Nest launches an outdoor security camera
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
I don't get the point of expensive, tamper-resistant cameras for home use. I'd rather have more cameras.
Sounds like there's a tension between high-visibility for deterrence and better placement for apprehension/prosecution. Perhaps the best plan is to put up a dummy camera up high and a real one down low.
There was talk about someone stealing packages from someone's front porch on NextDoor in my neighbourhood, and the cops told them to contact the Post Office General. The Post Office General told them to contact the cops. Literally no one cares, especially the cops.
Whether or not they care may still an issue, unfortunately.
I've sent them footage, along with the name of the guy who's face it was and they did fuck all. The guy's in jail now though a few years later for beating his wife.
I had video of someone opening my mailbox, rifling through the mail, and stealing a check. Neither the NYPD nor the USPS gave a damn, despite this being a federal crime.
My neighbor did the same thing (not on good terms; allegedly looking for misdelivered mail) and again, no penalty despite having clear video of the crime. At least if he does anything else I can it out then and show his previous malfeasance.
The elective public officials seems to response to these emails very fast and the head of police is CC.
The public official will put your email to their own email list - I don't mind that and support them if they act to provide solution to the community problems.
If that doesn't work then it gets a little difficult, you need to make it political and change the local government. If it happened to you, then there are probably 100 more people who have similar stories.
I'll stick with my Kuna cameras. It has a very nice app, face detection, etc.
- No wiring
- Battery lasts up to a year depending on settings
- Can be plugged into power
- No internet, software, or 3rd party dependency
- 10MP photos, HD video
- One-time cost of $100 + $15 SD card
I don't need to view photos or videos remotely, I only need evidence if something were to happen, so this is an acceptable solution for me, especially considering the one-time costs.
Bonus: I also purchased an ADT sign + window stickers from ebay.
A combination of both is recommended. Traditional IP cameras (Foscam etc.) are a pain to setup, but the new generation of "dropcams" are super easy.
Also, unless you hide the camera well, a thief can simply steal the camera, or disable it and remove the SD card.
A lock box for the game camera is $30 and can be painted to match its surroundings.
Also another vote for Blue Iris. It's not the most user friendly software but it's awesome for the price. It can be tricky to get configured just right though...
I would love to hear if anyone has any recommendations for getting Blue Iris to do some of the features of this camera, such as compare face images against a Google Photos API?
I would also be curious to know if the cameras that move & try to auto focus are actually better. That seems like a potential plus but I could see wind blowing trees or a squirrel running causing the camera to focus on the wrong things. Maybe the Nest is smarter & only goes for certain objects that it can recognize... Motion sensor recording is kind of a pain to get right on my Blue Iris. Windy trees & spiders cause me to get a lot more video than necessary.
I almost bought one from B&H Photo, but even they're not on the authorized partner list.[2]
[1]: http://www.hikvision.com/us/about_10677.html
[2]: http://www.hikvision.com/us/distributionPartner.aspx?stat=1&...
https://www.amazon.com/Security-Realistic-Surveillance-Busin...
They functioned for a day before nearly catching fire.
https://ipvm.com/reports/hik-backdoor
It's not pretty. You're bordering on negligence using Hikvision, much less recommending them.
This isn't news, but the best way to deal with cameras is to isolate them on a VLAN that has no route out. Just connect one NIC of your DVR solution to that VLAN, and broker all access thru the DVR. Only view cameras via the DVR software. You really shouldn't be putting your security footage into the cloud anyway, IMO. It creates too many unneeded dependencies in this age of cheap LAN/CPU/HD space. Replicating that footage into the cloud is defensible, but that should still all be moderated via the DVR solution. A UPS and Cellular internet connection could make cloud options more resilient.
Please correct me if I am unaware of some awesome way of doing this!
I'm assuming the typical setup is putting your cameras on a router & then using software like Blue Iris if you want to allow remote access to the videos. I would hope no one actually allows someone to connect directly to a camera using the camera's software over the internet.
