6 ms·

> A DVR and a set of "old school" network cameras in an internal network have none of those problems Ring is a $300 purchase and takes an hour to install. This

by jbob2000 8y ago

> A DVR and a set of "old school" network cameras in an internal network have none of those problems Ring is a $300 purchase and takes an hour to install. This would take me a few weekends and would cost thousands of dollars. Cloud centralization makes things easier and cheaper, by orders of magnitude.

e1ven 8y ago
Why would it be so difficult to connect to locally? A company could drop a camera and a small NAS box, and have it all work over the local WiFi. I haven't looked into it, but I suspect there are several vendors who already do this. It would get more complicated to support accessing it while away from home, admittedly. I don't know if that's an important feature for this application.
- ASalazarMX 8y ago
  > It would get more complicated to support accessing it while away from home, admittedly. I don't know if that's an important feature for this application. That's the killer feature. What good is a home surveillance system if you have to be there to use it?
  - cordonbleu 8y ago
    i can drop a link right now that will let you look around at my driveway, if i get to know you better i could give you a login so you can see it works.
  - mulmen 8y ago
    This feels like one of the huge benefits to true widespread adoption of IPv6. A firewall is still required but without NAS it becomes much easier to connect to individual devices on arbitrary networks from anywhere.
    - mulmen 8y ago
      NAS? NAT.
- jbob2000 8y ago
  > A company could drop a camera and a small NAS box, and have it all work over the local WiFi. If you setup a company to do this, you will quickly find you are a customer service and call center company, NOT a security tech company.
- Mister_Snuggles 8y ago
  > It would get more complicated to support accessing it while away from home, admittedly. I don't know if that's an important feature for this application. This is a huge feature which I've solved using an IPSec VPN. This is not something that's easy for regular people to do though, so it's not a universal solution. If someone made a router that could easily provision VPN access for a device (e.g., generate a sensible OpenVPN config or something) it would make this setup a LOT easier.
- bradknowles 8y ago
  Synology has IP camera support out of the box. For one camera. If you want more, you have to buy more licenses, which are only available from them. In hard copy form. And they take a week or more to arrive. Been there, done that.
Mister_Snuggles 8y ago
> > A DVR and a set of "old school" network cameras in an internal network have none of those problems > Ring is a $300 purchase and takes an hour to install. This would take me a few weekends and would cost thousands of dollars. Cloud centralization makes things easier and cheaper, by orders of magnitude. I have a number of "old school" network cameras and an on-site DVR, it doesn't take "a few weekends" to set everything up. Adding a camera is simply a matter of following the instructions to connect it to the network. This would be the same process for a Ring or an "old school" camera. Adding a camera to Blue Iris is a 5-15 minute job, depending on how much tweaking you want to do to the motion detection settings. In terms of implementing from scratch, I picked up a refurbished Windows 10 Pro machine, set up and updated Windows, installed Blue Iris, and added my cameras, in an evening. Cost-wise, my setup is more expensive than a single Ring camera. However, my incremental costs are a lot cheaper since I can buy sub-$100 cameras instead of $300 ones. There's also no monthly fee, which is nice.
- syphilis2 8y ago
  There's no monthly fee, but you do have the cost of running that Windows 10 machine. What does that amount to? At 100W and $0.14/kWh I calculate about $10, which is competitive with something like Nest Aware.
  - Mister_Snuggles 8y ago
    This really depends on the machine and how you deploy it. I picked up a refurbished SFF business desktop type of machine and the power draw is only 40-60W (with Blue Iris running and recording from all of my cameras). This is definitely a consideration though. More cameras and/or higher resolution cameras will result in more power consumption or require a beefier machine.
  - illumin8 8y ago
    Not to mention if you get robbed they're going to take the PC that has your recordings on it, so good luck giving the police footage of your robbers...
- bradknowles 8y ago
Lammy 8y ago
I know this is going to sound a lot like “Why would anyone use dropbox when they could roll their own with an rsync shell script” but it’s not that bad. Please don’t spread FUD about the difficulty of freeing yourself from cloud surveillance. A copy of Blue Iris is $60, and you seem to be able to get 1080p indoor WiFi cameras for about another $60 each. Anyone who can connect a device to their wireless network, run a program, and forward a port can get equivalent functionality, and from my experience even a lot of non-tech-focused people are familiar with doing that for e.g. Xbox Live
- jbob2000 8y ago
  IKEA can't get people to assemble a fucking box, and you're here telling me that it's totally possible for people to set up their own networked camera system? Yes, it's possible. No, it's not easy. I've been working as a software dev for like 10 years now and I would happily purchase Ring instead of pulling my hair out for a whole weekend trying to yak-shave[1] my way to a hacked together security camera system. [1] https://seths.blog/2005/03/dont_shave_that/ https://seths.blog/2005/03/dont_shave_that/ Edit: Everyone, just read the replies to my original comment and you will see why Ring is better. There's a million different ways to setup a home camera system, each with their own intricacies and challenges. THIS is why Ring is better. It's the ONE solution that ties together all this technical bullshit that nobody really wants to deal with (unless you're passionate about networking. Which is probably a lot of the users on this board. Which is why I'm probably getting crushed with downvotes).
  - mimixco 8y ago
    The problem is that the original intent of buying such a device has now been subsumed under a tech company and government agenda, the surveillance state. When you see Ring on the shelf everywhere, it isn't advertised as a way to surveil you and your family, to scan your face and report your video and audio to cops. This reminds me of 23 and Me which acts like it's helping you but, by signing up, you agree to help Big Pharma and cops keep track of you.
    - austhrow743 8y ago

e1ven 8y ago

Why would it be so difficult to connect to locally? A company could drop a camera and a small NAS box, and have it all work over the local WiFi. I haven't looked into it, but I suspect there are several vendors who already do this. It would get more complicated to support accessing it while away from home, admittedly. I don't know if that's an important feature for this application.

