I enjoy having cameras on my house to see what’s going on in the neighborhood. It has come in handy at least once when my neighbor’s truck was stolen in broad daylight.
They are ring cameras because two were installed already when I moved in. What should I switch to? I just really want motion alerts and proof when something bad happens.
Unifi Ubiquiti products are one of the best option for completely local data hosting and camera services with really good “ai” detections all run locally, but they aren’t that cheap and you’ll need to buy one of their Unifi protect capable routers to get started, which is gonna be like $300 by itself.
I’ve got a Ubiquiti setup with cameras and a doorbell. It isn’t cheap but it’s local and I highly recommend them if you have the budget.
Yeah, the idea of Amazon running my home security did NOT appeal to me. I went with another brand.
stallmanwasright.jpg
Crazy how a company owned by Amazon would do this. /s
You know they are in all of your cloud connected cameras, inside your home, inside your tesla, pretty much everywhere you have a camera… Definitely not just at your front door. The key thing to understand about the surveillance state is that they only acknowledge access of personal data if they intend to use it in a court room. Most of it is just used for spying, information gathering, and parallel construction if necessary.
There’s a term I haven’t heard for a while.
Oh noooo, that thing we warned people about when it came out is being misused in exactly the way we warned people it would be misused.
Oh nooooo.
I’m tired grandpa. Too damn many stupid people in this world.
Of course that happened, that happens every time when you buy things but then don’t own them.
I’ll buy cams for my home, but they’ll be for ME alone because they’re MY cameras, MY video.
Obligatory fuck Amazon and fuck the USA
Zoneminder/ Shinobi for Linux seems to be the software, and milestone is free up to eight camera channels if you only have a Windows box to run the cameras (I’m a dealer, so if you’re a Windows person and you get lost ask me how.)
While your at it, dont buy from amazon
People send me links to Amazon products and seem bewildered when I just don’t open them and or respond to send me the actual link to the mfr website.
Fuck amazon
There was a time when I thought that was impossible… now I don’t even have an account
I think my wife keeps one because according to her (and I believe this is true) there are things you just can’t buy elsewhere anymore. So far, I have been fine not buying something if it’s only on Amazon but I can see cases where that would be impossible.
Other than that, fuck Amazon right off
This was the kick in the ass I needed. Removing that device tomorrow.
Wish somebody would open source these things… Was gifted a really nice flood light cam with audio and hate to bin it. Their decent hardware.
I’ve been using this for years and it’s about to become my main. I put a memory card in it and can access it globally without a subscription to any service. It’s “compatible with Alexa” but that’s not ever happening.
Same i had canceled the monthly but I suspect they still have access…
I canceled my subscription a few minutes ago. I’m not fucking around. The device will be ripped off the entryway as soon as it’s light outside.
This is fucking wrong and I won’t stand for it.
Love the digital panopticon, love being tracked by Nazi pedophiles at all times
Oh look another smart technology I didn’t adopt for the exact reason being talked about. You can’t trust big tech to not collaborate with whoever it’s the most profitable to collaborate with.
It’s not really a trust thing. They are companies, not people. The top decision makers have a fubuciary responsibility to do whatever makes money. They can, and often do, get sued if they don’t. So you can expect them to sell you out. It’s literally thier purpose for existing.
- fiduciary
They are companies run by right wing shitbags. How many genocides were conducted on Facebook?
You can’t trust big tech to not collaberate with, big tech either. You don’t want them with your information, even if it’s not readily apparent how it could hurt you. Before you know it you could be in a fascist dictatorship and wondering how you got there, this is part of the reason. Or would be in that completely hypothetical situation that in no way mirrors our own situation with our dear most intelligent and not al all dickish supreme leader.
Ring is owned by Amazon, so it makes sense. You can’t really trust any company fully, but Anker and Reolink are OK for now
Reolink
Any cameras that can operate entirely offline are good. Dahua and Hikvision are good too. Look for cameras with RTSP and ONVIF support. ONVIF is a standardized API for interacting with cameras and can handle things like pan/tilt/zoom, sending events from the camera to the NVR (eg motion detection), and a bunch of other things.
I use Blue Iris as my NVR, which is usually regarded as the best, but there’s other good software too (like Frigate), and hardware solutions too.
Just follow best practices - keep them isolated on a separate VLAN with no internet access. If you want remote access to your NVR, use a VPN like Tailscale.
Though, on the other hand, having the video saved offsite is useful because then anyone with physical access to your home can’t get rid of the video showing they’re there.
This is not an argument in favour of using cloud services, because that gives access to your video to anyone the company deems should have access (or sometimes individual workers who either have access as part of their job or gain access because businesses suck at security). It’s in response to you saying isolate the cameras from the internet entirely; there is a good reason to have them connected (though you could have a PC handle that with a connection to two networks and no physical or software bridge between the two, just take video from one, upload (encrypted) to server on other).
Though, on the other hand, having the video saved offsite is useful because then anyone with physical access to your home can’t get rid of the video showing they’re there.
I have Blue Iris configured to send all alert videos to one of my storage VPSes via SFTP. As soon as someone is detected outside, the video clip is sent offsite.
The server and the PoE switch that powers the cameras are also on a UPS, which helps if the intruder tries to shut off the power at the main breaker (which, here in California, always needs to be located outside).
It’s in response to you saying isolate the cameras from the internet entirely
The cameras themselves should always be isolated.
Your NVR can have network access, and is what would handle uploading the videos to internet storage somewhere.
Hikvision is app only which is really annoying. I wouldn’t recommend it. (it also crashes my emulator for some reason)
Anker owns Eufy right? The company that had all their cameras recording to a publicly accessible cloud storage?
Yeah not trusting them either.
My eufys are supposed to be local only. Shit I hope so… That’s why I bought them in the first place
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HKSV does not get sent to ICE.
Are people going to start listening to their “paranoid” nephews yet?
Dammit, I fell for rings assurances of “only in response to a warrant”. Mostly out of laziness, but still …… I really am going to have to figure out self hosting a video doorbell, aren’t i
Sorry, wasn’t meant as a slight against you.
Remember people: Proprietary systems are never yours. And in this case, they own you.
Bare in mind that the government requires a warrant to obtain data against you, the barrier in which to get a warrant requires probable cause.
Obtaining data about you from a company only requires a subpoena if the company doesn’t cooperate.
BUYING data about you from the same company is completely allowed.
Until we get privacy laws, we are truly fucked.
It’s easy to do. Mine is a reolink piped through Home Assistant.
Ubiquiti offers a product that will do that out of the box iirc but I have no idea if it’s good.
Still ring has been handing stuff to the cops for years at this point. They only “stopped” recently and I guess started again.
Ubiquiti offers a product that will do that out of the box
- You need to host a controller for it. It needs the Protect platform to interface with. You can host that for free.
- The hardware is fine.
- The included app is marginal
- it supports onifv and can be added to blue-iris or frigate.
Only problem with the Ubiquiti offering iirc is that it offers no storage, you need a controller with storage installed.
I mean that is expected, though I guess that is my bias. I just meant that is was more “layman” than running your own storage system.