Am I missing some larger vulnerability?
I have friends that have an Arlo and like it. I was specifically looking for a continuous camera and didn't want a cloud service.
If I didn't have the Synology I would look into Blue Iris...but I haven't heard great things about any of the software out there.
Have you found decent software? I saw a recommendation for Xeoma and that's next on my list to check out.
My other camera system is a wireless Netgear Arlo setup and the software is comparatively excellent.
Its actually humorous to see these old school guys who have enjoyed having a low churn subscription service cash cow for decades, be slowly disrupted.
Total denial at every turn LOL.
Why would anybody want to spend less than a 1/3rd the hardware cost, no installation cost, can be moved when you moved, and no monthly monitoring fee. They just don't get it.
I sent them links to Nests product announcements today. It'll be interesting to see their response.
Anecdotally, I've a Synology NAS and any* IP camera can be hooked up to it, and there are plenty with PoE, etc so what's stopping me having a camera system at home is figuring out how to drill through 60cm thick walls made of three layers of brick, insulation and render without compromising the weather seal of my house... not lack of smart features.
ps. does anyone trust wifi cameras?
(* not quite every camera is supported)
Plugging this camera into a standard AC outlet and connecting to wifi is easier than it's ever been! I'm guessing you can stick it on with a strong sticker, epoxy, or something similarly easy. ADT built a $7B-valued business predicated on how hard this used to be for consumers to do. Maybe in the future these cameras will be cellular connected so no wifi setup needed.
EDIT: I originally said: "Nest is clearly cloning: https://ring.com/spotlight-cam-wired " But Nest launched first, as commenters point out below. HN crowdsourced knowledge based and fact checking FTW :)
EDIT2: original Nest outdoor cameras had a magnetic attach option -- even easier than the sticker/epoxy/etc path I mentioned.
Agreed on the point that the deployment is only going to get easier over time.
Aside: Ring seems like a really popular brand in my neighborhood. Can I use my own equipment for recording video from these or does it all get sent back exclusively to Ring HQ?
I ended up mounting it too high though. At the time I was a little afraid of somebody stealing or damaging the camera but now I realize I was being stupid.
I'm curious and I think it's interesting to see examples from other places.
Why?
>with brick and mortar construction techniques
Are there countries where houses are built using paper?
The motion software is not great, but it's nice to know that my data isn't being sent off to china or some other bullshit proprietary service.
My next one will be an outdoor camera, and if I can get it to work with a converter (https://www.amazon.com/GE-54276-Polarized-Handy-Outlet/dp/B0...), I think that will take out almost all of the wiring work.
> motionEyeOS is a Linux distribution that turns your single board computer into a video surveillance system.
Interesting, I've read research that says the opposite - also based on interviews with convicted burglars. From "Protecting the Home: Exploring the Roles of Technology and Citizen Activism from a Burglar's Perspective":
Only two participants said they were deterred by cameras. The other thirteen participants stated that cameras did not concern them because they believed that most cameras were not constantly monitored, especially police cameras. Al- though a camera played a role in one participant’s capture (P4), others believed that most cameras did not have a high enough resolution for them to be identified. P12 was the only one to describe how he disabled cameras, saying “I know how to disable [cameras]. I’d spray it and stand on the garbage and go through the window.” Former burglars generally thought cameras did not increase their risk of being caught, which is consistent with prior work [15].
I think what you’ve pasted is more for businesses where thieves know there’s high value goods or cash. In a home it’s more smash and grab - whatever they can get quickly.
End of the day though an alarm system isn’t going to stop anyone determined to get in.
Studies like this one: https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-...
That shows when CCTV is used, large, measurable drops in crime rate occurred in all circumstances tested.
https://store.nest.com/products/NC2100ES
This article doesn't really mention why I'd spend that much more money for what seems like a very similar camera to the outdoor one already on the market.
