Ubiquiti updated UniFi Protect last October to version 1.16.9 to add its first addition of AI, with person tracking under the feature, ‘Smart Detection’ and it is still only supported on the G4 line of cameras, which is now the G4 Pro, G4 Bullet, G4 Dome, G4 PTZ and G4 Doorbell. It is only supported on the new hardware, as the ‘detection’ is actually done on the camera.

Changes

With version 1.17.1, Ubiquiti has built on this with vehicle detection, from our short testing today it does a good job of detecting vans and cars but struggles with larger lorries and tractors, hopefully Ubiquiti will add this in the future. The UI has been cleaned up too in a lot of areas, the pop out side bars for the cameras now has a cleaner UI look and some new tool tips have been added to explain a few things too.

Two detections, shortly after updating
Two detections, shortly after updating

For example, when we looked at UniFi Protect 1.16.9 last year, we noted that enabling High Frame Rate Mode on the G4 Pro 4K camera disabled HDR mode and now Ubiquiti has provided a handy new tooltip to explain what happens.

Ubiquiti has also improved the way zones work for Smart Detection, now giving you the option to have multiple zones for different types of detection types, i.e if your camera over looks a road you can tune the vehicle detection to not look at the road for example.

Also new, the performance in the Timeline view has been improved and support for the G4 PTZ controls have been added to the Timeline live view too.

Read the full list of changes on ui.com here.