Hello everyone,
I hope you’re doing well. Someone left us in the middle of a CCTV installation project. The company had installed Hikvision cameras but went out of business, and now I have to set up the entire network and also add an NVR for these cameras. In total, we have around 16 cameras, and I still need to purchase one PTZ camera.
I was wondering if I can buy a UniFi NVR and use it with all of these Hikvision cameras.
I’m volunteering for a nonprofit, so I was thinking of purchasing a UniFi NVR and one UniFi ViewPort to display all the camera feeds on a TV.
The plan is to have all the cameras, NVR, and ViewPort connected to a single 24-port POE UniFi switch, which will then be connected to the Dream Machine Special Edition, serving as our firewall.
We also have some other devices that will be on a separate switch and VLAN, but the reason I want to keep this setup separate is to ensure that if the firewall fails, the recording will still continue uninterrupted.
My main question is: has anyone here used a third-party camera with UniFi NVR before?
As I mentioned, this is for a nonprofit, so they won’t be able to invest in an AI-powered port for all the cameras. Can I directly record the feeds from these cameras to the NVR? How reliable will this be? Or should I just stick to a Hikvision NVR instead?
Thanks in advance!
I think the unify systems are proprietary in that regard, I have never seen a UI system that would take RTSP from other cameras. However UI cameras can be put in stand alone mode and do RTSP to another NVR. I have done that. 
The UI system includes a lot of metadata in the recordings as big binary blobs, I am not sure it would understand not having it from other cameras.
If you are on a tight budget, you can look at zoneminder. Its pretty robust, all you need is a good decent performing workstation with a good bit of RAM and and decent speed drives.
It uses motion in the background and works pretty well for what it is, https://zoneminder.com/
It will eat 16 cameras like cake on any modern desktop. Really that’s all an NVR is, and zoneminder is actually the NVR software on a lot of NVR lines just re-branded.
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Specifically for the HikVisions, I had quite a hard time getting some to talk with both my UniFi UDM Pro and a TP-Link Vigi NVR.
Setting up some cameras for my parents place, I was going to hook in some old HikVisions but had no luck at all - even getting hold of the HikVision software. This is in no way saying don’t try it - The cameras I got were second hand ones that had already been used with a HikVision NVR.
However, I got hold of some TP-Link cameras and hooked a PTZ one up to the Unifi system, and it worked well. Was able to control it and move it around. Good image too.
If you go down the Unifi line, then when you buy a PTZ grab hold of a Unifi one then.
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As you have posted on Unifi forum, and people have answered
Yes, third party onvif cameras may work with Unifi - but you do not get any sound or motion detection - it records everything.
Best answer I can give you , go with HikVision NVR
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I have a video on the third party camera support with their new AI Port. The TL;DW is that it’s not a great setup if you are using all third party cameras. If you are going to replace the Hikvision cameras with UniFi then using UniFI makes sense.
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Thank you for your response.
