Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro: Zigbee, Matter, Thread, IA Local and RTSP

Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro is the new camera from Aqara that allows you to monitor an area of your garden day and night with artificial intelligence to recognise people and vehicles and it is also a Matter, Thread and Zigbee home automation hub, so you will be able to link Aqara Zigbee devices and Matter devices to your installation thanks to this camera.

Why is the Aqara Hub G5 priced like this?

Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro is more than just a camera as a Zigbee and Thread home automation hub, integrating local AI and other features such as two-way audio, night vision and local storage among the highlights.

Advantages and disadvantages of Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro

How to use Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro Tutorial

Today we are going to discover all the details of this Aqara G5 camera, one of the most complete on the market.

General features of the Aqara G5

To start with, if we open the packaging, we have the Aqara G5 camera.

We also have a USB-C power supply cable, an instruction manual and user manual, plugs and screws, a waterproof cable kit for PoE connection on PoE camera models and a back cover removal tool.

This Hub G5 Pro camera has dimensions of 70.5×70.5×89 mm.

As an outdoor model with an IP65 protection rating, it can operate in temperatures from -30°C to 50°C and a humidity level of 0 ~ 95%.

There are 2 models and each model is available in white or grey.

The Wi-Fi model that you can connect via USB-C 5V 2A or the PoE model that you can connect to a power supply via PoE 48V 0.27A, but you can also connect via USB-C 5V 2A with this model.

The PoE model integrates 4 communication protocols:

• Ethernet
• Zigbee
• Thread
• Bluetooth

The Wi-Fi model also integrates 4 communication protocols:

• Wi-Fi
• Zigbee
• Thread
• Bluetooth

In terms of image quality, the Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro has a quad HD 4MP 1520P resolution, with a field of view of up to 133° and an f/1.0 aperture, capturing up to 4 times more light compared to f/2.0 lenses.

The PIR motion detection angle is 100° horizontally and 65° vertically.

It integrates colour night vision and can identify potential intruders even at a distance and in low light.

In addition, it integrates an adjustable spotlight that allows us to deter a potential thief or simply illuminate an area.

It integrates a 100 dB loudspeaker for siren, two-way communication to communicate with a person in front of the camera and for customised ring tones.

But that’s not all. In addition to monitoring an area of the garden, if you want to control more aspects of your home, such as knowing the status of doors and windows, knowing whether or not there is movement detected in the house, turning lights on and off and much more, this Aqara G5 camera is also a home automation hub.

It integrates Thread technology and the Matter home automation standard, so any smart device that is compatible with Matter, whatever the brand, can be paired with this Aqara G5 camera.

In addition to Matter and Thread, Aqara G5 also integrates Zigbee technology, so you will be able to integrate Aqara-branded Zigbee devices to complete your smart home installation. This time, be careful: only Aqara devices can be linked and not other Zigbee devices.

If you want to mix brands in your installation with this Aqara G5 camera, I recommend choosing Matter devices.

This camera is also compatible with HomeKit, Alexa, Google Home and SmartThings and can enjoy live streaming with these ecosystems.

Another very interesting detail is that it integrates RTSP support, which allows us to enjoy streaming on RTSP compatible systems such as Jeedom and Home Assistant.

And as we had seen with the Aqara video door phone, this G5 camera also integrates local artificial intelligence with built-in NPU to recognise faces, vehicles, people, animals, packages or can even detect if the lens is obstructed.

So you can record events and run automations even without internet thanks to this locally operating AI.

On the storage side, this G5 camera integrates a 32 GB eMMC for local event storage and you can also use a local NAS system and the Aqara and Apple cloud.

And it is the first Aqara camera with end-to-end encryption in the Aqara Cloud.

How to set up the Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro

In the user’s case, he wants to monitor an area of his garden at the back of his house, as he has another Netatmo camera in front of his house.

If you have a power socket nearby and no POE connection, you will plug this camera into this socket.

Once connected to the mains, a yellow LED starts flashing.

So at this point, we can go into the Aqara App and click on “+” and “Add an accessory”.

Automatically, the camera appears in our App.

And now we have to scan the QR code on this camera.

Now, you must select your WIFI network and its password.

And you should keep your phone’s Bluetooth and WIFI turned on and keep it close to the camera.

Ready, we have our camera added and we can put a name and place it in an area of our house, such as our doorway, and click next.

We now have options to connect our camera to the Matter ecosystem and Apple HomeKit if we wish.

How to install Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro

Once the camera has been configured from our phone, we will be able to install it.

To begin with, we can slide the camera’s support plate and we will be able to install it on the wall thanks to plugs and screws.

In the user’s case, he has a socket available near the wall where he wants to be able to monitor an area of his garden. Therefore, he will be able to install his camera in the wood, thanks to plugs and screws that he has at home specially designed to be used in wood.

Be very careful when installing your camera: you should take safety precautions with adequate protection if you have to climb a ladder. You should also be careful if you are going to drill holes, using adequate protection and making sure you do not drill into cables or pipes. This content is for informational purposes only and I am not responsible for any risks or damages that may arise from the use of this information.