But uploading 4k from multiple cameras... isn't that going to be a problem for most home users?
Is there another alarm component they didn't mention in the article? It's pretty short, wouldn't be surprised if it was missing details.
Well criminals don't have to break in, just swipe the $350 expensive toy and walk away.
They're not going to stop an opportunistic crack-addled bottom-feeder from doing a "smash and grab" burglary.
Good for insurance, however, and check up on old-folks.
I guess I'm probably not the target market for this though, but if you're a tinkerer there are some interesting options. And fun to be had in the firmware reverse engineering department too.
A few samples:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/2015-New-model-DS-2CD2135F-I...
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4MP-Dahua-H-265-IPC-HDBW4431...
Heck, even my local computer store has their own branding of a cheap camera for a quite good price:
http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=37_498...
I bought one of these recently and it seems to be a Dahua based firmware, full ONVIF support and available locally is pretty nice.
Edit: I also recommend checking out the Zoneminder wiki for suggestions. Here are some pages for Amcrest: https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Amcrest https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Amcrest_QCam
They also have a listing here: https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Hardware_Compatibility_List#Netw...
AFAIK, you don't technically have to keep it connected to their service.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15296354
Only catch with the Pi might be decode/encode performance if you plan to do anything with the video on that side of things, you'd have to have video software that can take advantage of hardware acceleration on the Pi.
I'd be interested if you know any shortcomings of these, so far my experiences have been quite positive, though I have only been running a Hikvision and a cheap rebranded one for about a month.
Biggest catch is probably software - you basically need a Windows box or VM for one-time configuration as ActiveX or proprietary tooling is common, once that's done you're all set and don't need to touch that tooling again, just monitor your camera via the standardized ONVIF and RTSP stream.
There's potential security catch too - I managed to dump the firmware off one and crack a telnet password, but I had to manually enable telnet and so long as you do not expose it to the internet, there's not much harm there. I've read about older cameras that had hardcoded default telnet passwords with telnet on by default and unable to be turned off, fortunately I haven't seen anything that egregious yet.
Overall, the shortcomings, while present are very manageable as far as I've seen. Definitely not a perfect "out of the box" experience like a Nest device will be, but cheaper, more flexible and more interesting to me as a tinkerer.
I have gone through the entire gambit, having bought Arlo, Nest, Foscam, and trying Blue Iris, etc and can definitively say that Nest is the easiest and most reliable outdoor camera.
That said, I'm not going to buy this trumped up version of the camera mainly because I don't know what it buys me over the currect camera. The fact this has made the front page is kind of weird to me.
I've spent so much time screwing around with generic Chinese hardware that's, well, sometimes great (and sometimes truly worthless). Most generic brands (that exist for 6 months at a time) have software/firmware that leaves much to be desired, and is sometimes outright broken, but at least more often than not at least implement (most) of an open-source IP-cam standard (unlike the fancy expensive cameras).
But I have no interest in trading any sort of even theoretical access to video of my home for a fancy web interface: http://shodan.io/
But for that, you might as well buy a cheaper camera and configure it yourself to upload to a cheaper service like CameraFTP [1]. It's run by some cloud storage provider, I forget which one.
Remember their thermostat? The interclouds went down and people lost heat.
I put up some Ubiquiti cameras last year, we live on a pretty quiet street but we had some kids pulling shenanigans (a car window was shot out with a BB gun, our Little Free Library bench was drug out into the street, change being stolen from cars).
Since the cameras, nothing has happened, so that's a plus.
But the Ubiquity recorder device makes the system nearly unusable. For some reason, recordings usually stop while there is still motion going on, so I end up with a lot of little 15-30 second videos that show only the start of whatever is going on. I've fiddled with it a lot and had no luck.
We install Unifi camera systems for a living - the crazy amount tiny little files and MongoDB basically require that the Unifi Video Controller have an SSD for reliable usage - that precludes the Unifi branded Unifi Controller that has a spinning drive.
