Cameras for residential usage should only store footage locally. Any apps or portals to access the footage shouldn’t be able to view footage. This is one of the reasons I stopped using Nest after...
Cameras for residential usage should only store footage locally. Any apps or portals to access the footage shouldn’t be able to view footage. This is one of the reasons I stopped using Nest after Google bought them and switched to a system I had more control over.
I’ve got a camera pointed at my front porch for the express purpose of knowing when Amazon has delivered my packages. Storage is local, about a day’s worth, the angle really only covers my actual...
I’ve got a camera pointed at my front porch for the express purpose of knowing when Amazon has delivered my packages. Storage is local, about a day’s worth, the angle really only covers my actual porch, and the rest of the street is blocked by my porch’s banisters and my car. So far the only nefarious activity I pick up is that an orange and white cat likes to hang out on my porch sometimes. Small criminal.
Unfortunately, the only cameras that are reasonably priced for the general consumer are going to be the smart cams, none of which are currently sold to just work locally. If there are ones like...
Unfortunately, the only cameras that are reasonably priced for the general consumer are going to be the smart cams, none of which are currently sold to just work locally. If there are ones like that, none of them are currently being displayed to the masses in targets and best buys. Sure, you can patch together a home system with cheaper parts, but that takes technical know-how.
And getting people to part with their cams and switch to alternatives is... well it's a bit of a catch 22 given they got the cheap camera because it was cheap, and probably don't want to pay for another.
The other unfortunate part is that from my experience, it seems that the cloud based ones have better 'AI' and some better features and functionality than local ones, unless you go with some...
Exemplary
The other unfortunate part is that from my experience, it seems that the cloud based ones have better 'AI' and some better features and functionality than local ones, unless you go with some absurdly expensive systems or roll your own which requires even more technical know-how than just installing them even, and more hardware.
My personal experiences with cloud based systems are Alarm.com, OpenEye (which is owned by Alarm.com) and Wyze which I am pretty sure all their smart detections are cloud based, and local systems are Hikvision, Dahua, Reolink, a few random other brands, and then beyond that my knowledge is just what I've researched online.
From what I can tell, any of the cheaper hardware that can do local is all about the same capability detection wise. Decent but not great. If you want better detection or recording capabilities, you basically have to roll your own setup for the recording system, which can mean getting a beefy PC, running a desktop OS and then installing some open source software or proprietary software to function as the recording software. Some of these like Frigate require more specialized hardware in addition, like as described below.
A detector is a device which is optimized for running inferences efficiently to detect objects. Using a recommended detector means there will be less latency between detections and more detections can be run per second. Frigate is designed around the expectation that a detector is used to achieve very low inference speeds. Offloading TensorFlow to a detector is an order of magnitude faster and will reduce your CPU load dramatically.
That's of course excluding the other big reason why people go for these cloud based cams which is initially they were targeted for DIY install which for the average home user means battery powered. Plus the networking and remote viewing aspects of these are resolved in ways that securely viewing a local system isn't without the technical know-how.
Comparing local system detection capabilities to the detections and various capabilities of the cloud-based systems I interacted with, those cloud systems were way more capable. Alarm.com detection was quite good, their platform was limited in what kind of recording setups and notification rules and stuff you could set up. OpenEye was nearly perfect from a usability standpoint. They hadn't quite gotten to the better AI detections at the point that I was working with them but I understand it to be better now. It was designed around commercial/enterprise use more so, but it had way more granular controls and one thing that bothers me that other systems don't have by default is dual recording options. Recording motion detections in the high quality main stream of the camera, and recording 24/7 in the low quality substream of the camera. OpenEye had this and made me annoyed to find hardly anything on the lower cost end has it (and OpenEye isn't on the low end of cost so it's not necessarily a fair comparison). Synology has it on their NAS systems, but Synology has come under fire for being anti-consumer in their own ways too. They also have some other software and hardware limitations.
The good news regarding Frigate is that they no longer require (or even recommend) using specific TensorFlow hardware. The latest versions all offer a variety of detectors, some of which can even...
The good news regarding Frigate is that they no longer require (or even recommend) using specific TensorFlow hardware. The latest versions all offer a variety of detectors, some of which can even use the built-in GPU in inexpensive hardware. For example, I'm running Frigate using a Beelink Mini PC which can be had for $300. The N100 and N150 intel chips have built-in GPUs which can run the OpenVino detectors and the performance is as good (and in some cases better) than the TensorFlow hardware I used before.