ASalazarMX 8y ago
> It would get more complicated to support accessing it while away from home, admittedly. I don't know if that's an important feature for this application. That's the killer feature. What good is a home surveillance system if you have to be there to use it?
- cordonbleu 8y ago
  i can drop a link right now that will let you look around at my driveway, if i get to know you better i could give you a login so you can see it works.
- mulmen 8y ago
  This feels like one of the huge benefits to true widespread adoption of IPv6. A firewall is still required but without NAS it becomes much easier to connect to individual devices on arbitrary networks from anywhere.
  - mulmen 8y ago
    NAS? NAT.
jbob2000 8y ago
> A company could drop a camera and a small NAS box, and have it all work over the local WiFi. If you setup a company to do this, you will quickly find you are a customer service and call center company, NOT a security tech company.
Mister_Snuggles 8y ago
> It would get more complicated to support accessing it while away from home, admittedly. I don't know if that's an important feature for this application. This is a huge feature which I've solved using an IPSec VPN. This is not something that's easy for regular people to do though, so it's not a universal solution. If someone made a router that could easily provision VPN access for a device (e.g., generate a sensible OpenVPN config or something) it would make this setup a LOT easier.
bradknowles 8y ago
Synology has IP camera support out of the box. For one camera. If you want more, you have to buy more licenses, which are only available from them. In hard copy form. And they take a week or more to arrive. Been there, done that.

Mister_Snuggles 8y ago

> > A DVR and a set of "old school" network cameras in an internal network have none of those problems > Ring is a $300 purchase and takes an hour to install. This would take me a few weekends and would cost thousands of dollars. Cloud centralization makes things easier and cheaper, by orders of magnitude. I have a number of "old school" network cameras and an on-site DVR, it doesn't take "a few weekends" to set everything up. Adding a camera is simply a matter of following the instructions to connect it to the network. This would be the same process for a Ring or an "old school" camera. Adding a camera to Blue Iris is a 5-15 minute job, depending on how much tweaking you want to do to the motion detection settings. In terms of implementing from scratch, I picked up a refurbished Windows 10 Pro machine, set up and updated Windows, installed Blue Iris, and added my cameras, in an evening. Cost-wise, my setup is more expensive than a single Ring camera. However, my incremental costs are a lot cheaper since I can buy sub-$100 cameras instead of $300 ones. There's also no monthly fee, which is nice.

syphilis2 8y ago
There's no monthly fee, but you do have the cost of running that Windows 10 machine. What does that amount to? At 100W and $0.14/kWh I calculate about $10, which is competitive with something like Nest Aware.
- Mister_Snuggles 8y ago
  This really depends on the machine and how you deploy it. I picked up a refurbished SFF business desktop type of machine and the power draw is only 40-60W (with Blue Iris running and recording from all of my cameras). This is definitely a consideration though. More cameras and/or higher resolution cameras will result in more power consumption or require a beefier machine.
- illumin8 8y ago
  Not to mention if you get robbed they're going to take the PC that has your recordings on it, so good luck giving the police footage of your robbers...
bradknowles 8y ago

Lammy 8y ago

I know this is going to sound a lot like “Why would anyone use dropbox when they could roll their own with an rsync shell script” but it’s not that bad. Please don’t spread FUD about the difficulty of freeing yourself from cloud surveillance. A copy of Blue Iris is $60, and you seem to be able to get 1080p indoor WiFi cameras for about another $60 each. Anyone who can connect a device to their wireless network, run a program, and forward a port can get equivalent functionality, and from my experience even a lot of non-tech-focused people are familiar with doing that for e.g. Xbox Live

jbob2000 8y ago
IKEA can't get people to assemble a fucking box, and you're here telling me that it's totally possible for people to set up their own networked camera system? Yes, it's possible. No, it's not easy. I've been working as a software dev for like 10 years now and I would happily purchase Ring instead of pulling my hair out for a whole weekend trying to yak-shave[1] my way to a hacked together security camera system. [1] https://seths.blog/2005/03/dont_shave_that/ https://seths.blog/2005/03/dont_shave_that/ Edit: Everyone, just read the replies to my original comment and you will see why Ring is better. There's a million different ways to setup a home camera system, each with their own intricacies and challenges. THIS is why Ring is better. It's the ONE solution that ties together all this technical bullshit that nobody really wants to deal with (unless you're passionate about networking. Which is probably a lot of the users on this board. Which is why I'm probably getting crushed with downvotes).
- mimixco 8y ago
  The problem is that the original intent of buying such a device has now been subsumed under a tech company and government agenda, the surveillance state. When you see Ring on the shelf everywhere, it isn't advertised as a way to surveil you and your family, to scan your face and report your video and audio to cops. This reminds me of 23 and Me which acts like it's helping you but, by signing up, you agree to help Big Pharma and cops keep track of you.
  - austhrow743 8y ago