 Tom here from Lawrence Systems and we're going to talk about the Unify Protect Viewport PoE, or as we call it, Magic Video Tube for the Unify Protect. We'll get into that in a minute. But first, if you'd like to learn more about me or my company, head over to LawrenceSystems.com. If you'd like to hire short projectors, a hires button right at the top. If you want to support this channel in other ways, there's affiliate links down below to get you deals and discounts on products and services we talk about on this channel, including a link to our Patreon if you'd like to become a Patreon supporter. We also have a swag store where you can get shirts and other items that are for sale and that changes from time to time what's available and what's not. So go ahead and check that out frequently. And finally are forums. If you'd like to have a more in-depth discussion about this video, suggestions for new videos or just reach out, say hi and talk tech, our forums are a great place for that. All right, now back to the content. So Unify sent this output to us for review, maybe a little over a week ago and right away we started plugging in and using it. And it's a couple of my videos I've done since I used it. You may have noticed in the back we have the camera showing behind me because, well, our kitchen's on the other side of this camera and we liked using it to watch it work and see who's coming in the front door if we're all here eating. Anyways, in that week we've had no problems with it all. It actually works quite well. When we first set it up, adopted it, plugged it in and it did reboot once, which is because it auto updates without asking, which is actually good because if the target is to send this to people who just want to use the system like the Unify Protect is, kind of a basic system, it does have a place in the market I think for people who want a very automated system that is auto updates the cameras, auto updates the software, auto updates the accessories such as this that come on there and that's what it seems to do. Now a couple little background pieces. We do like the Unify Protect system for small cameras. That's what we're using this on is our Unify Protect with a handful of cameras and it is a Cloud Key Gen 2 with an SSD. So we've been using that and doing some long-term testing and I'm going to work on a separate review for Unify Protect, but we found it actually be very reliable, very solid and intuitive to use. Back to this, this is a piece that I would have said prior to knowing about this product coming out that this was a big missing component because a lot of people want to have some type of persistent display like a TV and have the views set to go on here. Now this is being done after Chris from Cross Talk did his video so this is May of 2020. I'll leave a link to Chris's video as well and I'm still seeing the same things that Chris seen. One, let's get these problems out of the way. They're not really a game stopper here but at least there's something I want to make sure people are aware of. One, I don't see any way to control this on the app on my phone. Two, the issue is if you have a full screen view or even a window view and you want to set it to either rotate based on time or motion that works perfectly fine on the computer in Protect but does not go over to this device. Those are something that are probably easily fixed with an update but I will admit I've experienced exactly the same things as Chris. I confirmed that he you know I messaged Chris and I said hey you know I seen that in your video you're having the same problems and I'm having these. I just want to make sure it hasn't been anything you figured out beyond that and so far as of right now it just needs to be a minor issue. Minor issue easily fixed with software. Now let's look at the device itself. In the box of course you get this you get the little holder to mount it onto the wall or to a TV. You get a couple screws. Now by the way because there's an end the way the ends are it doesn't matter it can go in either way whichever is more convenient to have the HDMI at the top or the bottom or the secondary network port which by the way it's right here's the HDMI and there's a secondary network port and on this end we have the standard PoE and it's only PoE there's no plug or anything you're going to have to either use an injector or a PoE switch and it's hard to see right here but I can show how it works. There's a little blinking light that you can't see when it's off but it it's blinking white is booting which takes about 35 seconds to boot. Solid blue means it's adopted and working and white solid means we're ready to be adopted. The adoption process is really easy in there. Then we got a couple screws in here we got a couple VESA mount screws if you want to mount it to like the back of a TV and one of the VESA slots that's kind of nice that they included that on there and these have the recessed so when you're doing that things still fit in there without getting caught so I'm glad they included those screws and two almost what feels like oversized wall anchors they really gave you some heavy-duty wall anchors on there. There's also a little sticky back so you can sticky back this. I'm probably I'm guessing so you can sticky back it to a TV so it's not plastic on plastic. I don't know it didn't feel that sticky. I was a little bit less clear on that particular application of it and it kind of looks like a little pack of gum which was the card which has a link on there in a QR code you can scan which will take you to this link right here. So just shows the package contents and the same things I shown. Oh there is a reset button on there and an HDMI cable was included and it just shows you how to mount it and then there's that optional sticky mount for sticking it to the back of a TV with the surface mount. I don't know maybe it will hold I didn't really test it. It feels sticky enough like I said it's not a part I tested. Anyways back to the review here so what we're going to do now is going to plug it in and show you how it looks like. I'm going to use the TV behind me that's actually where we usually have this plugged in plug in the provided HDMI cable that they gave me here and plug in the PoE and boot it up. So you can see the fancy