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Comment by stephenr | Hacker News Reader

> Without a camera, there's ~0% chance of anyone being caught.

If you're only interested in recording what happened (as evidence) an IP camera can run on PoE to a laptop or mini-pc on a UPS, and record for as long as you want, even in the case of a power outage if you include a UPS (an old laptop works well in this case - you can potentially just run the PoE switch/injector on the UPS and let the laptop run on its battery).

No internet connection required. No "service" to stop working. No "API" to become deprecated.

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But then they can also steal the laptop or mini-pc that is recording. It's also a PITA to setup and manage yourself. I'd rather pay the $50/yr that I do and just have someone else do it. I'm done with the bradlys-as-a-service thing. It'd be another thing adding heat to my living environment as well.

It's been useful for other things like checking in on. Where/when packages are delivered, when the landlord showed up, when a neighbor came over to tell us something but we didn't hear them knock on the door, finding out my smoke alarm was going off for no apparent reason, etc.

They can also cut the copper/fiber/coax coming into your house. If the NVR/whatever recording your video isn't in a super obvious place it will take a thief longer to find that then it would be for them to clip your connection to the net.

If that’s your concern have it upload the video to a remote location you control.

This misses the actual advantages that a managed service provides, like the fact you don't have to worry about the stuff you mentioned. Does your solution scale to multiple cameras? Will you get push notifications when movement is detected while you're on holiday? What if that very laptop is stolen? Would be ironic.

I'm not saying your solution is bad, my house has the same thing (with 4 cameras around the house), but most people don't want to spend time managing yet more stuff, and debugging their camera system if something goes wrong.

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