UniFi G3 Flex Repair: A €10 Fix, But Was It Worth It?

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Welcome to a new vlog. So, I've been repairing a bunch of UniFi products in the past year or so. You've probably seen the videos published on the channel. That is because I like the brand. I'm a user of their products. And because as an electronics engineer, it's always nice to be able to repair something and put it to good use, give it a second life. Today on the workbench, I have this defective UniFi G3 Flex camera. This is actually an older model which was originally released around 2018, I think. But it was a staple for the UniFi Protect lineup for years.

[00:00:34]It's just a full HD 2-megapixels power over Ethernet this mini format turret camera. And it's It does have built-in IR LEDs. I scored this one on eBay for roughly 17 euros, shipping included.

[00:00:49]This model is no longer up to date. It's out of stock pretty much everywhere, but it used to sell for around 84 euros last time it was in stock at the UniFi store.

[00:01:00]So, it's a pretty good score in terms of the price if we can repair it. The user was even nice enough to ship it in the original box which includes all of the original accessories and the paperwork.

[00:01:12]And on a first look, the device just showed a little bit of corrosion around its RJ45 jack, which is not unusual if the camera has been installed outside for a long time. Humidity condensation can get in there and start to corrode things, but it's not the end of the world. We can clean that up. So, I did plug in the device into my power meter supplied from a UniFi PoE injector, and I was seeing 1.5 to 2.5 watts of power draw, which looked normal. There were no shorts or anything like that. And I also noticed that the device got an IP address from DHCP and appeared on my local network. Next thing I tried was accessing its web interface by visiting that IP address, and it works, but the page was served with a static image with noise for the camera feed. And I also noticed that every about 60 seconds or so, the camera would just reboot. So, we already can identify two issues that need further investigation. While I was here on the web interface, I also checked the logs of the camera, and it was showing a lot of these messages related to Vsync loss, which makes me think something might be wrong with the camera sensor or the circuitry around the camera sensor. Now, as a quick side note, I also tried flashing different firmwares, uh older one, newer one, which didn't change anything. So, I thought I should focus more on the hardware side of things next. Next up, I started working on opening this enclosure, and I really don't have the full video of me opening this because it was really frustrating in the beginning.

[00:02:55]It's this really complex sandwich. You need to start at the bottom and then work your way up, but I'll try including some footage which I got I captured when putting it back together. One of the things that I noticed when taking up taking out this first plastic cap was that one of the screws was slightly stripped. So, I'm definitely not the first one that tried to get in here, and this is never a good sign because you don't know what others have tried doing it to the camera before you got it. Now, we can also see some signs of corrosion on the RJ45 jack. Again, nothing too critical. I can probably clean most of that with a special contact cleaner like this Techspray one which I like using.

[00:03:41]Now, because our camera is booting and I can access its web interface, I'm going to assume that the power supply section is working fine. I mean, visually it looks okay, and I also check with the multimeter when the camera reboots and there isn't any voltage drop or anything like that.

[00:03:56]I also did a quick test with a thermal camera, and nothing obviously hot showed up. So, we need to investigate this further.

[00:04:05]So, I put the power supply module aside and continued disassembling.

[00:04:11]After you'll be removing all of the screws from the bottom of the camera and there's no more to remove, please note that there is a hidden screw behind this small white cap here, and that screw will basically hold the entire black section in there from sliding out this main plastic body. And you'll also have to use like a plastic spudger, which you insert here for this trim piece, and this will come out as well before you can slide everything out.

[00:04:45]Now, when you take everything out, you'll notice there is a second PCB module, which connects to the actual camera module via a multi-pin flat flex.

[00:04:55]Nothing was visually wrong with this module. Again, I double-checked with the thermal camera. So, I focused on continuing the disassembly.

[00:05:02]Unfortunately, getting the final camera module out and that flat flex proved to be quite difficult. The flat flex, even though it has connectors on both ends, it was also secured using lots of adhesive to make those entry points into the enclosure waterproof. And it snakes its way through the enclosure up to the camera sensor. Now, long story short, I managed to get it out, but when removing it from the final section of the camera sensor, the pins on the flat flex got messed up.

[00:05:36]So, I wasn't able to check if the flat flex was actually bad before I messed up the pins. But, you know, at this point, the only obvious thing was to try and replace that flat flex. And luckily, the flat flex uses this standard pitch of 0.5 mm and has a total of 40 pins, which is a pretty standard size.

[00:05:55]The length was a bit more difficult to find. It was about 75 mm in length. Now, you can find standard flex flat flex cables just like this one on AliExpress or any of the major component distributors, and I found these two options on LCSC. One is 80 mm long, the other one is 60 mm long. I couldn't find the exact 75 mm length, but I'm willing to try these 80 mm long ones. I think these should work.

[00:06:24]And first thing I did was just to connect one of these for a quick test just to see if this fixes the issue. And these are generally cheap and worth getting for a try.

[00:06:35]Shipping is probably more than the product, so it it's just worth ordering these with the with some other parts that you may need for other projects. It's That's just what I've done.

[00:06:45]So, I have my flat flex inserted between the camera and the PCB, and I have the camera powered on. So, now if we go to the web interface, success. We now get a clear image. So, it looks like our flat flex might have been the issue originally. The image is clean now and and stable. I also checked the logs and they they no longer show those Vsync errors that were we were having before, and also no more reboots happening. Everything is stable now. It seems that the original flat flex just couldn't take it anymore because, I don't know, it it was mangled in there behind the camera.

[00:07:25]There's also the like this adjustment the camera has, so over time I'm guessing this puts stress on the flat flex. It also might have had like a factory defect.

[00:07:36]So, after putting everything together, you know, it turned out great.

[00:07:41]Everything went back together without damaging anything. I also ran this camera for a couple of days on my UniFi Protect system and it was all stable, no reboots whatsoever. So, I'm happy that I was able to fix it. And, you know, I paid about 17 euros for this camera, roughly 10 euro to get that replacement flat flex, which is not bad for a total cost of 27 euros for a repair.

[00:08:06]If I count just the cost of one flat flex, it obviously is much cheaper than that. But, would I do it again for this model specifically? Probably not.

[00:08:16]While this was fun to repair, it stops being fun when, you know, it's so tightly packed together and so difficult to take apart. You can absolutely break this device at several of the disassembly steps if you don't know what you're doing. So, it's not worth pursuing a repair which has a high chance of breaking breaking the device further for such a model which is older. Just my two cents, but I still hope it was fun to watch.

[00:08:43]And and maybe you learned something from it which you can use on your next repair. And as always, I would appreciate your feedbacks in the comments below. Let me know what you think. Thank you for watching and I'll catch you in the next one.