Admittedly, it's been at least 3 years since I used any cloud-based detection systems but the Frigate system is extremely performant (I get notification within 0.5 seconds of someone approaching my front door) and very reliable at detecting people. It's less smart about animals, but that can be improved with training a Frigate+ model. I use Home Assistant to interface with Frigate and Signal to push my notifications so all of the detection logic and data is flowing through my own hardware, except for the final notification which is sent via Signal which I trust to be private for my purposes.
The most common daily use case is I know when the mail arrives, when packages show up, and if someone is around my house (I get routine tests because of my gardener).
Yes, it's a bit of an up-front mental investment because you should install your own IP cameras on your own network so everything is local, and it does require you to understand how to do some very basic systems administration tasks. So, it's not for everybody.
How many cameras and what resolution are you able to pull off on that hardware? It's been my understanding that's where the spec requirements of the system can rise greatly. But yeah, that's what...
How many cameras and what resolution are you able to pull off on that hardware? It's been my understanding that's where the spec requirements of the system can rise greatly.
But yeah, that's what I've seen about that and similar setups, basically if you roll your own it seems to be much better performance and functionality, just too high of a barrier of entry for most people.
I have a smart doorbell because it lets my partner answer the door without wheeling all the way to the door for someone trying to sell us solar (that we already have) and it let's me see if his...
I have a smart doorbell because it lets my partner answer the door without wheeling all the way to the door for someone trying to sell us solar (that we already have) and it let's me see if his home care shows up as scheduled, or answer at work if he's in the hospital. We moved off Blink (that came with the home) to Nest if only because we use Google stuff already and might as well only share all that with one company?
I have it keep footage only for a short amount of time and facial recognition doesn't work in IL so I try to make it more secure without being part of Flock's nightmare. I can at least pop it off if needed in the future. But I don't have the technical knowledge, time or $ to work up a different accessibility tool. Hell, if we didn't have one, my partner could probably get one installed for free due to being disabled.
The idea of a smart home is great. The reality of the half-ass dumb-ass home is not.
One day, on Tildes, I am going to post a sincere request for help setting up some 'smart home' features that don't completely compromise security. I can't wait. It'll be like throwing arm fulls of...
One day, on Tildes, I am going to post a sincere request for help setting up some 'smart home' features that don't completely compromise security.
I can't wait. It'll be like throwing arm fulls of French fries to seagulls.
As far as I know, Eufy security and doorbell cams only store footage locally by default. Granted, the app is still the primary way to interact with them, so theoretically, it would be possible for...
As far as I know, Eufy security and doorbell cams only store footage locally by default.
Granted, the app is still the primary way to interact with them, so theoretically, it would be possible for them to access your footage. But you could also just disconnect it from wifi and access footage exclusively via the microSD if that's what you wanted.
Reolink in theory can be set up for direct access, either disabling their remote connection setup or going further and straight up blocking the hardware from connecting out on a firewall, I think...
Reolink in theory can be set up for direct access, either disabling their remote connection setup or going further and straight up blocking the hardware from connecting out on a firewall, I think Unifi can as well but not 100% on that. Eufy, I don't think so.
Unifi and Eufy I believe have both had session security problems in the past, giving people access to others systems because session tokens were swapped on the backend or something like that (I'm sure someone can correct me on the exact technical details). The only way to avoid this as far as I'm concerned is using direct connections to your equipment and not being reliant on any online accounts to sign in and view devices.
I don't see how that'd be possible depending on your config. You can literally limit access only by direct IP connect which is something they can't grant if you block external at the router (which...
Unifi
I don't see how that'd be possible depending on your config. You can literally limit access only by direct IP connect which is something they can't grant if you block external at the router (which doesn't have to be unifi).
I also can't find anything on sessions swapping failures for them at least not in the same way that Eufy fucked up.
It did happen, but they had it fixed within a few hours, were very transparent about the cause and the remediation, and only a few thousand accounts were affected total. And, like you say, it’s...
It did happen, but they had it fixed within a few hours, were very transparent about the cause and the remediation, and only a few thousand accounts were affected total. And, like you say, it’s not a risk at all if you disable cloud access - that doesn’t change the fact it shouldn’t have happened at all, but it does at least come down to a user driven choice on the convenience vs risk tradeoff.
Pretty much the mirror universe compared to the Eufy situation, IMO - what the handling of a fuck up says about each of them, as much if not more than the fuck up occurring in the first place, is a big reason Eufy are on my permanent blacklist while I happily recommend Ubiquiti stuff to people all the time.
