Blink has been acquired by Amazon
blinkforhome.com
blinkforhome.com
I just don't want to spend a year trying to cobble together my own software.
It was much easier than I expected, and works with more DIY things as well (like 315/433Mhz RF Sockets).
Glad you're making that sweet acquisition cash Blink founders but you really screwed over your users.
I have a bunch of cheap WiFi cameras, but they don't require a cloud service to operate so I can segregate them all onto a WLAN/VLAN that doesn't have access to the internet. This is a reasonable measure to secure these devices, but for cloud-required cameras (like the Blink appears to be) this isn't an option at all.
Of course, by taking the vendor's cloud service out of the equation I either have greatly reduced functionality or I have to spend time (and money) to build out that functionality locally. The route I've gone has Zoneminder doing motion detection, recording, and storage, with an IPSec VPN to provide remote access.
It's not perfectly secure (nothing is), but it's a lot better than the default.
What's the benefit of wiring your house for video?
And who gets to watch what feed?
At what age should parents stop watching their kids' bedroom?
If there are no cameras in the bedrooms / restrooms that leaves only the corridors and maybe the main living room? But a lot of things can happen in a living room that should not be watchable by anyone who has admin access.
I have a camera pointed straight down at the entry area/living room of my apartment. I'm on the 1st floor with a streetside entrance. I sure as hell want to see why my alarm system went off and if it's a real emergency, privacy be damned.
I bought a cloud-connected Nest camera to use as a baby monitor. Quickly realized how awesome it would be to have cameras in (almost) all rooms in my house, so I threw the Nest in the trash (terrible product) and got a few Amcrest cameras and hooked them up to a good, well-maintained Mac IP camera app called SecuritySpy[1].
It's great, and completely private, as it (obviously!) should be.
It's also way faster (obviously!) and lower latency when using it on the local network, than viewing video feeds routed through some advertising company's servers in the cloud, even on gigabit fiber.
I love it! Oh and the cameras were only $75 each.
Why?
- Monitoring how much food and which food each cat consumes.
- Seeing who's at the front door when the doorbell rings.
- Peace of mind when I'm on vacation.
I know this is an expression, but the idea of throwing out a $250 wireless camera seems excessive. Of course, adding a camera to every room in a house seems excessive too. I'm curious why you felt you needed cameras in every room? What's the "awesome" part?
But the Nest camera really is a terrible, awful product for many reasons (fundamentally flawed cloud-required design, additional horrid latency caused by software bugs, awful and dreadful user interface, etc). I hesitate to even give it to anybody.
However, trying it did make us realize we did want not just one camera, but a bunch. The cameras can send audio both directions, so they function as intercoms. Any computer, phone, tablet or TV that we have in the house can be used to check what's going on in another part of the house, and optionally talk to the people there.
Now when we have kids parties, we no longer have to send one adult upstairs with the kids to make sure they keep the nerf gun and plastic sword battles safe (for the kids, and for the house)--we can just relax in the living room and put the upstairs rooms on the TV.
Likewise, we can set the baby down in any room, and keep tabs on him while cooking or working or whatever.
The citizens of my little surveillance state also like the cameras -- the kids are used to them and use them ("mom! I want some water!") and my wife and I use them to keep tabs on each other, too. Am I at home? Oh yeah, there I am at my desk. So she never sends me messages like "Hey are you home? Is the baby awake?" any more.
The cameras also, of course, function as regular security cameras; capturing any action that occurs while we aren't there and storing the video remotely.
This was all fantastically easy to set up in 2017, too (compared to the security camera systems I set up at my businesses in decades past). The big issue is, of course, security in the other direction. But as long as you put the cameras themselves on a separate (preferably wired) network, and don't let them connect to the Internet (don't trust camera firmware!), it seems like it can be done reasonably securely.
I mean I might get hacked, sure. Maybe a zero-day comes out for my camera control software that exposes the video feeds over HTTPS, and an attacker can see inside my house and spy on me. That's not a good outcome, and I prefer to avoid that. But the cloud cameras from Nest, or Blink, etc. essentially come pre-hacked to share your video feeds with the large corporations that own them.
That's the part that seems crazy to me.
