The next step in my HA journey is adding cameras; indoor, outdoor, and doorbell so I’ve been exploring my options. I had originally intended to do a Frigate setup, I even have a Coral module and PC to do it with, but then I discovered Reolink.
Without having any experience with them they look nearly ideal. They seem to have tight integration with HA 2023.3 or later and their pricing and functionality look good.
They seem like a no brainer but I’ve noticed that they’re often NOT the first recommendation in the HA Community. Why is that and why shouldn’t I use them?
I’m running a few Reolink RLC-520A’s on a separate VLAN with Frigate and Home Assistant - no GPU or Coral yet, just a CPU detector. It works pretty well! The reason they might not be the first choice is that YMMV with HA/Frigate compatibility based on which model you get, a little research must be done. Frigate has some specific settings to make the RTSP work better on the models that are functional.