The reality is that a lot of societies or locales are not high-trust and it makes sense to take steps to insure oneself/family/possessions.
Installing cameras on your property does not necessarily mean you have a destructive attitude, are suspicious or paranoid, or that you are storing and cataloging events. It's a set-and-forget system that the majority of users probably don't think about on a daily basis. You install them in the hopes that you'll never have to use them.
I also reject the idea that installing a surveillance system means treating neighbors as enemies. Well-meaning people should implicitly understand that the surveillance isn't directed towards them in that way.
This is also why Amazon Ring and cloud-connected mass surveillance systems should receive scrutiny - these DO mean exposing your neighbors to third parties who may treat them with suspicion.
I would rather a more grounded argument like "_Amazon Ring_ is bad and you should feel bad, get a better surveillance system" because currently this article's reasoning is very nebulous and subjective.
Once in a while it has turned out to have been good to have. Never critical, but good to have. And I don't have to give everything to [Amazon/Ring|Flock|local PD|whoever]... unless I choose to.
I was a building manager for 6 years and Police took the footage over 10 times during my tenure, nothing was ever recovered by the police and recognised offenders were never bought to any sort of justice.
In this instance I'd say the surety and closure provided by the ability to simply review the footage is an important aspect for potential victims. And if victimized by something worse than petty theft, the value only goes up.
I’ve been debating adding a camera pointed a bit more outward, as there at least 5 2 car accidents a year at the intersection outside my house of a 1 way road without a stop sign and a 2 way narrow city road with a stop sign. At least 1 of these accidents every 2 years ends up hitting my neighbors house.
Once I had that, I called the police, and pressed charges, and FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HIS LIFE he went to court for his actions. He had previously made multiple assaults on his mother, even attempting to kill her, and the police only took him to a juvenile mental facility for a few hours to days: no court history.
THAT is what it actually gives you: actionable proof. What the fancy judge-types call "evidence".
Wether insurance went after those people for the claims or police, it certainly helped me there.
Same is said for dash cameras. It is in 99 percent of scenarios for "set and forget" not for some malicious anti-neighbor behavior
Can someone make an open source, privacy-focused doorbell? Perhaps like the Software Conversancy’s OpenWRT One wifi router. With an open specification, addons like a flashing light or entry buzzer could be integrated. A simple iPhone/Android intercom app usable only on my LAN would be lovely. Yes, one can get a ReoLink and muck with VLan settings but that is not consumer accessible, moreover you have to use their central service or forgo remote answering
If you want to get something safe and smart (IoT) then you have to think like an engineer. You also need to decide if you are going to do one thing - a doorbell, or if you want disco lights by the pool and the rest.
For a doorbell, you need a button at the door and a chime or whatever inside the house to indicate the button has been pushed. Already you have to potentially deal with delivering power at a place that might be hard, door frames/walls, wires, batteries, weather, positioning and lots more. Then you need to get the signal to a chime.
My previous doorbell was a chime that I wired into a switched and fused spur (I ran a 5A rated twin and earth out of a light socket into a back box with a switched socket faceplate and it has its own fuse) into the nearest lighting socket and a bell wire that ran out to the button. That was fine and simple but not too smart!
I have PoE switches and my IT gear is mostly in the attic. I put a backbox with an ethernet socket in the attic and ran solid core down through the roof/wall etc to near to where the door bell is on the inside of my house and put another backbox with ethernet face plate on it. I then run a short (3m) patchlead inside some trunking and through the front door frame and into the back of a Reolink PoE powered doorbell. I also have Home Assistant running as a VM on a Proxmox box.
Somewhere between those two setups sounds like where you want to go. I went for PoE because I also have UPS for my switches and other infra but wifi may be fine for you for comms but you still have to do power and I'm not a fan of battery powered door buttons but that might be a design decision for you.
You mention VLANs and I really recommend that you look into them. They are a core building block of networking. However, I also get that becoming a network expert is not on everyone's score card. Then again, you are hanging around on HN and probably tending towards ... nerd!
Even a simple doorbell can become pretty sodding complicated and that is why we have some people wondering what on earth all the fuss is about and others advocating to smash the looms ... sorry, doorbells.
Audio intercom with shared entry door buzzer are common with older apartment complexes. Newer buildings and retrofits have video.
My local CostCo has the ReoLink 8-camera CCTV system (4TB 12MP, supports up to 16 cameræ) on sale, $150 off MSRP (so, $649 total) — last week I installed mine and am very satisfied (PoE, so no additional power supply issues). You can entirely run two cameræ per single ethernet cable.
This device stores everything locally [1]; also has an option to connect to your Reolink system remotely using their app. I believe they do offer off-site storage options (to store footage), but I prefer to keep this information isolated — it's for my and neighbors' own protection (my corner lot sees entire ingress/egress).
[0] <https://www.costco.com/p/-/reolink-16-channel-8-4k-wired-dom...>
[1] even has a 2nd SATA slot for additional recording retention time (VERY EASY to install additional drive; holds up to 16TB)
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Let's become the stewards of our own data, again...