What this means is that when you buy an item which almost nobody buys fresh, like say apricots or coconuts (the case here, YMMV) and its easily perishable then you may end up with food which you gotta consume very soon once you receive it. If you buy an item in high demand with a high turnover rating you're probably good to go though.
Fresh is overrated anyway. Get a large freezer. I got all my bread in freezer, all bought on sale (50% discount). We generally toast it, but having it out of the freezer overnight also works. Same with frozen fruit (berries esp) and some frozen veggies. It doesn't deteriorate either, and stays quite tasty (better than canned, generally). And its cheap!
Got a link to share?
In terms of Amazon lockers, they're also not that common outside of cities. Some are on private property where you need access to the building to access it. Even when they are available near you, a lot of them will be full around the holidays. I had a package that I sent to an Amazon locker where it got automatically returned to their warehouse because the locker was full when the driver tried to deliver the package.
That said, no solution will ever be foolproof. If the attacker wants it bad enough and has physical access to the locker, they'll be able to get to your package. Whether it's copying the key, cracking the code, picking the lock, or just tearing it open. With enough determination, your stuff can get stolen. It just becomes a legal matter at that point.
Personally I don't care about security of my packages at all—they just sit outside my door for me. If one is lost/stolen, Amazon will happily replace it.
Automation improves it by allowing all carriers access to the box (no carrier key to use, it's all based on codes) and also generating one-time codes that can't be copied or otherwise readily stolen to access the packages.
Sometimes they're called "mud rooms" or "butler's pantries" or other things, depending on the age of the house, and the social status of the person it was built for.
That's why sometimes in old movies you'll hear the phrase "Tradesmen enter on the side."
Also, submarines.
I think I'm mostly kidding... soon you'll be able to have a housemates as a service. You pay random people to come to you home, open the fridge, and drink the delivered milk right out of the container.
Let's say Amazon has a full list of every possession you own and the price you're willing to sell it for. Any time someone goes to buy a thing, they find a nearby place that has it for the cheapest price, including shipping.
If you happen to win that round, they sending a shipping person^H^H^H^H^H^Hdrone copter into your home to pick up the item and transfer it to the buyer. They automatically credit your account the appropriate amount.
I trade a pack of Jaffa Cakes for that 2L bottle of Coke.
Maybe it's so that they can detect whether or not people are at home - To aid with their drone delivery system?
Before I read TFA, it was the only business reason that made sense to buy a car charger company. It wouldn’t be perfect information (maybe I took the motorcycle that day), but long term you’d get a pretty good idea of our comings and goings. When the car’s at the house, it’s usually plugged in, the charger knows it’s plugged in, and the charger has an internet connection (hell, the charger has a web server running). Unplugged: I’m leaving. Plugged in: I obvious just got home. I suppose that might have some utility for scheduling deliveries, dunno.
The reason for this tangent is the purchase is either to aid in delivery scheduling, of which I’m skeptical, or it’s just another piece of the puzzle to go along Alexa and the like. Now, I’ll agree that the puzzle might end up being super creepy, but it’ll be interesting to see what they up,doing with it.
…wait, they already did! The Fire has that.
Stranger things have happened this year.
If Amazon started courting Blink first, they'd have added a provision to make it expensive for Blink to walk away if they get propositioned by another company. This is Amazon's tactic whenever they court smaller companies like when Diapers.com got a counteroffer from Walmart after Amazon started negotiations [0]. Diapers.com eventually sold to Amazon.
Then there's the aspect of product complexity -- Butterfleye offers a slightly more complex product (learning camera to reduce false alarms, higher quality recording, longer recording times even 24/7, encrypted uploads, on-device storage options, rechargeable batteries & wired power, complementary installation, SMB focus etc) than Blink which is why they are in different price segments ($199 vs $99 per camera unit).
[0] http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/10/amazon_bo...
Did anyone have a really great experience using 4 blink cameras or more?
I transitioned over to wansview cameras and haven't experienced any issues, though I miss the battery availability.
I had 5 blink cameras setup and fully working in about an hour. So it was worth it to me. 24/7 recording would be better but this was reasonably priced and very easy to use.
Also it records in 5 second clips. I imagine that being somewhat painful to review.
The clip duration and re trigger interval can be set to up to 60 seconds. You can also set the re trigger to be immediate effectively making it record constantly. These settings among others are configured per camera in the app.