Unify logo and then the kind of cool screen it has in the back there. Like I said the boot up time should probably right around oh I don't know 35 40 seconds it's relatively fast which is nice so if you have to you know restart it or anything like that and when it did the update that was relatively fast as well. Now as far as uses well this is kind of simple first you find it you adopt it put it on the same network as your Unify cloud key then we called it managing video too but you know obviously usv ufp viewport and right here under the about of it is uh all the options so if we switch to all cameras you can see it very quickly switching behind me matter of fact I'll show that again I'll click on one and say from the time you click there's just like I don't know like three second delay maybe before it switches views you hear the click of the mouse and you can see it changes really quick so pretty simple there now how do you set these views really easy so you go over here to your live view and we have this view we have the one I titled youtube demo where I grab a handful of cameras any view you create an edit here and protect shows up as available under the about other device really simple now the problem I mentioned before was a magic video tube rotating so this is a rotating one so we'll set the view and show you if you drag multiple cameras to a view you can choose either a motion or time and I have it set to time so every five seconds it should save the it'll change this view so if we wait five seconds you'll watch it go to another section and now we switched out there but let's go back over here and magic video tube and we'll choose the rotating one you can see behind me is showing the front counter and we switch over here to watching the live view and we'll switch to the same one over here so rotating so we're on the front counter here front counter in the back and this one switches that one just stays in front counter it keeps playing it keeps loading it doesn't stop now we're seeing an outback view and I'm not sure why it doesn't do that let's see that is the kind of mystery other than that the multi-camera views and things like that work fine so if we were to go to like this view here with a four-camera view and even if you try to rotate one of these in a four-camera view or like this youtube demo view here where we have a we don't have a bit of a handful of cameras on the protect that we've been testing with we'll go back over here to the devices it does the multi views perfectly fine it just doesn't rotate any of them so really minor in terms of that so go switch it there actually which one was it oh youtube demo choose that one and you can see the multi-camera view behind me so it'll split it all up so really this is just a dead simple device kind of magical but that's in a way what you want for clients you want to have a device that you can plug in let it go adopt it it updates you don't have to really manage it now this is one of the places we think the unify protect system is really good at if you have just a handful of cameras and as i mentioned we have a cloud key gen two and we have i think four cameras on it it seems to hold up quite well one of those cameras is one of the 4k and that's why we put an ssd in there i've commented before when i did my review that if you want reasonably fast video playback and retrieval uh having an ssd makes a pretty big difference it seems like in the cloud key in terms of that we haven't tested it again lately when i finished my final review of the or longer term review of the cloud key plus running protect on there i i mean maybe i'll try another hard drive again but it seems to be working with the ssd pretty well overall i do like to protect system i think this is a welcome addition to it i know people you know they always want to have something displayed on there and there are other camera systems that offer like you know add-on boxes like commercial type nvr systems that have add-on systems to do this and are generally kind of expensive this as an msrp of 199 would i like to see the price point lower yeah i i don't know if they can do that it is a 4k device it does do up to 4k output i've only tested at 1080 but it's back to do 4k at 30 frames a second so maybe they can get the price point lower but i'll admit compared to some of the other nvr options out there that have like an external device this is still um you know within reasonable price because this is about half the price of some of the other ones i've seen the last thing i'm going to comment on you know my overall feelings on the unified protect system is please don't i did say for smaller camera systems i mean at some point the system does choke a little with a lot of cameras on there so my endorsement here is of the device and of this as a kit for maybe a business that says i'm i need five cameras or four cameras i don't need 50 and i don't plan to expand to 50 cameras it seems like a good fit so it's a welcome addition to the kit and it's way easier than trying to roll your own idea and i i'm aware of all the projects of doing things like having a raspberry pi to monitor it but that always comes with a lot more challenges um and to me for 199 versus even spending only half the price of something else but then you have to help manage it if you're a hobby is great but if it's something you want to put in the client who says hey i got four cameras i need four cameras displayed on this tv and uh this person's office then that's going to be a turnkey easy solution with this and i think that works we have a few pizza places and a few other small places using a protect and they like it it just works you know and they aren't going to get a bigger building so it fits their need and therefore this is like easy intuitive use and by the way the app for protect is so pretty nice so my thoughts on it i give it a thumbs up i think it's a nice product and thank you unify for sending us one for review we're actually gonna keep reviewing it right here like we are and use it because it's actually really convenient thanks and thank you for making it to the end of the video if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you like to see more content from the channel hit the 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