The only drawback I've found is that despite their IP65 weatherproof rating, I've had two failures caused by rain. (In each case, the microphone was permanently affected.) They've been good about issuing RMAs and sending replacements, but I guess I'll need to start paying for replacements if they begin failing after the warranty period.
This system was recommended by a trusted EE/hn guy, and his have been functional since ~2016 (no RMA, to my knowledge; but his are also under well-under eves).
ESL readers: "eve" (noun) is the underside of a roof overhang
I do think it's funny he focuses solely on the homeowner, the individual, for whom their entire life is in their home, but ignores all the cameras used by businesses, government, etc. Ask the police station take down their cameras! Ask the grocery store take down theirs! They can certainly afford to be robbed more than the guy just trying to make an honest living, and wanting to keep an eye on his stuff. But no, he focuses on the person who's likely been the victim of crime (a concept he tells you to pretend doesn't exist, because "capitalism" or whatever), to just ignore it, to just go with the flow, man. No, I don't think I will.
One of the things I do actually like is not being constantly stolen from. It's a pretty nice improvement to my life to see that something has been delivered and know that it will be there when I'm home. I don't have a Ring camera or anything, but I can see why people would rather have the Christmas gifts they send each other (even if small in monetary value) than some insight about the "painful predations of poverty under capitalism". The latter might actually not be as valuable to others as it is to the author.
When I lived in India many decades ago, it was quite routine to have anything not latched down taken from you. We'd lock our bags to our train seats and so on, and if you had an expensive thing delivered you'd have to make sure you were home or you'd have to go acquire the thing and escort it home yourself, and you wouldn't do that with an expensive item at a time when people weren't around. If I'm being honest, I think I would much rather have my present life where I am confronted with such "tragedies of unimaginably small proportions" rarely at the cost of the "opportunities to reflect on the painful predations of capitalism". I actually really like not being stolen from. Here, in my wife's Taiwan, I can even forget my phone on a table and it's probably still going to be there. That's somehow even nicer, though I do admittedly reflect less often on "the painful predations of capitalism" because of it.
I don't specifically know for a fact that a Ring camera would help me achieve this goal of mine to be not stolen from at the cost of reflecting on capitalism, but it is presented in the article as if it would and that giving up reflections on capitalism for safety from theft is not useful. Given that I have found such a trade useful, I think this speaks more as an advertisement for Ring than anything else.
On the flip side, I have basically never worried about being stolen from, and I have no camera.
The secret? All the places I've lived, have their front door in an inconvenient spot. For example, up stairs, or along the side of the house. Getting a camera doesn't make you safer... Cause all you have to do to thwart it is wear a mask. And thanks to the pandemic, literally everyone has one of those.
This kind of rhetoric is counterproductive. Telling people that package thieves are just misunderstood, is going to get people to do the opposite of what you suggest.
Luckily many Ring type cameras are mounted perpendicular to the road and with restricted field of vision (which makes picking out license plates tricky), but there will be plenty of cameras out there with great resolution and a good view of the road.
On the positive, my neighbour has a sensor camera and let us know one of our dogs was out wandering in front of his house. No idea when or how he got out the gate so we had no idea he was missing.
For that matter, they also know my credit card number, and supply the internet connection to my house.
There's no chance I'm hiding from Google, so might as well have the cool doorbell.
Yeah, I think he summed it up better than I could have there.
With my Reolink system, I can watch them "play" (fight &/or sleep) on my deck. And nobody else can track our relaxed situations (I talk to them, always) =D
My home is very small, so I got full-coverage of my exterior with two extra cameræ left-over — one of them I have made a dedicated "birdnest cam," which hopefully aforementioned feline don't murder... the other watches my bird feeders.
That said, it’s not like crime is uncommon, and a blasé attitude and snark won’t change that. Cameras are in fact the best deterrent.
Kinda funny that your links don't support that.
And I think that's exactly the issue. Doorbell cameras appear to be security theater when it comes to both trying to prevent or recovering package thefts.
If Amazon did their part, put the package on your door, it was stolen, is that their fault?
(Legally, could be more cloudy depending on jurisdiction, but I'm sure their tendency to say packages will require a signature on delivery but then to leave them on the doorstep with the driver's signature alone probably does them no favours)
The author also lives in a ridiculous bubble. Try getting a refund for your stolen goods from NOT-AMAZON. Most retailers can't afford to subsidize infinite free returns off their non-existent prime subscription income. I order furniture online through actual furniture stores, and they needed actual photographs and video evidence for the RMA.
SEWER and THINGS don't get to see the internet at all, except via Squid. DNS A records with ntp in them resolve to the IPs of my equipment.
It is a bit crap that you need to be a networking and IT consultant to make this stuff mostly safe. If you can't, then getting the claw hammer out seems to be indicated.
Easy Button option for us lazy folks.
