DVA Series

[Enquiries]

I’ve been asked to “take a look” at the tech at my parent’s apartment and connected rental unit, which means adding ~10 cameras to the property, building out a local plex server, and I’d like to get everyone off paid cloud services instead of just me. Synology sounds like it would be the move.

Just focusing on the cameras, the DVA series looks ancient. Synology doesn't even advertise the 3221 anymore. I need more than 2“deep learning video analytics” and 2 bays of the 1622, and the 3221 hasn’t been updated in almost 5 years. If I want to go with Synology, do you have any insights on what they are planning to do with the DVA series? Maybe "Synology AI" will do the analytics for the RS systems or DS 1825+ series? Should I only look at cameras that do AI on the camera itself? Do I really need to consider a $10,000 rack mounted option to get all of my goals completed?

Thank you,
John

[ed]

Thanks for getting in touch. At the moment Synology is putting nearly all of its video analytics development into the new rackmount DVA units, which are priced for the enterprise market. There is no indication that a new desktop DVA will arrive and the current models like the DVA3221 are already several years old. If you need more than two deep learning tasks the only Synology option is the expensive rack series.

For a setup with around ten cameras and proper analytics you will eventually need a system that can take a GPU. This is why QNAP becomes the practical alternative. QNAP Surveillance Station and QVR Elite offer analytics that are close to Synology and you can add a GPU through PCIe if you want stronger object detection or face processing in the future. This gives you room to grow without stepping into five figure hardware.

Camera side AI is also a valid path. If you want something secure and well supported, UniFi Protect is a far safer choice than the cheap mass market brands. UniFi cameras provide reliable person and vehicle detection directly on the camera which reduces the load on the NAS and removes the need for a DVA style system entirely.