese government. We warned management about the risk and they didn't care. They run in a seperate VLAN on their own but with connection to the internet

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BitsNBytes10101@reddit

We use BlueIris, virtualized.

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reni-chan@reddit

I've been doing the same for my home setup for over 6 years now.

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slapstik007@reddit

Interesting, are you using any of the AI tools? I use this at home, not sure I have ever heard of it used for anything larger.

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catherder9000@reddit

We went with Uniview after trying Unifi (you're too locked in to their hardware, sorry), and looking at Hanwha (Samsung) which a number of Canadian government departments went with (great quipment). We have been very satisfied with the quality of the unv cameras and equipment. Previous it was 160+ HikVision cameras and multiple NVRs. Still have most of the cameras but everything will slowly change to unv. The unv interface is ten times better than the HikVision was for playback/search/tracking etc. The price is good too.

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screener_kev@reddit

Avigilon for anywhere we have under 100 cameras and a budget that supports it, Unifi Protect for everywhere else. Avigilon's analytics actually work and the support is real, but it's eye-watering pricing for what's effectively a fancy NVR. Unifi Protect has gotten genuinely good in the last 2 years and the G5 cameras have closed the gap on image quality at night more than most reviews give them credit for. The one killer for Unifi at scale is the lack of granular role-based access. If you need to give a third-party guard service partial view-only access to specific cameras, Avigilon does it cleaner. Both beat anything cloud-only at the perimeter where you want footage even when the internet's down.

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Kortok2012@reddit

Exacqvision is a one time license/hardware, you only have to buy more when it’s service updates run out. It’s simple and local hosted

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_510Dan@reddit

Axis cameras. Genetec for NVR and access control.

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DDHoward@reddit

We just use Blue Iris with mostly LTS brand cameras, a few Hikvision cameras here and there.

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InternetStranger4You@reddit

Watch out. They updated their EULA to say Commercial requires a monthly commercial license.

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duncan882@reddit

We've been using Panasonic's Video Insight with very little issues. We have them on there own network with Tp-link switches and Hikvison and IPro cameras.

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adstretch@reddit

Hanwha

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TrexVsBigfoot@reddit

Hanwa Vision (Samsung) with Genetec VMS.

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jpotrz@reddit

ExaqVision and some cheap Hik cameras

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DarkNeogen@reddit

Axis or Bosch cameras combined with Genetec or Milestone. Axis and Genetec work very well together.

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Wolfram_And_Hart@reddit

Alibi and Ubiquity (their cameras are crazy nice)

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chrissb1e@reddit

Unifi Protect. I have no idea how many cameras we have but we have 3 NVR Pros and it works great. They added a webhook feature for alerts so I am working on adding features with that.

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Reasonable-Cat8530@reddit

Hikvision but due to the amount of cameras / nvrs we decided to go for hikcentral

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captainalvi@reddit

DW Spectrum is one of the best, runs on Windows, Linux, or any server you have. Licensing is perpetual and per camera - use it with any ONVIF capable cameras like Axis, Avigilon, etc.

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wangston_huge@reddit

Im a big fan of DW Spectrum except for the recent bugginess of their auto discovery feature. I end up with duplicate cameras. I've got about 800 cameras across 5 systems though, and for the most part it's great.

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therankin@reddit

We're very happy with our Digital Watchdog Blackjack 2U rackmount server. The software is nice and smooth, video searching features are great, and we maxed out the storage and with 73 cameras we can store about 40 days worth of footage. Their online service allows camera access from anywhere if you choose to use it. I really like it.

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unclesleepover@reddit

Axis with March Networks Command Client. Lots of our cameras flash on and off in the Windows client. Does not occur on their vivotek hdmi boxes.

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FuturePath6357@reddit

wisenet with axis and sony cams

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fattes@reddit

Reolink cameras and NVR.

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Crazy-Rest5026@reddit

Avignon platform and mix of axis/avigilon cameras. We used genetec wouldn’t even go back. 6 schools . As well set up cloud access. It’s tits. Expensive but definitely a nice product

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InvoluntaryNarwhal@reddit

Avigilon is just terrible.

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pstu@reddit

How so?

