Unifi Camera Upgraded!
Ages ago, we stuck a surveillance camera sweeping our driveway… aimed and configured rather carefully to maintain, as best we could, the privacy of our neighbours and fellow citizens whilst covering as much of the identifying area - our front yard and driveway - as possible. We were rather happy with this setup: Unifi cameras seem, to me at least, to be a tiny bit overpriced, but we’re able to avoid sharing video feeds with any government (foreign or domestic) without them asking and I’m not unhappy with how things have worked thus far.
Sabriena wanted one for the back yard though, specifically to catch the various bird life that visits. I could have bought another G4 Bullet, however these are getting a bit long in the tooth now. I could have spent a bit less on some of the G3 cameras, but all the same problems as before arise.
Instead, we figured that we could upgrade the driveway camera, and then use the old G4 one on the backyard. Apparently the night vision (while not as good as some other brands) has improved dramatically in the couple generations since this one. So I bit the bullet, ordered a very expensive G6 Pro Bullet with all sorts of stupid AI detections on it, and then went to work.
It arrived, so I just removed the old one, put the new one up, and yeah… it’s pretty impressive. In particular, the “AI audio detections” pick up dog barking as an event. That works out pretty good for us, Tiabeanie barks and we have a recording of what she barked at.
I was pretty happy with that, so we waited for a cabler to come run the plug out for the G4, when I realized that I’d neglected to slip the silicone gland over the cable before it was terminated. This was a problem getting it off too (the G6’s silicon plugs are split and then forced together by compression), but it was much easier getting it off over an RJ45 plug than getting it on over one.
But after much cussing, we managed to get it installed, adopted, configured, and yeah… it’s nice. No hits on the birdbath yet, I’m not sure if this is because nothing is using it or I haven’t configured it correctly. It took a bit of experimenting with the camera on a temporary cable out the door and me on my tippie-toes to make sure it would be in a place that would both sweep all the bits of the yard we want and not sweep the back window of our neighbour to the north, and I was briefly worried after the cabler left that maybe it wouldn’t be in the right place, but we actually nailed it.
With the two cameras side-by-side it became very clear however that the new camera’s night vision was substantially better, except I can’t get it to focus. I tried to click the auto-focus and no, that made it much much worse. The next morning, in the light of the day, I realized the problem: the camera has condensation on the inside of the lens! It’s installed in the same place, exactly as per specifications, in a place that the old camera has had no issues for the past 3 years, what the hell is going on?
I took a quick look on big-G and found a bunch of guides and videos talking about replacing the dessicant in the camera, but this is a brand new unit, so I instead reached out to Unifi’s support. They advised me that basically sometimes “this just happens” (my words, not theirs), and recommended I turn the IR illuminator on 24/7 for 48 hours to raise the internal temp of the camera. Some folks on Reddit reckons this doesn’t work, the condensation will leave marks on the lens, but I figured I’d give it a go.
It did indeed dry it up, and there are no marks, so I’m satisfied - if annoyed - for now.
Thinking more about it, I assumed it’s because when the other camera was installed it was because it was warmer when I did so - but that’s not the case, I installed it almost exactly three years ago (in July instead of June, no less).
But assuming the problem does not come back (if it does, can it please come back before the warranty period is up?), the only question left now is do I look at buying an IR illuminator for the backyard camera? I don’t think there will be much to see on it, but it’s jarring just how much better the front yard’s one is.
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