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Comment by axelonet | Hacker News Reader

This all is a side effect of the paranoia built by the corporation's. Why would you even want to look at the door when you are 1000's of miles away from your home. I understand pet and baby monitors but this information being on the web for anyone is just bonkers. We are in an age where Technology is advancing at a pace where we don't understand what we need to do with IoT devices.

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Aside from the obvious use of monitoring my door while I'm away, it's also useful to knowing when a package is delivered unexpectedly when I'm away from home so I can ask a friend or family member to pick it up so it's not sitting on my front porch for a week or two.

> package is delivered unexpectedly

I...huh? How?

Are you a darknet dropshipper? (Nothing wrong with that, just can't imagine what carrier doesn't give you a tracking number that you can get alerts on delivery/check status of.)

Family sometimes send me packages unannounced, not all shippers (especially international) give real-time tracking numbers, not everyone in our household keeps perfect track of their inbound shipments, and sometimes delivery agents just make a mistake - one time I came home from work to a big screen TV on my porch. It was supposed to go to neighbor, but that's something I wouldn't want on my porch for a week - even if I don't care if it's stolen, it's like a big "No one is home here!" sign.

All those Chinese products with free shipping were like that. They'd show up one day randomly. Also, I buy most of my stuff online so there's always something in flight. Books, toothpaste, whatever.

I use 17track for that. It's an app that I drop all my AliExpress/Amazon/eBay tracking codes in and I will get a push notification that the package has been delivered. Don't need a camera monitoring my neighbours front door for that.

Heh, so never had a friend or family ship you something?

Not without them telling me in advance, no.

We order a lot online. I can't even count how many times we get notified of a delivery via the app, but it is nowhere. A day or three later is when it actually shows up on our door. When we've complained, we've been told to wait a day or three. Sometimes the notification comes in a day late too. So a door camera helps us know when to look out for a delivery for realzies. Oh, and if a neighbor drops by while we are out, we can chat real quick over the door camera.

I'm guessing you don't buy stuff off of AliExpress much? Sometimes the shipping window is like 1 month or bigger, you just never know when it will finally reach your house.

I bought a cheap ring doorbell for our vacation house and indeed, it's a piece of junk. The picture quality is atrocious lol.

However, it and the other cameras I have (including an actually decent one in the entryway) almost eliminated the random door-to-door solicitors and people leaving flyers all over my front door!

It's also really funny because people hate cameras. I've seen someone cover their face before pushing the doorbell button and then walk away because they felt too afraid to be seen on camera.

OTOH, the ring app is really, really terrible. Woof! If you install it and leave it on defaults, it'll notify you about anything your neighbors post. And boy the things they post lol. Kid riding their bike by? SUSPICIOUS! EVERYONE KEEP AN EYE OUT! Random dog?

My grandma used a similar product to send video of a break in attempt to relatives so they could pass it on to the police while she was in another city.

But I get your point. A lot of this IoT stuff is mostly pointless and serves only to make people feel like they are living in the future.

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