The cheapest (~15 USD bullet, 20 USD dome) PoE cameras on AliExpress (focal length is pretty much the most important parameter to look at, depending on the fov you want) hooked up to a Unifi NVR. Skip all the vendor manuals, setup steps, and apps - adopt them directly to Unifi Protect.

I put them on separate vlan where they get no outbound network connectivity.

For cases where you want things like facial detection or license plate detection (automatic doors/gates) get a Unifi AI though and those things cost, but for normal perimeter/room monitoring the cheap ones are very good

I got a lot of 6 Axis cameras from eBay, it was around $200. I think they took them off a school or something but they were in great shape. They look great and have no spyware etc because it’s an industrial company. I recommend getting some industrial surplus because they tend not to have all the bloatware and have significantly better weatherproofing, casing, etc, even if the optics are the same as the consumer units.

https://www.cctvsecuritypros.com/

Blue-line domes, the $240 ones. Four of them. I'd get more but do not know how to make outside routing look neat. i have one bullet and i don't like it and don't use it, i prefer the wide-angle domes with ir.

Any of those that mention ONVIF or RTSP will do if you put them on a LAN without internet access

reolink, also look at the frigate nvr software, they have a list for decent recommendations

I have built out several Amcrest systems. You have the many options for recording and access, that will allow remote access without going to the cloud.

At one of our offices (it is not a large office), I have a 24-port Netgear POE switch running the show. If it has a fan inside (it may! there's cutouts for fans on the sides of the chassis but I have not looked inside), I've never heard it.

It fit the price-performance curve for our needs several years ago when we eventually outgrew the previous Netgear POE switch...that was also apparently fanless, and that I installed in 2007.

IIRC, it is a GS724TP. It's running a dozen cameras and some access points, and almost all of the rest of the ports are filled up with computers and printers and other Ethernet stuff. No issues at all to to report so far.

(A used enterprise switch with serious fans may be cheaper and/or more featureful and/or more reliable, but do we need that kind of noise at home? We sure don't need it at that small office.

I've also installed some fanless Cisco POE switches with big heatsinks (and dual power supplies, each fed from different sources) on some high-dollar projects where ultimate reliability was kind of a big deal, but... sheesh.

If one of these installed Netgear switches dies in one of these low-risk environments, I'll just patch things up for now and get a replacement coming under warranty.)

some netgear 8-ch poe switch. i don't recall. it's been on and running for about 8 years with no issues, way up near the ceiling of my garage, covered with dust. its plugged into a wrt1900 router i bridged via wifi to my main router.

yes that is something you need to decide for yourself i'm ok with it. i push my segments up to an s3 bucket but yes if they find the box before the rsync i lose. oh well. there's much more valuable stuff in the house they'll probably go for first. i suspect junkies aren't that smart.

> There are multiple PoE standards.

No, there aren't, not in the way you imply. There is the IEEE 802 PoE standards, which are all compatible (save for not enough power), and designed to carefully negotiate and especially never break non-PoE devices. And there is bullshit (sorry) like "Passive PoE" that is ironically an active violation of the IEEE specs, can break pretty much anything, and you shouldn't buy so the likes of Ubiquiti and Mikrotik finally get the wallet vote and stop f*cking doing. Unfortunately, the proper PoE PD logic is a few dollars of extra expense.

Yes, there is a slightly higher risk of killing devices due to faults in the PoE supply logic. I have the official PoE HAT for a RPi 4. I have to say it is somewhat poorly designed due to space constraints; the isolation between 48V and 3.3V should be better. I'm not even sure the RPi PoE HAT is spec compliant.

But I don't think you can/should blame this on PoE.

> If they had just stuck with 12VDC and buildings had 12VDC wall sockets everywhere, everything would have been fantastic.

Huh? We used to have low-voltage AC and DC powered cameras in the world (and we still do, too).

Those are awful in implementation because buildings, whether or old or new, don't have 12VDC sockets everywhere -- or at all, really.

Nor should they have 12VDC sockets for cameras; they're unnecessary.

I've run my share of siamese coax for low-voltage-fed analog cameras, and also separate power for low-voltage Ethernet-connected cameras, and I'm completely over those concepts.

With proper-fucking IEEE POE, we have standards and it only takes one cable to make it work properly instead of more than one.

If a switch isn't up to the power demands of a particular camera, then: No big deal. I can upgrade or supplement that switch without rewiring even more of the building than was already necessary to get Ethernet going.

(Structured cabling for the win.

Passive POE: Not even once.)

I use a PoE "extractor" to power my RPi over PoE and it works great. The extractor does the negotiation and safely gets the normal 48V PoE power, then converts that to 5V outputted on a USB-C cable that powers the RPi. Extractor also has an Ethernet[1] passthrough port that goes into the RPi as well. A bit basic, but seems relatively error proof.

