UniFi Protect: From Underdog to Industry Leader

[@jodycwilliams]

I run the security for a Gun Manufacturer here in Texas. They absolutely love Unifi Protect and all of the advancements over the last few years. The future is looking very bright for Protect.

[@justintyme6920]

The best part is that no one at Apple wanted to listen to Robert. So he left and started Ubiquiti right out of San Carlos! Now, he's literally a billionaire.

[@ronhoppner]

The Apple influence shows in every single product. He and Ubiquiti deserve all the success and more. Absolutely a favorite line of products of mine.

[@stultuses]

​@ronhoppner Apple is all about lock in, unifi is moving towards working with multiple devices, much much better than Apple Apple doesn't innovate anymore, they just purchase other companies technology and claim it as their own Like they stole the gui idea from Xerox, like they tried to claim they invented the tablet when in fact it appeared years beforehand in movies and TV shows like le femme Nikita Even the iPhone was ripped as an idea from star trek All the best innovation comes from Android now, and has done so for quite a while

[@DPCTechnology]

Great overview. The best thing is that all of this development is happeing at no charge. I just updated a UNVR from 2.0 all the way to 5.x and it blew my mind how much better that same UNVR hardware (bought years ago) is now with the software updates... And it will only be better in the future. They really have come a long way..

[@maxherman11]

Hold up, 5.0?! 👀 EDIT: Thought you were talking about UNVR FW which is currently 4.0, now I see you meant 5.0/5.1 for Protect, my bad!

[@DrivingPhilippines]

That's really good to know. Running Syno Surveillance Station now, and will be switching over to Unifi NVR soon. They have great cameras (as seen on your channel)

[@RT-iy9pu]

A main reason I saw for slow adoption, at least in the past, was that the cameras were quite expensive. Cameras for 1/4th the price were just as good.

[@John-td9cp]

not to mention, really shit mounting that is extremely easy to rip the older style cameras off the wall.

[@hifiguy77]

Incredibly over priced in the market place, with one of the worst warranties on their products. The ONLY thing they have going for the platform is their camera/NVR UI.

[@jahnkeanater]

All the other cameras are increasing their cloud storage costs and removing features. The cost of ubiquiti cameras is starting to look not so bad.

[@wojtek-33]

@@jahnkeanater That's why you go with something like Reolink where you keep everything local.

[@KoltL]

Ubiquiti cameras are still considerably more expensive than cheaper (and better) alternatives. If you care for picture quality, you're not going to end up with Ubiquiti (unless spending $$ on the AI port which is not worth it for some)

[@steveroywojciechowsk]

OMG. I have an old TP-Link NC450 which I was going to send to recycle as the TP-Link app and web interface no longer work with modern browsers. What do you know, UniFi Protect found it on my network and adopted it into protect. Awesome!

[@j340_official]

I have been using unifi protect for my house, a few g5 PTZ cameras. and now I have a little baby and I use a g4 instant as a baby monitor cam and I love watching her in her little crib. Unifi has helped make this moment special for me and my wife who also uses the app as a baby monitor.

[@Raymond.Jansen]

I bought an ai port to smarten up my 4k dahua cam. It turns out that the ai port doesn't work for all cams. In this case it connects, get's ready, connects again, and this in an endless loop. Support didn't know, but I see others having the same problem. I used the ai port now to smarten up my g4 pro doorbell, and bought an ai pro as replacement for my dahua cam.

[@dank9561]

When I first tried Protect a few years ago I hated it and found it was nowhere close to the performance of my Axis cameras on Synology Surveillance Station. Now Protect blows Surveillance Station clean out of the water. I'm gradually swapping out the Axis cameras as they go EOS or fail for Protect cameras.

[@giggadan]

Protect has been the best investment I have ever made. I started my installer journey with unifi when it was just the regular dream machine. All these years later with a ton of hiccups on the way in terms of wants, they have a competitive system that puts so many other systems to shame on just how easy it is to use alone. Looking forward to future with protect and knowing I’ll have more installs because of how great it is!

