What to do with all of these Amazon Cloud Cams? | Hacker News Reader

What to do with all of these Amazon Cloud Cams?

16 pointsfletchowns9 comments

Amazon is shutting down their Cloud Cam service on December 2, 2022. I have 10 of these devices that I had already been phasing out with a different solution. I was planning on selling my Cloud Cams but now I can't do that in good faith, given that they will be useless in less than 6 months.

It's such a shame though. There must be millions of these perfectly good cameras that will soon become e-waste. Is there anything useful that can be done with them? Is there any hope that somebody might release a hacked firmware some day to make them useful again?

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Ending support for hardware made exclusively for an online platform with no offline or local network support is infuriating.

I think it depends on what every other customer does now. If everyone floods the second hand market with second hand, soft-bricked cameras because Amazon hates the planet for some reason, people might buy them and hack them.

I don't expect anyone interested in running their own firmware will be buying spyware from Amazon, though, so existing support is pretty much non-existent. It's only a matter of time before someone will take this opportunity to find security flaws in the software, which will no longer be patched, and hopefully you'll be able to use your camera again.

If you have the space, stuff it into your attic and wait, or get hacking yourself if you have the time. Otherwise, at least take it to a recycler to lessen the environmental impact of this crap just a tiny bit.

You can sell them in good faith, as long as you explain that the back end service will end in December. Then someone who doesn't know that will not get ripped off, but someone who wants a cam to hack could be happy to get them.

My gf sold a broken dishwasher this week; her ad was pretty explicit as to its condition (multiple problems) but someone came by and happily bought it. He turned out to be an appliance tech and said he knew exactly how to fix it and then could resell it.

I feel like the person that is going to buy it probably doesn't know they are being cancelled and probably won't bother reading the full description of the item. I know, that's on them to be a more informed buyer. I can't help but think of those people that got ripped off buying a Playstation box or whatever because they didn't carefully read the item description. So many are stressed or tired or whatever that causes them not to read so carefully. That's why I feel I can't sell these in good faith. Maybe if I put it in the title and in big giant letters in the description.

I wonder whether Amazon could be convinced to free the specs required to hack these devices. That would spare them from the eWaste bin. Perhaps craft an open letter and get other owners to sign it? I’m sure HN would help spread the word….

The real lesson here is never to buy cloud enabled hardware. The vendor will always pull the plug eventually.

> On the bright side, Amazon will send a complementary Blink Mini (plus a year of Blink Subscription Plus) to all affected customers. The Blink Mini is nearly identical to the old Cloud Cam, though of course, its a bit more modern and offers better integration with Alexa devices.

The complementary Blink Mini is kind of a slap in the face though. I have $1200 worth of Cloud Cams (10 of them @ $120/ea) and they are giving me a $30 camera to get hooked into their new subscription service. How very nice of them...

Why on earth would you pay $100 per cloud camera instead of standalone ONVIF ones?

Amazon Cloud Cameras were so overpriced nobody even bothered trying to hardware hack them. Your best bet is donating few to hackerspaces and hoping someone bored takes a look.

Part of the selling point for me was the cheap cloud storage of video clips and ease of setup & accessing the live views and recordings.

I'm going to send mine to ewaste.

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