Well, this came as a surprise – I was expecting a WiFi new camera from Aqara to arrive this week, when this large box arrived – came as something of a surprise that the Reolink arrived first. The Reolink RLC-823S2 is a 12v or POE camera (POE adaptor not included – but Reolink can supply adaptors) which runs on an Ethernet cable.
So what’s new? 16X OPTICAL ZOOM is what’s new – and this sizeable camera looks ROCK SOLID…. The lens is huge and the whole thing looks bullet-proof. 360 degree coverage as well. Oh and 90 degrees vertical movement.
I’ve included my average-to-above-average-size hand next to the camera in the top image to give you an idea of scale. Here is the moving part from the camera back showing the sealed cover over the microSD card slot + reset button.
To keep this in perspective, the last Reolink camera I wrote about was the RLC-1224A and by comparison the normal-size RLC-1224A looks TINY. Just LOOK at that LENS…
Ok, now that I’ve recovered, lets take a look – 823S2 on the left – the camera has the usual microSD slot on the back combined with reset button all behind a sealed cover.
In this case, I don’t even need to look at the microSD as I’ll be using this camera with the Reolink HUB (not necessary but I have one) which already has a large microSD attached and that’s where the videos will be stored.
With the hub, no more losing your videos if the camera gets broken or stolen. Either way is OK or you can FTP your videos off-site. At this point I’d simply tested the camera to make sure it works, looked at the zoomed-in shots in the Android APP and generally had a play – setup is no more difficult than pointing the APP to the QR code on the phone – seconds later it’s done.
Question is will this automatically appear somehow in my Home Assistant set-up? WELL a quick look at notifications on HA answers that – NEW DEVICES DISCOVERED. Can it really be that easy? Having a wired camera helps, no searching around for access points etc – it just appears on the network.
Yes… and no. Home Assistant said “new devices discovered” and immediately picked up on the RLC-823 – that is – it got as far as the config where it wanted the address of the camera (which clearly it already knew and the user name and password.
Well, try as I might I could not get the password to work and could find no-where in the APP to SET the password for the camera. Weirdly, Home Assistant did offer and progress doing a firmware upgrade on the camera regardless. – I wrote to Reolink and within a day they’d sorted me out. It turns out that when you use teh hub, the IP address for setup is that of the hub – not the camera.
Meanwhile, as for the zoom – theres a button called CLIP – and the screen in the APP splits to show the original image and one with a re-sizeable window which lets you easily zoom in.. at first sight- the CLIP button had me thinking the optical zoom was in fact digital and not that good – but then I tried the actual zoom – 16* optical – YES.
SO – the above were using CLIP – useful but fairly poor quality closeup – but using ZOOM – slower but.. WOW.. now the camera is mounted on top of our pergola I can show you some imagery – but first – zoom in the workshop…
I can say now that when zoomed in, the focus can be a bit slow, I can now get the camera integrated into Home Assistant and there settings for RTSP and ONVIF. You can use the Reolink APP for Android/IOS, OR the PC APP or of house Home Assistant etc. The latter tendes to work but be a little slow.. I rather like the PC APP for playing around.
First shot – zoom*1 JUST outside the house.
Quick tire check….
And if that doesn’t convince you – I’m at the far end of a small town with the next town maybe 3km away.. I can clearly see traffic on the road going into the next town on full zoom and unlike phones, the zooming is continuous. Of Course as well as real optical zoom as above, the APP can let you digital zoom even further – not recommended of course as digital zoom results in very poor quality – but hey – why not… the same tyre below.
Possibly more interestingly – on the other side of the road is a cactus – couple of views here at different zoom levels…
And all from the comfort of my office. Later I’ll go into the controls and sensors all of which can be accessed from the APPs or once integrated, from Home Assistant.
Church in the next town to us… now you see it…
Now you probably don’t (still in the middle of the shot). Go on, say it.. I’m easily pleased….
Ok, you can’t compare this with the hoards of cheap cameras out there for price or quality – and this is not cheap(€363 Euros from Reolink, €303 on sale at the time of writing – €295 on sale Amazon Spain) – but I’m very glad I have this now….
Next will be testing of people/animal sensing… can it ignore my cats and pick up anyone approaching my car? Time will tell.
HOLD THE PHONE – I’ve just reported issues with Home Assistant to Reolink and meanwhile stumbled on the “3D ZOOM” on the PC APP. Turn on “3D ZOOM” and select a rectangle you want to see – it’ll quickly zoom in and focus on that rectangle – and you can repeat that if you’re not at full zoom – I LOVE IT…