 So we've done a lot of installs with these UniFi camera systems. We've done a lot of videos about some of the larger installs we've done and we're pretty happy with them except UniFi made a decision last year to stop development stop further development I should say of the UniFi video 3 software now They do have and I commented a few months ago and hoping something would change and it still hasn't as of mid 2019 right now it's almost September and We're committed to supporting existing UFv3 installation so UniFi video 3 will continue to receive Security updates bug fixes and support for any new G3 camera models But in there is software remain available for download on our website But what I'm talking about here is they're pushing their new protect system But this is back to the body in here on UniFi protect is just not as robust of a system. I was hoping they would develop more We were hoping they would allow us to run on our own hardware currently it only runs on the cloud key gen 2 plus and Despite the marketing title here simply scalable video security and don't get me wrong the interface is wonderful on it I like the product in terms of the interface But you know it not really scalable and why do I say that well when you can only run it on this little box here and Put a single two and a half inch SSD hard drive or say to hard drive I said SSD because when I did the testing and I was using 4k cameras. I realized right away The system wasn't very fast with 4k cameras at all trying to keep a you know standard spinning hard drive in there So we put an SSD in there But then SSDs are pretty expensive and still that's single hard drive and what about you know hooking it up to external storage Well, they don't have the clear support for that. I know it's running Linux I know how to mount Samba shares on but now I'm have a single network port that I'm You know trying to inbound all the data and send all the data back out to like a share to send it to some Rateray you can see how this turns into kind of a messy project right away. It's not smooth or clean So it's not that we're not recommending them. It's just when people say I want like a 20 camera system Well, well, they've stopped development on the uv3 software That you can run on your own hardware and you can't run protecting your own hardware And they don't have another device to do it So I don't have a solution that Unify can fit for those customers and because of that We have been moving over to Synology for a lot of our equipment and we've already done some really nice installs with the Synology systems now the first thing I like about Synology is the question comes up all the time I need to pick an nvr which one which cameras etc etc in the Unify world if you got to build a hardware yourself We have to spec out the hardware to support the number of cameras Synology makes this pretty easy He'd put in a number of cameras with their nvr selector how many days of storage you want How much recording whether or not it needs hdmi output etc etc and a solution list will pop up Including if you only are a small person with five cameras who only needs maybe 14 days of storage and we'll hit recommend And they have some pretty basic options like the nvr 1218 and The nvr 1218 we've actually put a few of these in small offices. Yes It's only a two-drive system that supports up to 12 cameras pretty basic But pretty basic price to 199 without the drives in it over here on Amazon so they're pretty reasonably priced and They have a feature that I really wish that I was hoping Unify would eventually even with their protect line had a solution for People want these put on a TV. Well, I know Chris I believed in a video on how to do this with an RTSP stream and a Raspberry Pi But now you can see you've built a project that you have to support as opposed to plug in hdmi cable Connect it to TV so they can watch your cameras Synology has that option and for the larger nvr installs where you're talking about like a hundred cameras or something more advanced They didn't have entire kits that will plug into the nvr via network interface and remotely Watch them on a TV. They basically create their own system so it has a direct interface for TV or you can just watch them on the computer very easily with a Windows tool that you load on there So they've got solutions for a lot of different scenarios hardware solutions or software solutions Now Synology also supports some of the more advanced things like they have here a built-in analytics module when you use some of their higher and Models like this nvr DV 832 19 that comes with an NVIDIA GTX 1050 And it's got options for you know watching and understanding where things are This is for no idle zone notifications. They have other integrations. They can do This is some people counting options that you can expand into and it's more than just an nvr It's also a NAS box. It's also all the other features that you get with Synology I know someone's already mashing a keyboard getting angry because going but there's license fees and you're not wrong Unify gave away their software for free, but with the Unify protect It's tied to their hardware and when the Unify video although you can load it on your own hardware Exclusively supported Unify cameras not necessarily a bad thing for a new install trickier to do a retrofit because we are doing more and more retrofits to people who have Existing systems they want to expand on they don't always like being told they have to throw out all their existing cameras And I did a deep dive into the Synology surveillance station software and they have a Amazing number of cameras they support so you can use a lot of your existing camera installations You can mix and match cameras and have many different types But their licensing fees that they have for them their one-time fees when you add them to those surveillance stations are not recurring You're not paying them every year annually Like a lot of other you know some of the commercial nvr systems And we have worked with some of the commercial systems and they are nice as well They are a different use case But many of them do have recurring fees that you have to pay annually to keep the system working Synology does not do that to you. Synology also we verified by reaching out to their team You can transfer licenses so if you buy 10 licenses and put them on your nvr You go wow we want like you know 50 more cameras, which we also need a bigger nvr Synology has support for that They also make it easy to back up the data put it somewhere else provided you have enough storage to do so They have a lot of synchronization tools by for example buying another Synology and say hey I want to duplicate this data because it's really critical because of compliance We have to do for keeping all this data and keeping all these videos and copy to another one Synology's made a lot of that easy. It's not that I have anything personal against Unify I just wish they had a clear upgrade path that I could sell my customers We're all about selling solutions. We're not committed or focused to any one company Our loyalty to a company goes as far as the company keeps developing the product if the company doesn't develop the product I can't recommend the solution. I have to find a solution that makes my clients happy and works for them so it's Deal a good suit system if you want to do a small office with you know four or five cameras with a Unify protect system. I wouldn't say not to do it But if you're going I want for today and 50 tomorrow I don't know when the Unify protect system if ever will support that It's not there's not anything I found in her blog post that I've been able to discover So we can find something that they've put on there but I'm right on the Unify website right here in end of August 2019 and not seeing it and We still have those systems out there that seem to work perfectly fine That we've done these large installs for and they are up and running and Unify has stayed true to their word of sending out security updates and fixes For them so we are been loading the updates and the systems have been working But you know, I just don't feel comfortable selling someone a product when Unify themselves has pretty much said Yeah, we're not continuing the development path of the UV3 software. We're really focusing on protect Well when they come up with a better solution Maybe we can put some more of those in if the Unify protect can support more than one drive and be loaded on Hardware or even having a really nice server option for that until then We're gonna stick with recommending some of these Synology stations because they're actually been a better fit for some of our clients Especially with the fact that they can use so many of their existing cameras that kind of makes it a lot easier to sale 20 more cameras when you don't tell them they have to rip out their 20 existing and just add 20 more That includes some one-off devices. You can hook up and we're gonna be doing some videos on this about Retrofits and we've now done some for some clients and it's kind of impressive. We've also done a few, you know Native installs that are brand new with Synology We're waiting because after we like to do a lot of testing I don't like to do reviews that the day after I install so waiting a few months It's kind of better proof to me to show you that yes These are some quality systems and we've got one client that's been running it for about two years That's been really happy with it We just were really hoping unifies path would go a little bit further along than it has but it hasn't so I just want to release this video to kind of talk about that my thoughts on where we are in mid of 2019 and what we've been doing for Recommendations for camera systems. 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