Getting Answers Locally

Whether Homebase 3 is worth it or not depends on your use case and priorities. Mine is centralized management and storage, and better motion processing, because Homebase 2 was terrible! As an early adopter, I’ve found that Homebase 3 works best with the cameras Eufy promoted at launch, e.g. Eufycam 3, Eufycam 2, and etc. Anything else added afterwards is just used car salesman gimmicks. It’s still useful, but won’t wow anyone.

As for Homebase 2 vs Homebase 3, I’d say hands down choose Homebase 3. If you have the money for it, get it. Homebase 3 has superior AI detection and expandable storage, vs. the laughable 16 GB on Homebase 2. But don’t pay full price. It’s always on sale for $99 USD or lower.

For some of the legacy cameras, they’ve been hyping Edge (legacy support) forever and keep changing their target dates:

https://support.eufy.com/s/article/Centralize-Your-Security-Ecosystem-with-HomeBase-3

Eufy did finally fulfill some of their legacy support promises, but it was underwhelming. In the end, Edge is just a dumbed down, hyped up network storage using Homebase 3 as Eufy’s proprietary NAS. As far as I know, the advanced device features of Homebase 3 do not support legacy cameras. So you’re mostly limited to storing motion activated footage, which is still useful for the laughable 16 GB battery camera models. But for SD card cameras, it’s insulting and you’re better off using the SD card.

So for example, I have 10x SD card cameras and 2x laughable 16 GB internal storage cameras. For the SD card cameras, I’m sticking to the 128 GB limit of the SD card to avoid having to spend extra for a mediocre network storage solution (one that is slow AF too the more devices you add). If you do the math, that’s 10 x 128 GB = 1.2 TB of storage needed just to replace the SD card storage I already have. In addition, continuous recording for powered cams aren’t supported, so you’re limited to just motion activated footage. I imagine there would be a continuous bombardment of radio in order to sync continuous recordings in realtime. As for my 16 GB battery cams, those silly things Eufy tried to coerce you into signing up for Eufy cloud storage for. It would be nice to be able to expand storage using Homebase 3. I’m looking forward to that, but Homebase 3 isn’t for my SD card cameras.

For clarity, I do like Homebase 3. There are some features not found in stand alone cameras and in Homebase 2. However, my like is for cameras like Eufycam 3, Eufycam 2, and etc. Not that Edge legacy NAS crap. I do have 7x other cameras that supported Homebase 3 at launch and they work great, for the most part. But 7 out of 19 is… hmmm… not that great.