Of all the brands I whose word I wouldn’t trust on that… Admittedly that was a couple of years ago, so maybe it was high profile enough that they had to make some actual changes, but their...
Admittedly that was a couple of years ago, so maybe it was high profile enough that they had to make some actual changes, but their handling of it was bad enough that I stopped buying their cables and chargers as a matter of principle (Eufy is an Anker sub-brand). It’d take an awful lot to convince me that their cameras are a good option for privacy and security.
Not me justifying their plans, but Ring messed up from a PR perspective because they didn't cut to the chase and focus their Superbowl ad around law enforcement. A far more dramatic advert where...
Not me justifying their plans, but Ring messed up from a PR perspective because they didn't cut to the chase and focus their Superbowl ad around law enforcement.
A far more dramatic advert where Search Party helps catch a dangerous sexual predator mid-abduction, rescues his victims and lands him life in federal prison would have received far less backlash. Finding lost puppies is a weak argument for Search Party's existence, yet "think of the children" has been the strawman argument for mass surveillance.
I mean it's why my country ended up with the Online Safety Act...
Cameras for residential usage should only store footage locally. Any apps or portals to access the footage shouldn’t be able to view footage. This is one of the reasons I stopped using Nest after Google bought them and switched to a system I had more control over.
I’ve got a camera pointed at my front porch for the express purpose of knowing when Amazon has delivered my packages. Storage is local, about a day’s worth, the angle really only covers my actual porch, and the rest of the street is blocked by my porch’s banisters and my car. So far the only nefarious activity I pick up is that an orange and white cat likes to hang out on my porch sometimes. Small criminal.
Unfortunately, the only cameras that are reasonably priced for the general consumer are going to be the smart cams, none of which are currently sold to just work locally. If there are ones like that, none of them are currently being displayed to the masses in targets and best buys. Sure, you can patch together a home system with cheaper parts, but that takes technical know-how.
And getting people to part with their cams and switch to alternatives is... well it's a bit of a catch 22 given they got the cheap camera because it was cheap, and probably don't want to pay for another.
The other unfortunate part is that from my experience, it seems that the cloud based ones have better 'AI' and some better features and functionality than local ones, unless you go with some absurdly expensive systems or roll your own which requires even more technical know-how than just installing them even, and more hardware.
My personal experiences with cloud based systems are Alarm.com, OpenEye (which is owned by Alarm.com) and Wyze which I am pretty sure all their smart detections are cloud based, and local systems are Hikvision, Dahua, Reolink, a few random other brands, and then beyond that my knowledge is just what I've researched online.
From what I can tell, any of the cheaper hardware that can do local is all about the same capability detection wise. Decent but not great. If you want better detection or recording capabilities, you basically have to roll your own setup for the recording system, which can mean getting a beefy PC, running a desktop OS and then installing some open source software or proprietary software to function as the recording software. Some of these like Frigate require more specialized hardware in addition, like as described below.
That's of course excluding the other big reason why people go for these cloud based cams which is initially they were targeted for DIY install which for the average home user means battery powered. Plus the networking and remote viewing aspects of these are resolved in ways that securely viewing a local system isn't without the technical know-how.
Comparing local system detection capabilities to the detections and various capabilities of the cloud-based systems I interacted with, those cloud systems were way more capable. Alarm.com detection was quite good, their platform was limited in what kind of recording setups and notification rules and stuff you could set up. OpenEye was nearly perfect from a usability standpoint. They hadn't quite gotten to the better AI detections at the point that I was working with them but I understand it to be better now. It was designed around commercial/enterprise use more so, but it had way more granular controls and one thing that bothers me that other systems don't have by default is dual recording options. Recording motion detections in the high quality main stream of the camera, and recording 24/7 in the low quality substream of the camera. OpenEye had this and made me annoyed to find hardly anything on the lower cost end has it (and OpenEye isn't on the low end of cost so it's not necessarily a fair comparison). Synology has it on their NAS systems, but Synology has come under fire for being anti-consumer in their own ways too. They also have some other software and hardware limitations.
The good news regarding Frigate is that they no longer require (or even recommend) using specific TensorFlow hardware. The latest versions all offer a variety of detectors, some of which can even use the built-in GPU in inexpensive hardware. For example, I'm running Frigate using a Beelink Mini PC which can be had for $300. The N100 and N150 intel chips have built-in GPUs which can run the OpenVino detectors and the performance is as good (and in some cases better) than the TensorFlow hardware I used before.
https://docs.frigate.video/configuration/object_detectors/
Admittedly, it's been at least 3 years since I used any cloud-based detection systems but the Frigate system is extremely performant (I get notification within 0.5 seconds of someone approaching my front door) and very reliable at detecting people. It's less smart about animals, but that can be improved with training a Frigate+ model. I use Home Assistant to interface with Frigate and Signal to push my notifications so all of the detection logic and data is flowing through my own hardware, except for the final notification which is sent via Signal which I trust to be private for my purposes.
