Ubiquiti outdoor UniFi Protect G4 Instant Camera

I bought this camera to watch my fish tank when we were on vacation. I know, I know... but, the tank was new and I was more concerned that it would overflow or the power would cut off and everything would die when we were away. The camera itself is great - much smaller in size than I was expecting. The image quality is perfect and it paired immediately upon plugging it in. All of the Ubiquiti products I have in my house have far exceeded my expectations with very few if any issues.

I have never been a fan of having a camera inside my house. But we wanted one for our pets and these work great. You can disable the mic for privacy which is what we did. Highly recommended as they are locally viewed and recorded to your own local storage.

I got a great black Friday deal on this, about $30 less than regular price. It is my first security camera and so my first unifi and I am very happy with it. Running it from inside facing out a window, it included the option to disable IR which made this possible as otherwise all you would see is the reflection of the glass. It has great video quality and very simply to set since it is a wi-fi camera. Using with a UDM-SE and this with unifi-Protect has turned out to be a great experinced for my first steps into survailance systems.

Easy to setup. Needs Unifi Protect app on Ubiquity router.

I was looking at setting up my own AI solution with Home Assistant and AI TPUs, but I really don't have the time I used to for a technical homebrew Implementation like that, so I went with Ubiquiti. I already had their networking equipment, so I figured why not go to their protection suite. We'll see how it goes and see if they turn it to crap in five years like the Yi cameras did.

I use it to watch my animals and i used a 12 volt to USB C adapter connected to a battery. I can now check on my animals anytime. I would have bought a 30 watt solar panel but it was cheaper to buy 100 watt and just have extra power that i can use later to add a bigger battery with.

I have four of these bad boys and think they're well worth the money.For years I've wondered what my neighbors are cooking, what types of outfits they've picked out for the day, what kind of shows they watch on TV. It wasn't until recently I discovered I can easily just point a camera straight into their living room because our houses are practically kissing they're so close together.What I've noticed about this camera in terms of pros and cons:Pros:- It's nice not to need POE like many of the other Ubiquiti cameras require. A lot of people see this as a downside but the lack of POE lets me run an extension cord along the side of my house and attach it to the perfect mounting point.- I like that I can turn off the LED on the camera so that people can't see the little green light when it's dark out staring back out at them.- It's held up great in the Chicago winters. Cold, heat, rain, snow, intense sun. None of these phase this camera.Cons:- This isn't so much the camera as Unifi Protect overall - They're super alert happy. "I SAW A PERSON" "I SAW A PERSON" "THERE'S A PERSON". It seems like every time a person enters and exits the frame, even seconds later, I'm about to find out.- At times has required a power cycle. It just stops connecting to WiFi randomly. I have an outdoor access point really close to it and the connection is solid but every once in awhile it just decides "nah". I hate when I lose even a minute of my video feed. Especially during episodes of House Hunters.- The audio capture is subpar. Even when people are standing around it outside wondering why it's facing their house I can barely hear their displeasure.

Ubiquiti is always out of stock of these cameras as well as the G3. But I needed a replacement right away and not wait for an in-stock notification from the manufacturer. This unit was sold for twice what you can get them for direct. The G4 is much bigger than the G3 and hopefully deals with heat much better. Video quality is good and the voice prompts were a welcome change.