Our recommendation: A Intel (Intel Brand) Atom NUC with an SSD and 8GB of RAM. Installing Linux and the Unifi server on it takes about 20 minutes and you're left with a more manageable machine.
I would also admit that the Unifi Video Controller hasn't been rock-solid until about a year ago - current releases now go forever without issue.
Thanks for the pointers. I haven't had the Unifi system for a year yet, so I must be running the more reliable software.
I did do an install of the Unifi software on a Ubuntu virtual machine for initial testing, and I agree that it was super easy.
So I assume that if you are installing these systems, that you are more or less happy with them? I was optimistic about it, like the cameras and the promise of the controller software, but wish it was more reliable.
Have you seen the thing where it stops recording in the middle of motion?
At the same time the controller has gotten more stable, we finally bit the bullet and jumped to SSDs for all our installs - I think that helps with long term reliability. I had a hunch that the controller doesn't deal with SATA timeouts while a spinning hard-drive reallocates sectors. But I really have no evidence of such a theory.
I really should contact support and see what they say.
We have WiFi problems sometimes, it just seems like I'll have fewer problems if I run wired.
At work we have a Nest and it seems to be pretty good, though it's a much more consumer level thing. Which probably is good.
But, honestly, the Google Wifi and OnHub have been working really well. We are in a challenging environment for some reason (neighbors with a bad cordless phone or something?). I've added a few wireless mesh nodes and hope to wire them at some point here.
I went through running PoE (also got their PoE switch, so this is all their gear), and I figure that if this hardware doesn't work, I can switch to different PoE gear.
Maybe I should try scheduling a regular reboot? I've wondered if I was running into it just having problems running out of space and having to do maintenance that interfered with recordings, and if a SSD would help. Haven't gone that route yet though.
Most home users aren't going to pay full retail for cameras, hire a professional installer to put 1-4 cameras outside, then pay for cloud storage... or at least not without a huge amount of Support effort. Given their feature list, they aren't going to be able to compete with the business/enterprise market due to both having worse features AND being more expensive.
(shameless plug: I work for a company making enterprise IP cameras, and both our cloud storage AND cameras are cheaper, while having way more features)
I have evaluated and intend to use a UniFi camera system at my home when I can get around to running the PoE wires.
Our 30-day plan is $20/month msrp whereas Nest is $30/month. (Your Nest pricing is not current - you're probably grandfathered on that rate)
Our main market is businesses with multiple locations who need role-based access and/or LDAP integration for cameras with cloud storage.
https://www.amazon.com/Wansview-Wireless-Security-Surveillan...
Or spend $42 and get it's outdoor parent:
Is this a statement about criminaity or about stupidity of home owners. As a Europian it is hard to make a difference...
1. The cost of Dog Food + Care makes them much more expensive than almost any security system.
2. Here in Las Vegas more than half the dogs in our shelter are Pit Bulls. Almost all were purchased by people who wanted a "security dog" more than a pet.
If the deciding factor for you to buy an animal is the security benefit, ultimately you will not be happy with that decision. And neither will the animal.
The marketing statement from Nest just seemed like some hyperbole and I have a bad habit of fixating on those sorts of things.
Great points though!
That's all a camera does, evidence, after the fact, unless you're Scarface and monitors everything.
Ones that got caught.
My requirements were, I thought, fairly simple. Good quality outdoor camera which uploaded motion off-site (cloud, FTP, whatever).
Apparently, that doesn't exist.
Most of the cameras fail the first requirement. Terrible video quality, tiny field of view, poor build quality that results in frequent failures, and/or bad track records with security bugs.
Some do okay on the first mark, but fail on the second. It's beyond me why most security cameras don't have at least _some_ ability to upload motion off-site. I have an Amcrest indoor camera, really terrible, but at least it will automatically upload motion to an FTP server. But it seems none of their outdoor cameras upload motion; only still images. !?