The most common daily use case is I know when the mail arrives, when packages show up, and if someone is around my house (I get routine tests because of my gardener).
Yes, it's a bit of an up-front mental investment because you should install your own IP cameras on your own network so everything is local, and it does require you to understand how to do some very basic systems administration tasks. So, it's not for everybody.
How many cameras and what resolution are you able to pull off on that hardware? It's been my understanding that's where the spec requirements of the system can rise greatly.
But yeah, that's what I've seen about that and similar setups, basically if you roll your own it seems to be much better performance and functionality, just too high of a barrier of entry for most people.
I have a smart doorbell because it lets my partner answer the door without wheeling all the way to the door for someone trying to sell us solar (that we already have) and it let's me see if his home care shows up as scheduled, or answer at work if he's in the hospital. We moved off Blink (that came with the home) to Nest if only because we use Google stuff already and might as well only share all that with one company?
I have it keep footage only for a short amount of time and facial recognition doesn't work in IL so I try to make it more secure without being part of Flock's nightmare. I can at least pop it off if needed in the future. But I don't have the technical knowledge, time or $ to work up a different accessibility tool. Hell, if we didn't have one, my partner could probably get one installed for free due to being disabled.
The idea of a smart home is great. The reality of the half-ass dumb-ass home is not.
One day, on Tildes, I am going to post a sincere request for help setting up some 'smart home' features that don't completely compromise security.
I can't wait. It'll be like throwing arm fulls of French fries to seagulls.
As far as I know, Eufy security and doorbell cams only store footage locally by default.
Granted, the app is still the primary way to interact with them, so theoretically, it would be possible for them to access your footage. But you could also just disconnect it from wifi and access footage exclusively via the microSD if that's what you wanted.
I believe Unifi and Reolink are much the same.
Reolink in theory can be set up for direct access, either disabling their remote connection setup or going further and straight up blocking the hardware from connecting out on a firewall, I think Unifi can as well but not 100% on that. Eufy, I don't think so.
Unifi and Eufy I believe have both had session security problems in the past, giving people access to others systems because session tokens were swapped on the backend or something like that (I'm sure someone can correct me on the exact technical details). The only way to avoid this as far as I'm concerned is using direct connections to your equipment and not being reliant on any online accounts to sign in and view devices.
I don't see how that'd be possible depending on your config. You can literally limit access only by direct IP connect which is something they can't grant if you block external at the router (which doesn't have to be unifi).
I also can't find anything on sessions swapping failures for them at least not in the same way that Eufy fucked up.
It did happen, but they had it fixed within a few hours, were very transparent about the cause and the remediation, and only a few thousand accounts were affected total. And, like you say, it’s not a risk at all if you disable cloud access - that doesn’t change the fact it shouldn’t have happened at all, but it does at least come down to a user driven choice on the convenience vs risk tradeoff.
Pretty much the mirror universe compared to the Eufy situation, IMO - what the handling of a fuck up says about each of them, as much if not more than the fuck up occurring in the first place, is a big reason Eufy are on my permanent blacklist while I happily recommend Ubiquiti stuff to people all the time.
Of all the brands I whose word I wouldn’t trust on that…
Admittedly that was a couple of years ago, so maybe it was high profile enough that they had to make some actual changes, but their handling of it was bad enough that I stopped buying their cables and chargers as a matter of principle (Eufy is an Anker sub-brand). It’d take an awful lot to convince me that their cameras are a good option for privacy and security.
They've had a lot of open security audits since then, so I trust them enough for smart cams.
Definitely more trustworthy than Ring.
Not me justifying their plans, but Ring messed up from a PR perspective because they didn't cut to the chase and focus their Superbowl ad around law enforcement.
A far more dramatic advert where Search Party helps catch a dangerous sexual predator mid-abduction, rescues his victims and lands him life in federal prison would have received far less backlash. Finding lost puppies is a weak argument for Search Party's existence, yet "think of the children" has been the strawman argument for mass surveillance.
I mean it's why my country ended up with the Online Safety Act...
What?! I’m shocked at this development!!