It's kind of a combination of things — IP cameras definitely don't have the greatest software... and combined with shitty entry-level routers port-forwarding is

It's kind of a combination of things — IP cameras definitely don't have the greatest software... and combined with shitty entry-level routers port-forwarding is definitely frustrating to the average person... then you get into dynamic IPs from ISPs, etc... It's just annoying that there's no middle ground between "hold my hand with a cloud service" and "I want to spend a little effort to not be 100% reliant on external services" Google could decide to fold Nest service entirely (luckily there aren't signs of that) and at this point you'd have thousands of thousands of devices in a landfill. It's so irresponsible. Historically you could have a CCTV setup running for 10-20 years without huge issues. >I suspect there are now modern, IP cameras that aren't cloud reliant It's surprisingly limited and still a bit expensive. Foscam/Hikvision have been getting better, but it still feels a few years behind when it comes to firmware... and the notification and advanced "human detection" are obviously better with a cloud service.