Our "secure" Video Baby Monitor

In preparing for our first babies (our first set of twins), we decided against getting a video baby monitor right away. When we were finally ready a few months in, I wasn't impressed with the options or their security promises.

While some monitors looked decent, I wasn't comfortable with cloud-connected devices, and the "encrypted" non-cloud options didn't inspire confidence. In a perfect world if I had lots of time I would have bought a few and seen if I could hack them, but I didn't. So instead, I opted to go enterprise since...well, is it okay if I just wanted an excuse to? 🙈

(Note: This was in 2020, so there may be more secure baby monitor options available now)

I wanted all footage stored locally on our network, running on wifi (or better yet, wired) that I could trust, given its extensive testing across many installations. Enter: UniFi Protect. While nothing is completely hack-proof, this setup gave me the most control. Though UniFi offers cloud-based viewing of camera feeds, we initially stuck with local-only access.

Since we were renting at the time, I chose a wireless camera. For our more recent additions to the family, we've switched to wired cameras. Our newest twins have a G5 Flex wired on the ceiling.

As a fun aside, this was my first security camera project since I commandeered some old cameras from my dad's office when I was a kid and since then I've done half-a-dozen camera installs across homes and businesses.