Once the plate is installed, you can place the camera on this plate, sliding it to fix it. As it has a swivel mount, you can easily orient this camera to record the most strategic area of your garden, and it is worth noting that you can install it either face up or face down, as you have a setting in the Aqara App that allows you to invert the orientation of the video.

Detailed features of Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro

Now let’s take a look at the highlights of Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro.

In the “Living” tab, we have different options available.

For starters, we can view the live image from our camera and we can listen to the captured audio or mute it.

We can also view the image in full screen, being able to zoom and swipe to an area if we want to see a specific part of our garden in detail.

At the bottom of the image, we have 5 icons:

• The first icon allows you to hide the camera image at any time and you can click it again to see the image again.

• The second icon allows you to take a photo of the image captured at a precise moment, and this photo will be stored in your phone’s photo album and in the “Album” folder of the Aqara App.

• The third icon allows, this time, to record a video of the image captured from our camera, and also this video will be stored in the album of our phone and in the “Album” folder of the Aqara App.

• The fourth icon allows two-way communication with the person in front of the camera. A very interesting detail is that, like the Aqara video door phone that we have discovered in other content, we can keep our original voice or modify the voice if, for example, we have children using this camera and there is a stranger in front of it, and we do not want them to know that it is precisely children who are speaking.

• The fifth icon allows you to pause the camera image.

Below we have more icons, such as:

• “Associated event”: allows you to record at key moments events that you have defined. For example, if you have a water leak detected by an Aqara water leak sensor, the camera will be able to record this event, of course, if you have a camera installed in this area.

It’s a paid service called “Home Guardian” which you can find starting at $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year for one camera. This plan gives you access to additional features such as 90 days of video storage, AI event filters, SMS and email alarm notifications, unlimited storage space, offline review, video downloads and sharing from the Aqara App, and data security and privacy through the cloud service, in addition to these events.

• “Album”: allows you to view screenshots and recordings. We can also view videos of different types of events, such as animal or human detection, and we also have time lapse video.

• “Highlight”: allows you to adjust the intensity of the spotlight from 0 to 100%.

Then we have 8 types of detections that we can activate or deactivate individually:

• Facial recognition
• Vehicle recognition
• Packet detection
• Human detection
• A persistent detected
• Sound detection with AI
• Animal detection
• Lens occlusion detection

If we activate each type of detection, we will have events recorded for it. In the case of deactivating a detection type, we will have no events at that time.

If we go to “Chronology”, we have the possibility to see the different events stored in the cloud and locally, with a calendar and timelines during the day, being able to see in each event what has happened.

In the user’s case, he has detections of members of his family and also of cats that show up in the garden, and of his chickens that roam in this garden.

Of course, the very interesting thing is that, depending on the environment where we have our camera installed, we can also know when we receive a parcel from a transporter or when there is an arrival or departure of a car.

With facial recognition, like the Aqara video door entry system, we can configure the face of each member of our family to know which person has been detected.

Then, the “Service” tab allows you to access the Premium subscription plan that we have seen previously.

At the top right we have access to additional settings.

Among the highlights, if we go to “Device settings”, we have different options.

“Camera settings”: allows you to deactivate the light indicator for a defined period of time.

“Video settings”: we can activate or not a time watermark, configure the direction of the image captured by the camera, activate or not a white light, adjust the brightness of the focus, define a screen detection frame, disable audio recording and correct image distortion.

“Private mode”: allows you to define periods during which the camera will not record.

And we can also use the privacy masking function to record only some parts of the garden and not others if we wish.

Under “Detection settings”, we can enable or disable and adjust facial, vehicle, person, persistent, AI sound (either a baby crying, alarm sound, barking or coughing) or animal detection. We can also decide whether we want to receive notifications for each type of event, record these events and define the sensitivity, period and frequency of detection.

“Facial management” allows us to add photos of faces so that we can recognise people captured by the camera and “Vehicle management” allows us to set up vehicle recognition, so that we can know when a vehicle arrives or departs.

Then we have “LAN RTSP Preview”, which allows you to retrieve the camera image via RTSP, which is very interesting if you have solutions like Home Assistant or Jeedom.

This is the case of the user, who has the Jeedom home automation hub with a Zigbee installation based on Zigbee2Mqtt and Z-Wave with Z-Wave JS and now wants to add the Aqara G5 camera.

Thanks to its compatibility with the RTSP protocol, you can retrieve the image of your camera in Jeedom and unify your installation from this interface.

“Security settings”: allows you to activate and change a password, if you want to protect access to your camera with your App.

Under “Local storage”, we can see the storage status, we can configure the recording mode and enable or disable loop recording, and we can also store recordings on a NAS.

We can also connect our camera, as we have seen previously, to the Apple HomeKit ecosystem and with Matter, to other compatible Matter ecosystems, the new home automation standard that promises to unify our smart home installation.

And since this camera also integrates Thread and Zigbee technologies, you can link Matter devices with Thread to this camera.

And Zigbee devices, this time from Aqara and not from other manufacturers.

We can see if there is a new firmware available that allows us to fix technical problems and enjoy improvements.

We can see the automations and scenes related to our camera.

And finally, we can see a log of all the activities of this camera.

All in all, Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro is, in my opinion, one of the most comprehensive in the world, with endless options that should be of great use when it comes to personalising your smart home experience for today and the future.

Generally purchased together

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