Those new fangled doorbell/cameras

[Onomatopoeia]

Okay, I am going to jump in here as I actually have a system of 3 indoor cameras and 1 outdoor hardwired camera from Nest (http://nest.com).

My yearly subscription for all 4 cameras is $400. For that I get 10 days of video history, meaning I can pull up the recording for any point in the last 10 days and review it, or even save it to my computer. I can set the cameras to record when it detects motion only or all the time. I have the outdoor camera set to record motion only, and the indoor cameras set to record continuously…although I turn the indoor cameras off on the weekends as there is no reason to record myself walking around the house in my underwear.

Both the indoor and outdoor cameras record audio as well. One of the features I really like is the night vision. The quality of the recordings when there is absolutely no ambient light, ie, my family room in the middle of the night, is amazing.

The outdoor camera is mounted 6.5 feet above the porch landing. As a deterrence measure, the installer advised that I want the camera to be seen.

Whenever someone approaches my front door I receive an alert on my phone and can view the live action immediately. I can even speak to the person at the door if I need to from wherever I am. I can monitor all the cameras in my home at any time from my laptop or phone when I am away. I can even control the cameras remotely, eg, turn them on or off, change the quality of the recording, turn night vision on or off, change the recording schedule for each camera individually, rotate the recording image, etcetera.

As far as ripping the outdoor camera out of the wall is concerned, it is installed in there pretty good so I think it would be a challenge to actually rip it out. Probably much easier to simply smash the camera with a hammer or something, but then, as others have stated, at that point you’re already identified and recorded.

I contemplated getting a system that stored the recordings locally but it would have been (a) costly to set up, (b) time-consuming to manage, and (c) less secure, in my opinion, than cloud-based recordings.

[scr4]

@Voyager

Since I live across from a school on a high traffic street I’d be more worried about someone entering my backyard than through the front door. And the Ring would never even pick that up. A camera over the garage would be far more useful.

The Blink camera is probably a better choice for you than the Ring.

Amazon bought that company too, by the way.

[gigi]

@pulykamell

Plus wearing a mask over your head makes you stick out a ne’er-do-well in the neighborhood in a way somebody just casually approaching the door and checking the locks would not.

When I was a kid, I had this fear of a man putting a ladder up to my window and climbing in and stabbing me. When I finally confessed my fear to Mom, she burst out laughing at the image of someone carrying a two-story ladder through the neighborhood.

[scr4]

@gigi

When I was a kid, I had this fear of a man putting a ladder up to my window and climbing in and stabbing me. When I finally confessed my fear to Mom, she burst out laughing at the image of someone carrying a two-story ladder through the neighborhood.

He’d probably get away with it if he was wearing a high-visibility vest.

[Anny_Middon]

As luck would have it, my husband installed the Ring doorbell earlier this week. He’s going to pull it out and replace it with the new Nest one which is due to be released this month.

The problem is that he can’t get the motion-activation to work. As he’s tested it, sometimes it shows motion when there hasn’t been any; other times he can test it by walking up the door and it doesn’t show any activity. I don’t know why he thinks the Nest one will work better.

Personally I don’t care – the whole motion-activation thing seems a bit silly to me. What I do care about is a doorbell that I can answer from my upstairs office. If someone comes to the door with a package I need to sign for, there’s no way that my arthritic knees can get me downstairs before the delivery person has put the sticky note on the door and left.

[CookingWithGas]

@Onomatopoeia

My yearly subscription for all 4 cameras is $400.

This is a lot of money for what they provide IMHO. I cannot understand why the market allows them to charge that much. All they do is allow you to store data in their cloud, and that is cheap these days. Compare to cloud data services like Dropbox, which is free for 2G, and $100/year for 1TB.

