Which HomeKit cameras are you running? Native, HKSV, or bridged?

[Amanda Jones]

I've been reworking the cameras around my place over the last few weeks, and it made me realise how differently everyone seems to approach this. Picking a homekit camera sounds simple until you actually try it, and then you find there are really three separate routes with very different trade-offs.

So I'm curious: which HomeKit cameras are you running, and how did you get them into Apple Home?

Here's how I see the three camps, and where I've landed so far:

1. Native HomeKit cameras

These are the ones you scan with the Home app and you're done. No extra hardware, no plugins.
• Setup takes minutes and they tend to stay paired
• Live view, notifications and automations work out of the box
• The catch is choice: the list of native models is short, and outdoor and PoE options are thin

I started here with an Aqara Camera Hub G2H Pro in the hallway. It has been the least trouble of anything I own, but I ran out of options quickly once I wanted something outside.

2. HomeKit Secure Video (HKSV) models

This is where it gets interesting for recording. Footage is analysed locally on your home hub, then stored end to end encrypted in iCloud.
• You need a home hub (Apple TV or HomePod) and an iCloud+ plan
• The plan tier sets how many cameras can record, so check that before you buy a fifth camera
• Recordings don't count against your iCloud storage
• Person, pet, vehicle and package detection, plus activity zones, are handled in the Home app

What I like is having one timeline in one app. What I don't like is that recording tops out at 1080p even on a higher resolution camera, and clips sometimes take a while to load when I'm away from home.

3. Bridge-based setups (Homebridge, Scrypted, RTSP)

This is the route for cameras that were never meant to work with HomeKit. If the camera exposes an RTSP or ONVIF stream, you can usually bring it in.
• Opens up far more hardware, including PoE and proper outdoor cameras
• Scrypted can add HKSV support to cameras that don't have it natively
• Homebridge with a camera plugin works well for live view and motion alerts
• The trade-off is that you are now running a server, so updates, codecs and stream settings become your job

My outdoor camera is a Reolink E1 Outdoor Pro coming in over RTSP through Scrypted. It took an evening of fiddling with stream settings before it loaded quickly, but it has been steady since.

What I'd love to hear from you

• Which cameras are you running, and which of the three routes are they on?
• If you use HKSV, how reliable are the notifications and the detection?
• For the bridge crowd: Homebridge or Scrypted, and what hardware is it running on?
• Any camera you regretted buying, and why?
• Has anyone mixed all three in one home without it turning into a mess?

For transparency, I'm on the forum team here, but I'm asking this one as someone still trying to sort out their own setup.