alt Hacker NewsA lot of you won’t want to hear it but HomeKit + iCloud secure video is the only way to go. For one thing it’s end to end encrypted. You can also do ML stuff like face recognition which happens locally on your Apple TV. And you can set it to trigger HomeKit scenes if eg the person in the video isn’t recognized, or if it recognizes a particular person. Yeah Apple bad, blah blah. But they don’t have an incentive to sell your data.
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When I got an Apple TV I never expected the main value I'd get out of it was being a smart home hub. I do wish the automations were a bit more programmable. Other than that it has been perfect, everything even failed over to my other Apple TV when rearranging the living room without having to think about setting either up as hubs.
I'm a heavy Apple user (Apple TVs, Mac Mini, iPad), but we also have Android phones in my household, so HomeKit Secure Video is a no-go.
If Apple ever releases an Apple Home app for Android, I'd transition my entire home over by the time of my next Google Home Premium subscription renewal.
I would like to replace Ring with something fully local.
Local ML/face recognition would be a bonus. Ability to sync to a private owned server owned by me would be a bonus.
I'm assuming there are projects out there that would enable this -- does anyone have recommendations?
And you can run open source camera firmware on a disconnected vlan if you don't want to trust a phone app or a camera with internet access.
There’s actually another alternative: Just don’t install surveillance in your home. Approximately nobody had it 20 years ago. Before asking which unreliable, overpriced, invasive gadget to buy, think about whether you really need any of them.
Apple totally sells your data, they just anonymize it first. Why do you think they shifted towards services?
They also can give the Feds access to your iCloud data through a NSL. Just like Prism.
Unless you explicitly enable Advanced Protection mode for all your devices, Apple stores your key in their servers and will give it to whoever legitimate looking asks for it. Aka ICE etc will definitely be granted access.