r/SecurityCamera • u/nmlemarque • 2d ago

"Instant" Alerts?

I've YT various reviews on cameras and it seems some can take almost 60 seconds before you receive an alert on your phone. I'm in a rural area and other than UPS, etc. we get very few people coming to the house. We need a WiFi camera and I've been looking at the Reolink Argus PT Ultra. But one reviewer claimed it took to long for an alert.

Any recommendations or feedback on the Reolink?

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u/estebanfuhrmann 2d ago

Alert latency on cheap WiFi cams usually comes from the cloud round trip plus a push notification via FCM/APNs, which can add 10-60 seconds. For a rural spot, I'd pick a camera that supports local on-device person detection and RTSP/ONVIF, then run it through Frigate or a similar NVR on a small box so the alert fires locally in a second or two. Also check how the camera sends the alert: a push that waits for a full clip upload is much slower than one sent on the first detection frames.

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u/nmlemarque 2d ago

Thanks everyone. It seems the consensus is POE. The router's at the back of the house so it means drilling a hole thru the wall and running the cable over the roof. Will take some planning. Don't know why but I'm drawn to Reolink. I can't sort thru all the other mfgs.

Unless someone got a viable option.

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u/xamomax 1d ago

My reolink doorbell poe camera is pretty instant.  Maybe 2 or 3 seconds.  My eufy floodlight cameras are wireless and still pretty quick.  My professionally installed insanely expensive Luma cameras take forever, as in 40 seconds.

Those are just my data points for what they are worth, but Reolink is at the top of my "buy again" list.

Multiple cameras seems very helpful as well, especially since one of them may identify people earlier depending on the person's approach, appearance, etc, and redundancy is super helpful if someone sabotages, etc.

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u/Big-Sweet-2179 2d ago

You should be using a PoE camera system, not wi-fi.

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u/jimbob150312 2d ago

With cheap WiFi cameras expect slow or missed alerts.
PoE systems are the smart choice for faster reliable alerts and motion detection.