Question 1

I currently have 5 IP cameras in my warehouse that we are not recording. will this device allow me to record them?

Accepted Answer

Depends on what kind of camera. If they're UniFi cameras, yes. Otherwise, no, and you'll probably want an NVR that can record RTSP video streams, which most IP cameras are capable of outputting.

Question 2

This statement is false:  HDMI and VGA Video Outputs (ubiquiti says no) it has none, am I missing something?

Accepted Answer

I has both but they will not allow you to look at the video being recorded.   You can only watch device boot up and see the IP it gets in order to connect with a browser and configure it.

Question 3

is the hard-drive up-gradable?

Accepted Answer

I have not taken my device apart however it is able to use an external usb 3 hard drive to save too I did a search on the forums and found this ....

Yes, it is possible (has to be a slim 2.5" drive)  I have a 2TB drive in mine.  As @LLigetfa? points out, I did run into an issue with 3.2.0...  there is an "eeprom" error with the new drive, AKA, they can't determine it's a legitimate NVR and it has some issues.  one the UBNT staff had to log into my NVR and make it look like a software install to make everything work.  But i do not have any problems right now and love it.  I currently do 14 days retentions on 12 cameras FTR and still have  600GB remaining.  I may take it up to 3 weeks... still haven't decided yet.  I like to have a lot of extra room for system processes.

Question 4

does this NVR support onvif 3rd party cameras ?

Accepted Answer

Ubiquiti had talked about adding onvif support shortly after they released the UniFi Video application, but it seems they decided against it. Here's a statement from a Ubiquiti employee on the topic of your question from their forums a few months ago:

by  Ubiquiti Employee ubnt-taka
on ?04-28-2016 05:05 PM

We provide our software for free, but it is meant to be used with our hardware. Hardware sales fund software development.
 
It doesn't make sense business-wise to add support for third-party cameras. We could possibly charge a license per camera, but it's not on the roadmap at this time.

Question 5

I was not able to find this answer anywhere online even on their forum, I realize this question can have different variables but what is the average retention time for the stock 500gb drive? I realize frame rate and quality of can affect this. Is it 2 weeks? 3 weeks? Thanks in advance.

Accepted Answer

This is a very hard question to answers.  I have 9 cameras around and in my house.  2 of them recorded 24x7 (one inside and one outside) the rest are outside and just on motion.  I have 8 days of recordings on the internal 500 gig hard drive.  I am running medium quality (720x400) resolution on all recordings.  All motion cameras save 5 seconds before it detects motion and 5 seconds after.  Bugs will take up alot of your hard drive recording time on motion at night.   I have lots of wasted recording with bugs flying by the camera getting recorded.  Hope this helps you decision.

Question 6

I need to do 16 cameras.  How many of these NVR's will I need to buy to accommodate?

Accepted Answer

You only need one. This is Nvr is for IP cameras. and can support 100 cameras. the only limitation is the storage capacity.

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