What is going on at Ubiquiti(ubnt)

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geocom

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#177547 6-Aug-2015 12:34

We have a Ubnt NVR for our Ubnt 2nd gen Aircam domes. The hardware is great. Good quality video for a good price.

What I cannot get my head around is how bad the software is. I'm now facing my 3rd time with an unresponsive NVR. Having already been through a factory reset once already(Only a few days ago) after it filled up the hard drive and decided the best thing to do was to shut down the web interface and not delete anything to free up more space and even then I was having occasional interface issues that would require reboots or ssh accessing the device.

These issues are not uncommon just look at there forums. To make it worse they decided to make the platform closed(Disabled the RTSP stream) so there is no way to use the cameras without the NVR. So your locked into this awful software.

So whats going on anyone facing the same issues here? From what I am hearing they have quite a few devices that they have some massive bug that renders the device totally unusable.

I would hate to be an end user with no IT skills as the only way to fix these issues is in the terminal with SSH or frequent factory resets.

Geoff E

sbiddle

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#1359970 6-Aug-2015 13:23

UBNT software (and often hardware) is always beta and has been for many years. Anybody who's read anything in their forums over the last 5+ years will know that. It's a shame their focus is always on new products rather than making those they have stable.

(I've deployed thousands of pieces of UBNT kit BTW)

geocom

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#1359997 6-Aug-2015 13:43

I can live with beta jank most of the time.
3 factory resets in less than 3 months when your doing exactly what the device was built for is pushing the stable tag and even a beta tag to far.

I have had really bad iOS beta builds that are more stable than this and at least at the end of the time I would have a stable build.

Geoff E

sbiddle

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#1360033 6-Aug-2015 14:35

Always pays to do research before you buy or deploy any UBNT (or infact any brand) of equipment.

Kish

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#1360052 6-Aug-2015 15:08

geocom: We have a Ubnt NVR for our Ubnt 2nd gen Aircam domes. The hardware is great. Good quality video for a good price.

What I cannot get my head around is how bad the software is. I'm now facing my 3rd time with an unresponsive NVR. Having already been through a factory reset once already(Only a few days ago) after it filled up the hard drive and decided the best thing to do was to shut down the web interface and not delete anything to free up more space and even then I was having occasional interface issues that would require reboots or ssh accessing the device.

These issues are not uncommon just look at there forums. To make it worse they decided to make the platform closed(Disabled the RTSP stream) so there is no way to use the cameras without the NVR. So your locked into this awful software.

So whats going on anyone facing the same issues here? From what I am hearing they have quite a few devices that they have some massive bug that renders the device totally unusable.

I would hate to be an end user with no IT skills as the only way to fix these issues is in the terminal with SSH or frequent factory resets.

Hey geocom,

There's new firmware (alpha) that's a huge improvement to the UniFi Video line. And brings back the RTSP feature. Email me at austin at ubnt dot com and I'm happy to send you a copy, and you can give us your feedback.

Cheers,
Austin

chevrolux

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#1360270 6-Aug-2015 20:30

When UBNT pushed out their 'Unifi Video' cams (as opposed to AirCam) the UBNT NVR would just stop recording randomly - only a manual restart of the camera would make it record again. They then pushed a software update (the gui changed and looks all fancy now) and that issue went away.

At the end of the day though I just see Ubiquiti as a wireless company. I will always buy stuff in the Airmax range because it works well and is extremely well priced - same as the Unifi range. Anything else though hmmm maybe not.

If you want awesome, cheap, CCTV Hikvision is the way to go.

geocom

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#1360275 6-Aug-2015 20:49

Austin has set me up with the alpha so will see how it goes. He's confirmed it something they want to improve.

The current stable release I have found is anything but, and to go for 3 months without an update for something as broken as it is did not full me with a lot of hope for its future, but we will see how things go.

At the very least they have brought back RTSP streaming from the camera which was something that was removed in the 2nd gen cams so if things don't improve with the NVR at least I can get a security NAS now unlike before.

Geoff E

richms

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#1360289 6-Aug-2015 21:15

I had a quick look at their camera and NVR range, but didnt see anything in it that $40 cameras and a cheap NVR off aliexpress couldnt do. Its certainly not up there with geovision feature-wise.

Richard rich.ms

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geocom

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#1360306 6-Aug-2015 21:30

richms: I had a quick look at their camera and NVR range, but didnt see anything in it that $40 cameras and a cheap NVR off aliexpress couldnt do. Its certainly not up there with geovision feature-wise.

Have not found any $40 cameras that have IR LEDS do 720p@30fps that go's into a celling cavity and has a microphone and does not look awful.

Geoff E

richms

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#1360309 6-Aug-2015 21:33

Yeah well I was not wanting ceiling cavity ones, I cant put those in easily in the house. It was outdoor cameras I was after and the 720p ones from aliexpress work mint. Not sure they get 30FPS, because I have it set to 50Hz to minimize problems from crappy LED lights that have mains flicker to them, so 25fps is the max I can set it to. Some of them have topped out at 27fps when I had a look at the settings with it set to 60Hz shutter, which was a bit odd but no drama.

Richard rich.ms

breakaway

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#1360720 7-Aug-2015 15:27

We've deployed a lot of UBNT kit and have never had any issues with unresponsiveness nor freezing. I do however the NVRs running as a VMs and not their NVR box (the physical NVR is not much good, doesn't even have RAID or anything). Also got a lot of their waterproof kit running outdoors (truly outdoors, not under an overhang or anything) and never had an issue either.

The only annoying thing is when veeam freezes the NVR to take a backup we get an e-mail saying the camera is offline presumably because of a few missed pings but I can live with that.

I also bought a 24 Port PoE 250w max switch as well, nothing else could touch it in the price range. The interface was good, setup was easy, no issues so far! The UI is really good compared to other 'managed' switches.

It's a shame the mFI range was such a flop. At the end of the day I reckon it was too expensive.

richms

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#1360920 7-Aug-2015 21:25

Just saw this tweet. Perhaps this is why they have been a little slow to get things developed?

Ubiquiti Networks discloses they lost $46.7M from social engineering event targeting the finance dept. CAO fired http://t.co/K6jLv2imKa

— Nicolas Krassas (@Dinosn) August 7, 2015

Richard rich.ms