Blue Iris

There are lots of cameras out there on the market. the prices range for the most inexpensive $20 Techin TC100 to the multi thousand dollar cameras by Panasonic and GE. For a home user I'd prefer to spend on the lower range of cost than the higher side.

I know that I will likely need more than one camera for my home. My current thought is to start off with two small indoor cameras and build as I go with the hope that prices drop and availability increase in the months or years to come. I was thinking that rather than try and rewire and pay the current premium for a front doorbell with camera that seem to be designed to require a subscription, that I could buy a small IP camera and put it inside the house in the glass window beside the door pointing towards the front porch that will capture people coming up to the front of the house and at least see packaged getting delivered and maybe even catch those getting undelivered by porch pirates.

Here there are quite a few common names that you see. I have seen the name Reolink mentioned a few times and found instruction to get them working with Blue Iris. The problem is that these units are either way to large to fit inside the top window rail pointing out, or are bullet style cameras designed for outside. I am wondering for something more like the Wyze Cam v2 or amazons Blink Mini. I would be most interested in if anyone has tried one of the Ubiqiti models like the G3 instand or G3 Flex?

I would prefer to buy into something that is known to work than try by fire and buy, test and hopefully send back what doesn't work. I don't currently own Blue Iris but will be buying it once I can find something to put together and get it working. On the software side of things. I have a small Intel NUC5CPYH Desktop Computer - Celeron N3050 1.60 GHz - Mini PC sitting unused right now. I am not sure if this will be totally under powered for this use? what low power (AC) computers are suggested to work with Blue Iris?

Any camera with IR would reflect back from the window, so you wouldn't be able to see anything at night unless you could turn it off (Or cover it with sticky paper as I did with a Foscam R2). I have tested the UK equivalent of the Wyze V2 (Neos), and it is a pain putting the rtsp firmware on it, and it constantly drops out. THE WYZE V2 is also famous for not working if you try to use more than one of them, and they can only use wifi of course.

I guess the R2 is the cheapest camera I would recommend, and it does have point and tilt, but the zoom is digital = fake. It will work on wifi or ethernet. I have mine plugged in via a powerline ethernet socket.

thanks. the Wyze V3 is now out and I don't know if they fixed any of the issues that plagued the older version. Foscam is available in some models here in Canada but are quite a bit more expensive. The R2 you mentioned isn't readily available and has a price history of around $200 cdn, so about 2-4 times the price of say a Reolink. All the Foscam units that you can get are larger bullet and massive external wall mount units. Not what would work inside my home.

I don't know if anyone here has experience with the Reolink cameras? You can get a simple 3mb E3 for $45cdn, the E3 Pro 4mp cost $65 and the E3Zoom 5mp is $80. I will have to figure if these Reolink can be mounted upside down, or onto a wall as that might be an option that would work for me.