• spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    Just returned 2 Eufy cameras because the company claims ownership of my video streams and won’t allow me access to those streams. Their website conveniently hides the fact that almost all of their cameras are locked to their base station or their cloud, and makes it look like the streams are readily accessible. Ultimately that means Eufy can pull the plug at any time.

    Many people got wise to the printer ink racket, they’ll eventually figure out these cloud services are to be avoided too.

  • Zak@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Perhaps it should be mandatory when selling a paired hardware/software product that the user can unlock it to install their own software, and that the manufacturer provide enough basic hardware documentation for a third party to develop software that can run on it.

    • wizzor@sopuli.xyzOP
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      8 months ago

      The EU Data Act might partially apply, it requires companies to design their products so that any data they generate is locally accessible (that was my reading of it anyway) from sept 2025 onwards.

  • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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    8 months ago

    Normalize mandatory open source when a product is no longer supported. Either we pay for a service and they Replace it free of charge or we own it properly

    • stop e-waste/ longevity
    • Breed innovation
    • Foster community engagement
    • Boost educational value
    • Improve compatibility and interoperability
    • Empower user customization and flexibility
  • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Google is giving Dropcam owners 50% off on Nest Cams, but that was a hard pass from me.

    Only 1 hour or local storage, cloud backups are not end to end encrypted, and you have to use Google’s services / app.

    I ended up buying a little Aqara camera. Video can be stored locally on SD card or NAS, and if you’re in Apple’s ecosystem, it supports HSV. So E2EE cloud storage + no need for the manufacturer’s app.

    • june@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I really like the Aqara stuff I have now and have been looking for a good solution to replace my Xfinity home security system and hadn’t even considered them.

      Do they have any outdoor cameras? My quick search didn’t find any.

      • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        They have a video doorbell, but that’s it for outside stuff. I ended up going with an Eve camera for outside and using HSV. So still remote storage, but at least it’s properly encrypted.

        • june@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          What’s HSV? Does the Eve integrate in with HomeKit/home assistant the way Aqara does?

          • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            HomeKit Secure video.

            Eve is basically HomeKit-first right now. I can’t speak for home assistant unfortunately.

            • june@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Rad. Thanks!

              I can deal with no home assistant right now. I have everything bridged into HomeKit anyway.

  • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    I have some amcrest cameras that are on PoE, save data to an SD card and aren’t connected to any amcrest cloud services. They work great. They have a viewer app that I remote into my network to review, but has no cloud connectivity outside of that. I have the switch and modem (and router) on a battery backup for the rare times I lose power.

    As far as I can tell this is a minimally viable passably secure system that “just works”, requires no other hardware, and has local storage.

    A few more steps such as a (edit: dedicated) hard drive backup, nvr and so on would be great, but my needs are currently met.

    This or something like this might be of interest for someone trying to move away from highly cloud connected subscription services but who aren’t ready for a more “hobbyist” setup.

    It took me longer to research a quality sd card (so many fucking acronyms) than it did to install and test my 4 camera system.

    • glimse@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I don’t say this to rain on your parade at all (especially because you’reset already) but you could have probably used the SD card money to buy a cheap server for Frigate for even more functionality!

      • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        Yep. Just didn’t want more hardware than I already had (plus the cameras).

        It’s great that there is a nice ramp of hardware and software you can scale with. Feel free to post that general setup architecture for others to consider too!

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 months ago

      as a tech enthusiast myself, and i would assume you are one too. Please for the love of god store that video on a hdd, or at least good quality flash first. Get an intel optane module if you don’t want to think about it, those things have the write endurance of a fucking shipping vessel.

      Flash is probably the single worst thing you can use for continual writes like that, it’s just universally bad quality. If cost is an issue you can get a used 4tb hdd for like 40 bucks second hand. You probably have one laying around already.

      • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        I do, I access them on the local network and the software has a local export feature. So I regularly write the SD card to my pc hdd and wipe the SD

        Edit the cameras have overlapping fields of view and I live in a very low crime area so I feel I’ve mitigated my risk to my comfort. I would need multiple cards to corrupt at once, and a crime to occur, and for it to happen perfectly between my backup job for maximum impact.

        Edit edit I was unclear in my original so I understand why you commented this, my bad I’ll edit

        I backup to my PC but do not have a dedicated hdd for this task

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          8 months ago

          yeah that’s definitely more sensible than what i had thought was going on lol. At that point i’d still probably write to the hdd directly, and use flash as a backup though. It’s also a lot more portable that way.

          • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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            8 months ago

            The flash cards are onboard the cameras, silly as it is. So it’s super convenient, provided they don’t all corrupt at once.

            All cameras are well out of reach

            • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              8 months ago

              oh well that’s just stupid frankly. I understand why, to some degree. But that kind of nullifies the entire existence of security if yeeting the camera and yoinking the card removes any shenanigans that could’ve happened lol.

              meh, whatever.

              • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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                8 months ago

                Well you’d have to climb a house or a tree in ways that would be quite acrobatic, again to multiple cameras at once. These are not casually available and even with a ladder are quite a dangle. The trees they are in are not “good climbing trees” at all.

                All while I’m getting alerts that there’s motion sent to email, (which I have greenlit to ping my notifications and buzz) and I could hit “backup” at any time by remoting to my PC and running the command.

                If a 5 man team is arriving with tools and ladders and is aware of my situation the game is over anyway and I’m just calling the cops.

    • Dog@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Their cloud system sucks, so I’m glad you don’t have yours connected to it.

  • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    8 months ago

    good, this shits spyware anyway. Literally in fact, it’s hardware, that can be used to spy.

    That’s enough of my anti-consumerism bullshit for the day though.

  • Crylos@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Non-cloud cams with an nvr all the way. I won’t touch the cloud based services. My go to is currently Reolink.

    • wizzor@sopuli.xyzOP
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      8 months ago

      I built a few with ESP32CAM but its hard to get night vision and color camera with those. At least it’s mostly open source.

      • sramder@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Mostly… does it ever worry you? That their’s something tucked away in that network blob.

        I have at least a dozen running at any given moment… so I’m not really worried, but I can’t entirely banish the thought.

        • scarilog@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Someone’s working on an open source implementation of the low level wifi firmware for the ESP32, info here. Would be cool if they do actually manage to reverse engineer something usable.

    • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      I’m an electronic security technician. My system is a mishmash of Axis, Hikvision, Bosch, UNV, and Arecont. Basically whatever customers throw away when they upgrade. As long as it can do ONVIF, I’m good.

      Anybody need some commercial access control panels? I got a stack of those in the basement too…

  • sramder@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I’m pretty sure whatever model of Nest cams I have (looks like the original drop cam style) have RSTP support… I wonder if they can be used with Frigate NVR?

    I assume there’s no way to re-configure them after that deadline… but Corals are back to like 150% of MSRP ;-)