[@linyingyen]

Doesn’t seem to have an officially supported method of remote backup of video recordings.

[@RussellMoran]

I’m using Blue Iris and have for years. I’ve upgraded ALL of my network except my router (pfsense) to unifi. Would the unifi protect be worth moving to?

[@daltonschrader8328]

i wouldnt personally do it. you have the right idea with blue iris you choose the hardware can upgrade it as you want to add more cameras and not be locked into using a single hardware vendor for your nvr needs

[@joekellyou]

I’ve been thinking of making a home lab/just home system out of unifi stuff. I hadn’t even considered there could be a processing max that low on the non enterprise stuff. Good to know!

[@F0XH0UND007]

Anyone know if unifi cameras work with open source software such as frigate or scyrpted?

[@stultuses]

Making the sharing of a camera available only in enterprise makes unifi start to move out of the consumer arena Having a camera viewable by a third party so they can check in on say a pet or elderly person shouldn't be an enterprise offering nor should you have to share all your cameras to allow someone to access just one if your cameras, most other cameras manufacturers allow anyone to share a camera via a link without paying more I get the gaming unifi will move me and more into enterprise and leave the average consumer in the dust

[@USSJeff]

The only thing I wish it had for third party (onvif) was record on motion. Maybe that is not possible since as you say the processing is done in the camera.

[@wojtek-33]

If you just want cameras to be in the same eco system, then fine I suppose, but some of them have bad video quality compared to pretty much anything else. Now maybe this isn't a priority for everyone, but paying 2-6x for the quality they provide, just to be in a ecosystem, is kind of crazy. The 3rd party support is the best thing they could have done though.

[@TotteVG]

Appreciate your insight on Protect. After a decade with Synology Surveillance Station and being dissatisfied with some of their recent changes (ex dropped hvec support) and unavailability of their own cameras (out of stock for over a year), have decided to try Protect. Picked up the AI Turret and UDMPM. Will miss some features like smart time lapse and automatic footage archival, but hope Ubiquiti will add those features in the future.

[@illegal101_lml]

Do their NVR’s support out of the box AI features from non UI cameras like Amcrest etc?

[@JonathanRootD]

Not without the $200 aI addon

[@Raymond.Jansen]

No, only onvif support, no ai (without ai port).

[@illegal101_lml]

Well… that’s a massive bummer on their part! Was thinking about switching over to Protect & all my Amcrest cameras have built in AI, won’t consider it now! Thanks for the replies 👌🏼

[@hyperthreaders]

FYI ENVR’s can’t be stacked. Says so right on support and mentions those looking for more should use vantage point.

[@Chazzaa-n7g]

Really good video, thank you. I find myself increasingly frustrated and limited by unifi’s network devices/software and have in recent times found myself preferring other vendors (they’re still ok for basic home/soho use, though). But will say… protect has come a very long way in recent year’s, they’ve done a fantastic job in this area and the support for 3rd party cameras is both unexpected and game-changing. They’re serious contenders in this market now. Love to see it.

[@leogaming83]

not exactly about unifi but is anybody switching to unifi AP from TPlink because of the ban on the routers ?

[@ronhoppner]

Protect gets better and better as every month goes buy. UI is on fires these days!

[@GXShade]

I wish unifi had better support ipv6

[@michaelrice500]

Excellent review; thanks!

[@accesser]

Very keen to see if this triggers some competition in the market from the likes of Synology , I'd love to see Synology release something similar to the AI port

[@ElliottDay-ok6ti]

I wouldn't even use them again buying a licence for a camera is just crazy

[@accesser]

​@@ElliottDay-ok6ti I’m on the fence with paying for a camera license, Good software development costs money, So IMO its understandable the license money goes towards paying the devs doing the work testing camera models, how proactive they are in fixing is somewhat hit and miss

[@timwood06]

Thanks for the video Tom! I have a Dream Machine Pro and didn't realize I can use my 3rd party cameras. Game changer for sure.

[@garynagle3093]

Wow. Just when I get thought for security here’s your wonderful video. Thank you!

