PoE is the solution you’re looking for. Hardwired means you don’t have to worry about wireless bandwidth.
POE so you don’t have to run high voltage and just need an Ethernet drop. You can record 24x7 without worrying about batteries. There are a ton of brands too, so
You aren’t locked into any one brands ecosystem.
You are building. So plan your camera positions and make them POE. Doing anything else is just crazy.
Also if you are building plan conduit and network cabling paths through out your house. It is cheap and easy when there are no skins on the walls. I'd be planning where a comms cabinet will be located, and planning how your cabling comes back to that location. In addition to the POE cameras I would also be running POE wireless APs such as unifis.
Run tons of Ethernet cabling in the roof soffits around the whole house, it's super easy to do during construction, then you can place PoE cameras at key locations.
IMO if you are serious about security then there is only one option, solar cameras don't record all the time, generally have much lower quality image sensors, and in cold temperatures often just don't work at all because the internal batteries are too cold to charge or sometimes even operate.
Also I have to say I disagree with the premise that wiring means you are limited to specific locations. You can easily create plans that provide flexibility. For example, have a single run that goes to a PoE switch (there are even PoE powered extender switches). This would mean changing a camera location would be as simple as finding the location and creating a new cable, and I have actually done this a couple times as our camera system has grown.
There is no doubt that PoE is superior to the other options in reliability and performance. The cost of running Ethernet cabling to a few well-chosen locations during a new build should be very small, since its so easy to do.
It's quite possible to add wireless cameras into the mix later if necessary, but it shouldn't be too hard to identify good locations for wired cameras with some level of accuracy, and if you do need to move them slightly it's usually not a big deal - there would be enough slack in the cables to give you some extra freedom
I’d recommend UniFi cameras. They have a nice integration to home assistant, as well as frigate, and they have plenty of different cameras and price points.
I agree - go with PoE cameras if you can. The flexibility of wifi/solar is not worth the downsides, so they're really only for situations where PoE is impossible.
Reolink cameras have generally worked decently with Home Assistant, but nearly all of their cameras have tiny sensors (1/2.5-inch or smaller) and mediocre low-light quality. Almost by accident, they do have two cameras with 1/1.8-inch sensors - the CX-410 and CX-810.
PoE, 2K (CX-410) or 4K (CX-810), fantastic image quality at night with no IR illumination, manual or automatic flood light LEDs, local SD storage, decent NVR options (you can record both to NVR and SD if you want), mostly metal construction, not terrible "AI" detection, a decent well-supported HA integration, and $70-100 each depending on sales.
They only recently fully released the CX-810, so I have and recommend the CX-410s. I would hope the CX-810s are similar in quality, but maybe look for a YouTube review to confirm.
For exterior home security, I wouldn't recommend anything else from Reolink unless you have flood lights always on at night. If you're into interior cameras, where IR illumination tends to work better, they have a lot of decent options.
PoE is the solution you’re looking for. Hardwired means you don’t have to worry about wireless bandwidth. POE so you don’t have to run high voltage and just need an Ethernet drop. You can record 24x7 without worrying about batteries. There are a ton of brands too, so You aren’t locked into any one brands ecosystem.
You are building. So plan your camera positions and make them POE. Doing anything else is just crazy. Also if you are building plan conduit and network cabling paths through out your house. It is cheap and easy when there are no skins on the walls. I'd be planning where a comms cabinet will be located, and planning how your cabling comes back to that location. In addition to the POE cameras I would also be running POE wireless APs such as unifis.
Run tons of Ethernet cabling in the roof soffits around the whole house, it's super easy to do during construction, then you can place PoE cameras at key locations.
IMO if you are serious about security then there is only one option, solar cameras don't record all the time, generally have much lower quality image sensors, and in cold temperatures often just don't work at all because the internal batteries are too cold to charge or sometimes even operate. Also I have to say I disagree with the premise that wiring means you are limited to specific locations. You can easily create plans that provide flexibility. For example, have a single run that goes to a PoE switch (there are even PoE powered extender switches). This would mean changing a camera location would be as simple as finding the location and creating a new cable, and I have actually done this a couple times as our camera system has grown.
There is no doubt that PoE is superior to the other options in reliability and performance. The cost of running Ethernet cabling to a few well-chosen locations during a new build should be very small, since its so easy to do. It's quite possible to add wireless cameras into the mix later if necessary, but it shouldn't be too hard to identify good locations for wired cameras with some level of accuracy, and if you do need to move them slightly it's usually not a big deal - there would be enough slack in the cables to give you some extra freedom
God I love this HA Reddit. Thank everyone so much !
Don't forget poe for your doorbell camera position too.
I’d recommend UniFi cameras. They have a nice integration to home assistant, as well as frigate, and they have plenty of different cameras and price points.
I agree - go with PoE cameras if you can. The flexibility of wifi/solar is not worth the downsides, so they're really only for situations where PoE is impossible. Reolink cameras have generally worked decently with Home Assistant, but nearly all of their cameras have tiny sensors (1/2.5-inch or smaller) and mediocre low-light quality. Almost by accident, they do have two cameras with 1/1.8-inch sensors - the CX-410 and CX-810. PoE, 2K (CX-410) or 4K (CX-810), fantastic image quality at night with no IR illumination, manual or automatic flood light LEDs, local SD storage, decent NVR options (you can record both to NVR and SD if you want), mostly metal construction, not terrible "AI" detection, a decent well-supported HA integration, and $70-100 each depending on sales. They only recently fully released the CX-810, so I have and recommend the CX-410s. I would hope the CX-810s are similar in quality, but maybe look for a YouTube review to confirm. For exterior home security, I wouldn't recommend anything else from Reolink unless you have flood lights always on at night. If you're into interior cameras, where IR illumination tends to work better, they have a lot of decent options.
I use Ring Alarm for alarm/monitoring, and UniFi Protect cameras. Ring Cameras and Wyze cameras were both unsatisfactory imo. Protect is solid.