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ephemere_mi@reddit

Interested to hear why as well. I've been using it for almost a decade and it's been great. Once or twice we've had police in here to check footage and they've always compared it favorably to what they see at other companies. One even told us it was the best he'd ever seen.

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Limeasaurus@reddit

Agreed 100% we demo their system with a few vendors and wasn't impressed.

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synkus@reddit

Inner Range Integriti :(

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Slasher1738@reddit

Unifi Protect

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BigSnackStove@reddit

Unifi

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No_Friend_8864@reddit

I use Alibi cameras and NVRs across 5 offices, very easy to use. They also offer a cloud service and are NIST compliant.

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noelknight@reddit

Meraki for stores & offices, verkada for warehouse.

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old_cypherpunk@reddit

We have to get a few cameras for Soc2 compliance and my bosses are pushing for Ring. I tell them it is just a consumer product, even the "business" side, it has major privacy concerns and we'll probably get dinged (but I can't prove it.) But they're familiar with Ring so they want Ring. Any more "why not to use Ring" reasons? A definite "will get you dinged for Soc2" answer would be great.

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demonfurbie@reddit

Genetec with hanwah cameras on VMs , largest system we have is only 890 cameras. Best part is that it’s the same system for doors and key boxes.

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r3almaplesyrup@reddit

Unifi, and we love them

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Silveradotel@reddit

Verkada. Users love it.

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cheapcologne@reddit

LTS is an option. No license fees. We installed LTS platinum systems at two of our locations.

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nonResidentLurker@reddit

Axis cameras with Salient CompleteView.

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JLee50@reddit

I use Verkada and UniFi depending on site / requirements.

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CrackedInterface@reddit

verkada. it's decent. I do wish the camera access was a bit more individualized but overall that's a non problem.

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MayoDeftinwolf@reddit

Axis cameras, and genetec for NVR/viewing/door control. Been running it for years, never had any major issues with it.

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mrbios@reddit

Unifi, had a unvr pro with the intention to stack two, but the stacking was crap and the unvr struggled to maintain the camera capacity advertised Performance was just really poor. ENVR on the other hand is brilliant. Regarding unvr pro, there has been a huge amount of firmware releases since my issues, with a lot claiming performance and stability benefits.

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landob@reddit

Vast2. It works? I have no complaints about it

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chakalakasp@reddit

You gotta specify org size and needs Like sure, UniFi is great, unless you’re an company of moderate size with actual needs and a budget to fit those needs Real on prem solutions that aren’t magic cloud stuff like Verkada involve some expensive-ass cameras and expensive-ass servers running expensive-ass management software like Milestone or Avigilon (that will indeed have a subscription license), and you or some vendor you hire is gonna need to be on top of updating and maintaining all of that and replacing it all in 4 or 5 years. On the other hand if you’re a tiny shop with a shoestring budget, none of that is for you.

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Hopeful-Try2839@reddit

We are using Milestone with HikVison and Axis cameras across 10 locations. We have a special use setup at one location with Ubiquity which we'd probably switch to for everything if we ever move away from Milestone. The best thing about Milestone are it's fairly camera agnostic.

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ryocoon@reddit

Honestly I wouldn't trust Synology at this point. They've yanked features from their products repeatedly. Sure, last I checked the per-camera licensing is pay-once rather than subscription, but with how the company has acted in the last decade, I wouldn't chance it.

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D1TAC@reddit

For our offices it's a combination of Axis and Hikvision cameras. The hik ones are being phased out, upgraded with Axis ones, but costs are always the hold up for most of these, we've gone with the phased approach. Using Salient Software. I've looked at BlueIris but I just want something to work.

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Sprucecaboose2@reddit

Unifi.

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xXNorthXx@reddit

Verkada can be cheap but requires long commitments (5yr or 10yr contracts). All depends on scale. How many cameras? How many sites are they spread across?

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BPCycler@reddit

Unifi

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cjcox4@reddit

We use zoneminder

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EnterpriseOnion@reddit

I’ve ran synology before but even with one of their beefy servers it’s not great. Motion section isn’t great. Implemented unifi at the 2nd site, performance was way better and easier to admin

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