Comment by AlexandrB
2 days ago
There's one big gotcha with Unifi cameras, where you have to cloud-connect your Unifi system if you want "AI" detections[1] (anything other than simple motion detection). I'm hoping they fix it some day[2], but for now I just have motion detection on my Unifi hardware. If this is a problem for you, make sure you understand the tradeoffs here before you commit to a Unifi system.
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1cifnut/unifi_pro...
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1dbyvan/home_assi...
Still dont understand why this is such a big issue, and I have been reading threads about it for a year now.
Just turn on cloud access, accept the t&cs and then turn it off again. If you are really scared then you can isolate that device in a vlan or DMZ temporarily.
I run many commercial and residential networks, and this is definitely a non issue for me.
I stopped buying Ubiquiti when I reset my UDM Pro and took it to another house without internet access, and it refused to "activate" without an Internet Connection or a phone app connection. Seems they are more interested in selling a lifestyle rather than actual production network equipment.
I stopped buying them when I saw users posting on reddit that they were logging in to their systems and seeing other peoples camera feeds and networks.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ubiquiti-user...
Im not excusing Ubiquiti here, I agree thats pretty annoying.
However a UDM pro is a router (as well as other things). The expectation is that it is connected to WAN.
Unifi switches and access points etc do not have the same online requirement.
2 replies →
What are you using instead?
8 replies →
Having seen a few slippery slope situations like this over the years with IoT and other services, I'm simply not willing to make any concessions in that direction. I use a UDM Pro and turning on cloud access requires associating that hardware with a Unify cloud account. That's already undesirable if you want to safeguard privacy.
Fair enough, the Unifi brand is a consumer/prosumer brand after all.
I guess if you have strict privacy requirements then you would be looking more at enterprise gear anyway.
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Will it still get automatic updates in case of security issues?
https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/ai-key
Even this only reviews "Smart Detections" and I have smart detections turned off on my Unifi cameras, because it enables cloud AI. Having the ability to have an AI key to process detections locally would be great.
Also, having to buy extra hardware kinda stinks. Would love to be able to have a self hosted Unifi OS server that can do AI key abilities if the hardware supports it.