Hikvision cameras were frequently recommended as capable and good quality, but they were riddled with security bugs. Totally unacceptable for a _security_ camera.
Nest, from the article, has good build quality, and AFAIK no serious security issues. But no normal American can actually use them, because for all intents and purposes they require ~2 Mbps of constant upload bandwidth per camera. Google being Google requires the cameras upload all footage, 24/7 to their servers. For decent quality, that means 2Mbps of bandwidth. There's really no other way to use the cameras without doing that constant upload. Most Americans don't have much upload bandwidth. I only have 10 Mbps egress, which means each camera eats 20% of my bandwidth. Totally useless.
Not to mention uploading 24/7 live footage of your home to Google, and paying hundreds of dollars per year in subscription fees for the privilege.
Cleverloop sells a system similar to Nest, but they they do all their machine learning motion detection and such locally. So you don't have to burn upload bandwidth, and you don't have privacy issues. Plus no subscription fees. But their cameras are unreliable, 720p, limited FoV, and not standards compliant so you can't use them outside of Cleverloop's system.
There was another system, who's name I forgot, which was all around good and met all the requirements ... except that apparently all the cameras have a bug where they often delay recording after motion detection for 5 seconds or so. Wow...
All the other systems fall into either poor quality, buggy software, security issues, etc, etc.
Basically, for the average consumer there are _no_ good options. I'm an engineer so I have the advantage of getting my hands dirty customizing things but most people don't have that option. Most people need a system that just works. It's totally crazy that such a thing doesn't exist. And personally, I'd rather not spend my time building a custom camera system. I, too, want something that just works.
Well, after days of research the solution I landed on: I bought some plain ole PoE cameras from Costco. They have good specs (4MP, 90 FoV) and I trust Costco to vet for quality. Still fairly cheap (~$150 per camera). I bought an old small form factor Dell, Core i5, 2TB storage for $250 to act as the local recording station. I'll slap some software on there, ZoneMinder or Blue Iris or something, and hopefully get it to detect motion and upload those clips to the cloud. The cameras will also automatically upload snapshots over FTP (seriously why can't they just upload video!?) as at least a redundant system.
I'm just aghast at how difficult and cruddy all of this is.
You might be thinking of Netgear's Arlo -- I've got several of them and have for a few years. I've seen the camera lag 0.5s on motion but never 5 seconds!
Did you look into Synology at all?
As far as I could tell, SS is some feature of Synology NASes. So you still need cameras, then you need to buy a Synology NAS, and then you need to license SS (which is a per camera cost after some number of cameras, IIRC). It didn't seem compelling versus just buying the Dell for $250 + software. And, again, it doesn't solve the problem of finding good PoE cameras.
Note that this may very well violate certain state wiretap laws that require two party consent.
See this with regard to evesdropping:
"New York makes it a crime to record to record or eavesdrop on an in-person or telephone conversation unless one party to the conversation consents. "
http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/new-york-recording-law
Do I think anyone would be prosecuted? No but the way I read it it's a violation of the law.
Now burglars will cut your internet connection to the outside, then rob your place.
burglars will cut your internet connection to the outside
OK, so the question is a little facetious, but most burglars won't know (or even know to consider) that they should cut a particular cable before breaking in.
In many installations, that cable won't necessarily be visible/reachable: want to climb a telephone pole to cut what's hopefully an ADSL cable and not a mains electricity cable? Without anyone noticing you?
Some users may also use a backup 3G/4G data connection, hook the alarm up to a UPS, and in some cases of monitored alarm systems, a data outage is in itself an alertable/respondable alarm.
Your degree (and expenditure) of defense will very much depend on your perceived threat profile, but for the most part, a burglar cutting your internet connection isn't high on the threat list.
It will be interesting to see what happens.
No thanks.
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