alt Hacker NewsYep. Anyone got alternatives? I love the convenience of a video doorbell but I really really would like to not help the police or ICE or anyone else for that matter unless I decide it's a good idea.
Replies
Reolink has doorbell cameras[0] that you can keep disconnected from the internet. They also have some pretty useful local recording hubs if self-hosting is not your deal[1].
[0] https://reolink.com/ca/product/reolink-video-doorbell-wifi/
Got the UniFi Doorbell from Ubiquiti and I'm really happy with it. It's hooked up to my Dream Machine, records video on disk and I access it via Tailscale. Not paying any subscription and it doesn't live in a cloud.
you can use a company that is self hosted like Unifi and have complete control over your data, still have remote access, and not pay a subscription. “self hosted” scares people off but its literally a box you plug in and forget about. Pretty trivial.
I dont understand why anyone chooses Ring when the costs of Unifi are so much better.
The ring app also sucks imo and all their hardware is quite slow.
Normal door bells are pretty great and have less overhead and maintenance...
All tech puts it's best foot forward, some of it's really nifty, but a camera on every street corner is always going to pose more risks than it's worth IMO...
It's work to go back to the old ways but I think this is one we step we should really all take.
I use Amcrest's AD410. I don't pay for their cloud, have my own NVR, and can access them through Wireguard if I'm out of the house.
Frigate is incredible. I have 3 instances of it (different homes across the family) running using various amcrest and reolink local-only PoE and Wifi cams. I access the remotely using wireguard. One is running on a 2017 miniatx box (Intel i7-7700T) using openvino to do local-only object detection with the 2017 intel CPU. One is using a Beelink EQ14 Mini PC, Intel Twin Lake N150, also using openvino for object detection (people, dogs, cars, etc). One is using a nvidia 5070 gpu. All notifications are processed via the home assistant integration.
Truly top-notch quality, full-featured, very low maintenance, easy to set up, cheap to operate. I'm glad so many people are using it now.
For video doorbell I just have a cam that can see the front door and I drew a box around the area I want notifications for. When a person enters the box, I get a notification and snapshot.
Reolink with Frigate NVR. Can also put Home Assistant on the same box. Pretty much any 12+ gen intel CPU with QSV should be able to handle the encoding for streaming to your device. Probably will want to use tailscale so that you don’t have to open any ports.
I have a Reolink doorbell. It records to a SD card and works great with my Home Assistant setup. So much better than the Ring it replaced.
I’ve been pretty happy with Reolink. No subscription required and uses local storage. Notifications are done through smtp which works pretty well. Mobile app is pretty solid as well.
We've got an analogue video phone on our apartment. Works flawlessly. No digital path other than the ring selection. Has a flat monochrome CRT which is kind of cool.
I made it half a century without a doorbell in my phone. I don't need it now.
The difficult lesson is that getting off the treadmill of always chasing greater convenience is the only way to stop the bleeding of increasing dependence on technology.
Yi cameras are supposed to be local if you dont get a subscription.
None of these agencies get your video data without your consent. The feature was designed so they have an easy way to present you the request for footage.
Unfortunately a portion of the information getting circulated is the complete opposite.
> Yep. Anyone got alternatives?
The self-hosted and home-automation and home-assistant subreddits are _full_ of discussion threads on this. The good news is that you have a TON of options to pick from. The bad news is that they're all deficient in one way or another so you really do have to spend a bit of time to figure out who executes best on the things you care most about.
If you don't mind the lock-in, Unifi is nice. Reolink (and the other DaHua re-brands) usually leave a lot to be desired in terms of software / quality but they are cheap and they reliably spit out a regular video stream that can be used with just about any software. Just don't let them onto the WAN!