I have a D-Link interior security camera that has excellent infrared vision that I bought for $65. It has a computer interface where I can configure which areas in the field of view that I want to be motion-sensitive. I can connect to it over the Internet for live video and audio. It has an on-board micro-SD card and it starts recording 10 seconds before motion occurs. It automatically erases the oldest recordings when the card gets full. I pay $0 per year. The only thing it doesn’t have is a speaker for me to talk to whoever is on the other end, and it’s not weatherproof. But those two things have nothing to do with what you get with a subscription service.

[Onomatopoeia]

@Anny_Middon

As luck would have it, my husband installed the Ring doorbell earlier this week. He’s going to pull it out and replace it with the new Nest one which is due to be released this month.

The problem is that he can’t get the motion-activation to work. As he’s tested it, sometimes it shows motion when there hasn’t been any; other times he can test it by walking up the door and it doesn’t show any activity. I don’t know why he thinks the Nest one will work better.

Personally I don’t care – the whole motion-activation thing seems a bit silly to me. What I do care about is a doorbell that I can answer from my upstairs office. If someone comes to the door with a package I need to sign for, there’s no way that my arthritic knees can get me downstairs before the delivery person has put the sticky note on the door and left.

This is pretty much what I use the outside camera for. It is very convenient and has saved me from having to shlep over to Fedex to pick up a package, and one time gave me the opportunity to tell a delivery guy where to place a box so it wouldn’t get wet in the rain.

[Onomatopoeia]

@CookingWithGas

This is a lot of money for what they provide IMHO. I cannot understand why the market allows them to charge that much. All they do is allow you to store data in their cloud, and that is cheap these days. Compare to cloud data services like Dropbox, which is free for 2G, and $100/year for 1TB.

I have a D-Link interior security camera that has excellent infrared vision that I bought for $65. It has a computer interface where I can configure which areas in the field of view that I want to be motion-sensitive. I can connect to it over the Internet for live video and audio. It has an on-board micro-SD card and it starts recording 10 seconds before motion occurs. It automatically erases the oldest recordings when the card gets full. I pay $0 per year. The only thing it doesn’t have is a speaker for me to talk to whoever is on the other end, and it’s not weatherproof. But those two things have nothing to do with what you get with a subscription service.

My yearly subscription works out to, what, $33 a month for 4 cameras ($8.25 per camera)? Totally worth it for me not to have to deal with the hassle of setting up and managing a system myself.

[Patch]

@Ravenman

Your local security expert doesn’t know about zoom and enhance? Pffft. Loser.

Don’t forget “uncrop”

[Patch]

@Crazyhorse

Its a lot more practical to have a DVR at home if 24x7 recorded surveillance is the goal.

What’s to keep someone from wandering off with the DVR along with the rest of your stuff?

[Ornery_Bob]

On the other hand, my sister spends most of her time in her bedroom, which is two sets of stairs away from the front door and simply being able to see who is at the door when she is upstairs is worth the modest price of the unit. She has an older traditional home security system for when she is actually away.

[ftg]

@Patch

What’s to keep someone from wandering off with the DVR along with the rest of your stuff?

Obviously you hide it, if you can. In a house like ours there’s plenty of places to stash such a box complete with hidden wiring so it would take a thorough search to find it. Such a search takes time and most thieves worry about time. In and out quickly, grab the stuff which has obvious value (and a DVR box doesn’t look all that promising compared to a computer, etc.).

An apartment might be harder. But there’s still the option of a cloud-based security DVR.

Cloud storage is incredibly cheap. Paying $33 a month is ridiculous. This is the Gillette razor model. Sell the cams for cheap and make it up on the monthly fees. Which you keep paying and paying and paying. Well past the point of making up the discount difference.

It’s far cheaper to pay a bit more upfront for one that uses your Amazon/Google/MS/whatever cloud storage.

Another concern in some cases is the thief cutting your cable wire before breaking in. So having a Plan B communication plan for cloud access would be nice. Unfortunately that means cellphone-type communication for most people and that’s more cost and trouble to set up.