Nest started their move to a worse plan last year and are now getting more forceful. I already dislike cloud cameras, and their app still has massive bugs in it that remain unfixed.

I'm moving to entirely non-cloud cameras. PoE and Wifi, mostly hardwired, to hard drives on my network rack. Upfront cost is higher but longterm worth it for additional privacy.

What cameras are you thinking of using?

I've been looking at cameras from ubiquiti but I'm new to camera tech and have found it hard to find out "do they want me to use their service / subscription?" and etc.

Not OP, but i've recently set up 5 cameras, 2 more on the way. My system is Ubiquiti with the following hardware:

- UDM Pro

- 24 Port PoE Switch

- 3 G3 Instant (Wifi based Camera)

- 1 G4 Pro (4k Cam, optical zoom, etc)

- 2 G3 Flex (cheaper/simpler option to the G4 Pro for less important areas)

- 1 G3 Doorbell

- 2 Wifi 6 Lite AP

I've been mostly happy with it so far. My only complaint is that there seems to be a semi-common issue with scrubbing timeline history. Downloading the clip works fine, but the websocket driven UI seems to lock up - i suspect it is a UI Software issue.

Aside from their software i've been very happy. Also the cameras, i believe, serve standard RTSPS so if i get fed up with Ubiquiti software i might switch to something standard. Though i'll probably try changing the hard drive (something faster perhaps) or even a dedicated NVR in an effort to make the history scrubbing work better.

Seems like a minor issue that could probably be resolved easily if it was FOSS :/

Thanks for the feedback!

I think i'm going to try out Ubiquiti with a camera or two... one day. Unfortunately, Ubiquiti cameras at regular price are hard to find these days.