[1] https://x.com/varenc/status/1961587127931867466

240V AC and 5V DC manage to live close in a charger without problems. Problems with quality does not depend on voltage. I love the concept of PoE with one exception that it requires constant 1W or similar load to work even if it is not needed for low power device.

I never had to know the difference. I have four cctv cams on ~100ft of cat5 each. didn't have to think about it, just plugged them in and they worked.

It's such a wide field that it's hard to pin down. I agree if your thinking about what a business that isn't just a handful of people needs then we'd be looking at the kind of switch you're thinking of if it has standard office workers. But soon as you start talking about businesses that are manipulating central data (which keep in mind would probably include most primary business, design workers or anyone working with media not just software people) you're talking about a wide gamut of devices that you wouldn't really (at least traditionally) call consumer grade.

Mikrotik website has a good selection of them and if you look at the other hardware types it'll be interesting in getting an idea of weird things you don't see in normal offices.

https://mikrotik.com/products/group/switches

Apart from obviously larger bandwidth options like 28qfsp 100gb (I'm unaware if mikrotik does them but 400gb is normal in some circles) there's things like reverse POE switches, media converter switches, and all sfp+ switches.

Poe++ exists and you can use switches with it to power poe+ switches that will power poe switches. Or they can be used to power laptops or NUCS directly.

Arista 710P for instance. I don’t see what port count has to do with it, it runs the same OS and has the same capabilities as all their other switches. Cisco has a Catalyst 9k like this too.

I also haven’t found any bidirectional ones yet, even though the hardware (except maybe the negotiation chip if it’s pure PDE) should be able to support it. Would be really nice for development of PoE devices to just hook up one dongle to my laptop.

I already use splitters throughout my stack and devices, but that’s additional material and complexity cost compared to native PoE.

Theory and practice and all that, but that shouldn’t happen regardless.

A correctly-designed Ethernet interface is galvanically isolated at both ends to avoid ground loops, differing grounds, and other nasties over long distances.

Passive PoE is evil, standard PoE is safe since does negotiation.

Which is ok if done right, but if they're anything like the usb-a ones there'll be plenty that are continuously pulling much more power than they need let alone the danger of uncertified ones.

For those thinking about adding one they've grabbed off amazon and installing themselves, please do a bit of hunting and reading rather than just buying the first word soup brand cheapest ones. Also remember installing uncertified electronics in your walls is a good way to void your insurance if they're the cause of disaster and turn it into a legal battle even if they're not.

Besides being reversible, USB-C is a horrible connector. Tiny contacts, no positive retention, and a massively overengineered standard that should've been broken up.

> - Do you have a part recommendation or reference design for ideal diode POE?

I've done a PoE design and just went with TI's reference design; the higher power ones use ideal diodes, sometimes there's multiple circuit variants.

(It's not worth mucking with the PoE design for small-scale builds; the reference design might be a bit more expensive but you get that money back on way less trouble to deal with.)

Nerdsniped: You're describing a IEC 60320 C13 cable - they're technically only spec'd for 10A, which means you're looking at ~1200W, not 1800.

(However, UL will list them for the full 15A -> 1800W, and I'm sure plenty carry that. And for that matter, I suppose you can get twice that in Europe on 240v...)

I find it useful in Broadcast Video Production (that’s where I end up using it most) and yeah with Wifi7 supporting > gigabit speeds I’ve seen some Wireless Access Points supporting it (though 2.5GbE Poe++ is more common there and practically speaking enough)

Ubiquiti sells Wi-Fi access points with 10GbE uplink ports that are PoE powered: https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/all-wifi/products/e7

In theory at peak throughput the access point might use close to 10 gigabit. But definitely more than 1G/2.5G.

I had no idea it could supply 90 watts or so. At that point you could power some pretty powerful terminals.

The new 14” MacBook Pro comes with a 70 watt charger. An M4 Air only gets a 35 watt adapter.

Basically seems like enough power is available to run something pretty powerful.

What if you need a small switch somewhere due to the runs otherwise being too long?

A multi-radio WiFi 8 AP?

Another smaller switch closer to the location of your devices.

an all nand-flash NAS ?

I have a WiFi 6 AP that can saturate a 2.5GB link when I test it with two devices. So far, for me the peak speed for an individual device was around 1.6GB

I have not yet tested WiFi 7 APs, but they are supposed to be even faster. The use-case for me is video editing over WiFi (I do have a 10GBe Thunderbolt adapter but hey, I like wireless).

Running a browser with javascript disabled is great, I recommend it to everyone. More often than not, you get a better experience - more responsive, your battery lasts longer, fewer ads. And, if the site breaks for some reason, you just allow list the site and reload.

Sure. It's really useful if you're setting up a home security network.