[@oldman_eleven]

What camera system should a poor buy

[@KoltL]

I am waiting for someone to make a video regarding Ubiquiti cameras vs Dahua (or similar) cameras so people can see UI cameras are really poor in performance but are pro at costing more money.

[@stultuses]

Unifi is expensive for average performance

[@AAstebs]

The only issue I really have with Unifi is the G3/G4 instants I use have super super super bad wifi reception. Like I could duct tape the G3 instant to the actual router antenna and Ill still get poor reception alerts.

[@TheDefusedHero]

I do not have this issue at all.. I have two G3 instants that I use inside where I cannot feasibly run cable. You may want to just investigate interference and channel use. My 2.4Ghz network is down to a 20 width due to us being in a congested area; 5Ghz is 80.

[@ss-xy2im]

Do i own my data exclusively? Do i have to use the cloud? Am i guaranteed never to need to pay a monthly subscription? If the answer is no to any ....

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

You own your data, You don't have to use the cloud There are no subscriptions

[@dank9561]

The Cloud features are only needed if you want to watch/manage your cameras remotely. You can run it using only a local account if you don't want cloud access.

[@ss-xy2im]

Thanks for clearing that up, for some reason i was under a different impression when it to unifi...

[@dank9561]

​@@ss-xy2im As Tom touched on briefly in the video there was a time when Ubiquiti decided to force cloud registration during setup. Fortunately Ubiquiti listened to the customer feedback and restored the ability to run it with local accounts.

[@Joshv918]

Any comments about the availability.. all of this is a fun to play with and you really have to find pockets when you can order something’s. But more often then not I come back to buy something and it’s sold out. Incredible what they’ve done but twice in one week I was hitting a wall because I just couldn’t get the stuff.. they’re not supply isn’t keeping up with their innovation or demand..

[@ecrist]

Good stuff, thanks for the video!

[@jafizzle95]

Just sitting here drooling over this system wishing that I could convince my place of employment to only offer these to customers from now on. I have no say in the matter and the people that sell and install them have absolutely nothing to do with them post-install. We have 200+ Geovision systems deployed to customers and I am one of a small number of people responsible for maintaining and monitoring them for customers and I don't know if there could be a worse system for the scale of deployments that we have. Just the most bizarrely designed software that requires at least weekly checks to make sure it hasn't just stopped recording for no reason. No smart detection function whatsoever, just raw motion detection. That includes dust, spiderwebs, the grain on the video itself. Finding incidents is nightmarish because either hours of nothing was recorded or nothing at all was recorded. Pardon my rant.

[@the1maxb]

Great product hamstrung by poor availability. I'd sell them into more projects if only I had a reliable supply. It's hard to bid a project only to find that the chosen models are no longer in stock, and lead time unknown.

[@daltonschrader8328]

will not be an industry leader until protect can be self hosted like the old nvr software. Digital Watchdog, Milestone XProtect, etc all all professional systems that have self hosted and hardware based systems.

[@MrsCyImsofly]

Ahh, micro center 😐😑😮‍💨

[@LackofFaithify]

Ubiquiti is on a full force advance all along the hardware front. Looking back just 5 years to now is pretty insane from switches to cameras to amplifiers?! That said, you have to be careful who you put these in, as they are not NDAA compliant (at least last I looked last week). My concern goes back to the prior platform: they changed the deal once, what stops them from deciding that 3rd party isn't going to work with the system tomorrow? Also, tariffs will this stuff hard. If that happens and ubiquiti gets smashed, which groups get cuts first, Wifi APs, switches, cameras, or gateways?

[@tomstruble7380]

What industry is that? Every IT professional that I know puts them at the kiddie table in the Mom's basement geek club.

[@REDRIDER101]

Just curious what you might suggest over the Ubiquiti product.

[@rookie28604]

Every industry that doesn't want to pay 10x more for a marginally better product at best?

[@justinliu7788]

first

[@chris_schenkel]

Industry leader? Hahahaha. The land of stupid always disappoints.