Hi all, my Unifi Doorbell just died after only 4 years of service. I’ve been pretty disheartened with them lately, other products haven’t lived up to the company’s promise.
So I’m not looking to replace my networking stack yet, but I am looking for a doorbell camera. I only have the Unifi machine, but I also have an extensive docker/kubernetes stack, and mostly I want to use it with Home Assistant.
Any recommendations? Open to software, hardware, you name it. I have a few other Unifi cameras too, if they could be brought into the fold while I slowly migrate, I’d be interested. Thanks!
Have you thought about moving your HA off your server and onto a miniPC? I know you weren’t really looking for advice but that seems like the move to me tbh, doesn’t take long to migrate and it might clear up a lot of headaches.
it is on a separate miniPC, but that is also a proxmox box that does a couple of of other things. I did have it on a Pi4 previously but I outgrew that. might need to go back to having HA as a dedicated appliance, not running Nodered and other things on it, keep all of that on the other servers.
my whole setup needs a rebuild soon anyway.
I guess I should’ve said “on its own dedicated hardware” too but, still.
I think I remember reading somewhere about a firmware update that was pretty recent (8/2025) specifically for latency issues, you might want to check that out if you’ve had it awhile.
yes I was on the latest firmware that only came out in the last month and even when on the same subnet it was 1-2 seconds of delay, dropouts, mic issues. I had to have the thing replaced (under warranty) at one point because the two way audio just refused to work at all.
swapping it for the Unifi doorbell lite as soon as I get a 45 degree mount for it.
I’ve tested it and it’s miles better, the video quality is fine too, I though it would be noticeably worse but it’s perfectly decent for a doorbell, I’ve got other cameras on the front of the house anyway.