How to replace Arlo with fully local cameras
Step-by-step guide to replacing Arlo with fully local PoE cameras and Home Assistant: pick the right camera, set up RTSP/ONVIF streams, and keep footage local.
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If you’re looking to ditch Arlo and build a smart home that’s fully local, you’re not alone. People move away from Arlo because of subscription costs, cloud dependence, and the lack of control over their own footage. This guide walks through replacing Arlo with local cameras, centered on Home Assistant, with notes for HomeKit and Hubitat where they actually apply. (Coming from a different system? The same playbook works for Ring and Eufy.)
Why Replace Arlo With Local Cameras?
Arlo leans heavily on the cloud for storage, processing, and many alert features, and several capabilities sit behind a Secure subscription. Your footage lives on Arlo’s servers, and the system depends on Arlo’s service staying online. For a local-first home, that’s the opposite of what you want.
Local cameras record and store on your own network. You keep control of the footage, cut recurring fees, and remove the internet as a single point of failure. With Home Assistant you can fold the cameras into automations alongside the rest of your devices.
The key technical point: local IP cameras integrate over standard video protocols — RTSP and ONVIF — not MQTT. Any guide telling you to add a camera as an “MQTT camera” has it wrong. MQTT may carry a separate motion event, but the video stream itself is RTSP/ONVIF.
Choose the Right Local Camera
The most reliable local cameras are wired PoE models: one Cat6 cable carries power and data, nothing depends on Wi-Fi or the internet, and they expose RTSP/ONVIF streams Home Assistant can read directly. (For a wider shortlist, see the best PoE cameras for Home Assistant.)
Reolink (PoE models)
Reolink’s wired PoE cameras — for example the RLC-810A (4K bullet) and RLC-820A (4K dome) — are popular local choices. They have a first-party Reolink integration in Home Assistant that works locally, and they also support plain RTSP/ONVIF. They can record to onboard microSD, to a Reolink NVR, or to an FTP/NAS target, with no cloud account required.
A caution about one specific model: the Reolink Argus 4 Pro is a battery-powered Wi-Fi camera, not a wired PoE cam, and it is not a HomeKit camera. Reolink reserves RTSP and ONVIF for its wired PoE models, so a battery camera does not expose a local stream on its own at all. Reaching one from Home Assistant or Frigate means adding a Reolink Home Hub or NVR to re-expose it locally. If you want rock-solid local recording with no extra box, choose a wired PoE model instead.
Amcrest (PoE models)
The Amcrest IP8M-2496E is a 4K PoE bullet camera that supports RTSP and ONVIF and records to microSD, an Amcrest NVR, or a Synology/QNAP NAS, Blue Iris, or FTP. It integrates with Home Assistant via the generic camera/ONVIF integrations or through a tool like Frigate. It does not use MQTT for video.
Amcrest also makes the AD-110, but be aware that’s a Wi-Fi video doorbell (1080p, RTSP-capable), not a general outdoor IP camera — useful, but a different product class.
What about a fully local NVR?
For multiple cameras, point their RTSP streams at a local NVR. Frigate (a Home Assistant add-on) is the popular choice: it does local recording plus object detection on your own hardware, and it works with any RTSP camera. A camera-brand NVR (Reolink, Amcrest) is the simpler appliance route. Either keeps footage entirely on your network.
Set Up Your Cameras in Home Assistant
1. Wire and address the camera
Connect the PoE camera to a PoE switch or injector. Give it a static IP (or a DHCP reservation) so its address doesn’t change.
2. Enable RTSP/ONVIF on the camera
In the camera’s web interface, make sure RTSP and ONVIF are enabled. Note the RTSP URL and the camera’s username/password — you’ll need them.
3. Add it to Home Assistant
- For Reolink, use the Reolink integration (Settings > Devices & Services > Add Integration) — it pulls in streams plus motion/AI sensors.
- For other cameras, use the Generic Camera or ONVIF integration and supply the RTSP stream URL, or add the camera to Frigate and let Frigate expose it to Home Assistant.
4. Configure local recording
Set the camera to record to microSD, your NVR, or your NAS — or let Frigate handle continuous/event recording on your server. Confirm nothing is routing to a vendor cloud.
HomeKit and Hubitat Notes
If you use HomeKit, you can expose Home Assistant cameras to the Home app via the HomeKit Bridge integration. Most generic IP cameras are not native HomeKit cameras, so this bridge route is usually how you get them into HomeKit. (A HomePod is a speaker and Matter/Thread hub — it is not a camera and does not add camera support on its own.)
If you use Hubitat, note that Hubitat’s strength is Zigbee/Z-Wave automation, not video; for live RTSP streams and recording you’ll still want Home Assistant or a dedicated NVR doing the camera work.
Real Tradeoffs to Consider
Local cameras take more setup than Arlo’s plug-and-play model, and you’re responsible for storage and keeping the system secure (put cameras on an isolated VLAN with no internet access). Wired PoE means running cable. In exchange you get no subscription, full ownership of your footage, lower latency, and a system that keeps recording when the internet is down.
Quick Verdict
To replace Arlo locally, choose wired PoE cameras (Reolink RLC-810A/820A or the Amcrest IP8M-2496E), connect them over RTSP/ONVIF — not MQTT — and record to a microSD card, an NVR, or Frigate on your own hardware. Skip battery Wi-Fi cams like the Argus 4 Pro for primary recording, and don’t expect a HomePod to act as a camera. It’s more work than Arlo, but you keep your footage and drop the subscription.