Reolink Security Camera Setup Guide – NO CLOUD SUBSCRIPTIONS!
Reolink sent over three of their rather impressive security cameras – one ultra wide angle camera, the Argus 4 Pro, one pan-and-tilt camera, the Argus PT Ultra, and one video doorbell, specifically the WiFi version – and in this video I’m going to get them set up and show you why I really like them. Let’s start with the video doorbell. In the box you get everything you could need to set this up – the doorbell itself, the remote chime, a power brick, and power cables – plus a handy drill guide, mounting plate and an angle plate too. This can be powered from either DC or AC, and can even be connected via ethernet if you don’t want WiFi at all – although if you were going that route you’d probably want the PoE version instead! You’ve also got a MicroSD card slot for onboard local recording. The doorbell itself is a pretty sleek, rounded, design with a large illuminated button at the bottom and the camera up top.
Setup wise, it’s pretty simple really. You’ll need to drill a couple holes to mount the angle plate to the wall, remembering to run the power cable through first, then insert the wall plugs and screw the plate down. You can then screw the metal bracket into the angle plate, then hook up the power to the camera and lastly clip the camera into place. Setup it pretty easy, you’ll need to point the camera at your phone screen to let it scan a QR code with your WiFi information, then it’ll connect itself and you’re pretty much ready to go. It will automatically connect to the chime too, and any time someone rings the bell, regardless of your phone notification settings and such, it’ll still ring the chime as normal.
With that said, the video aspect of this is what most people will be interested in, and it’s pretty good. It seems to save just shy of a 1000×1000 video file – 896×672 at 20 FPS and 1.3Mbps – and is very wide angle. It’s a proper fish-eye camera, giving you plenty of visibility. Here’s a look at some motion.
You’ve also got night vision with infrared LEDs – here’s a look at night time performance.
All in all I’m pretty happy with this. It gives you push notifications for motion detection, and of course when someone presses the button you’ll get a notification too. You can talk through it if you need to, although there is a touch of delay there. You can adjust a lot too, like the motion sensitivity, or the daytime/nighttime switchover level, plus record clips directly, or access the saved recordings from the MicroSD card. The good news for this camera too is that if you have Home Assistant set up, you can connect this really easily and have this feed an RTSP stream straight into HASS. That’s fantastic for the whole local control and true ownership idea that Reolink emphasises. There are no cloud subscriptions required here, and I’m here for it.
Right, let’s get onto the next camera – this is the Argus PT Ultra, a battery powered pan-and-tilt camera that offers a full 4K resolution at 15 FPS and up to 3Mbps bitrate. It too has a MicroSD card slot you’ll want to populate for local recording, and the real fancy feature here is that you can get it with one of these, a 6W USB C solar panel that can basically trickle charge this camera all day, meaning you don’t need to run any wires to this at all. Just screw it down, or in my case I’ve mounted it to a post with the included strap mounts, both for the camera and the solar panel, run through the same setup as the doorbell, letting it scan the QR code, and that’s it, ready to go. When connected via the app you can control everything you’d expect – including moving the camera up, down, left and right. It’s a little slow with a second or two delay, but it’s easy enough to get placed where you want it. Here’s a look at some motion on this one.
The camera does have spot lights built in, plus an IR night vision mode, so regardless of time of day, you should be able to see plenty. There are a couple of limitations to these battery powered cameras, namely that to save battery life, you can’t get an RTSP stream from these meaning you will have to use Reolink’s app to access your footage – you won’t be able to connect this to Home Assistant, for example. You also can’t seem to automate the pan-and-tilt movement – that’s something I was hoping you could do as a sort of “patrol”. While it isn’t a big deal, it would be really cool to be able to set a schedule for where the camera looks. Still, the image quality is great, and the fact you don’t need to run a single wire to it makes it really easy to get set up.
Lastly, we have the brand new Argus 4 Pro – I actually did a full video on this one already so if you want to see a complete review I’ll leave that in the cards above, but seeing as we’re using it as part of this setup I think it’s worth taking a look at that here. Much like the Argus PT Ultra, this is a battery powered camera with a 6W solar panel, although this one is an ultra wide angle view – a full 180° field of view – thanks to dual cameras offering a 5120×1440 frame at 15 FPS and around 2Mbps bitrate. Daytime views are fantastic – in fact the image quality is genuinely vibrant and sharp, although the real magic is at night. This doesn’t have an infrared mode, because it really doesn’t need it. Here’s what it looks like at night. It’s full colour, and remarkably sharp still. There’s a bit of movie magic going on for sure, but it’s still plenty clear enough to make out faces or cars which is exactly what you want to see.
Between these three cameras, I think we’ve got a pretty comprehensive setup. I think the doorbell camera is the one I’m most interested in, with the most functionality and the most new-to-me features. The Argus 4 Pro is excellent though, and the Argus PT Ultra is really cool too. Of course if you’re interested in any of these cameras, I’ll leave some links in the description to them, and if you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments too!
