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Comment by krunck | Hacker News Reader

"This first difficulty was to find information about the camera. Despite having a company logo printed on its front, I could not find any information about this company on Google. I found several identical cameras being sold online, but under different brands, all of them seem to be Chinese names."

Why does this continue to surprise people? So much sketchy garbage coming out of China is sold under numerous "brands". Just look at a lot of computer stuff sold on Amazon.

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This is true for the top, known' brands as well.

Wyze camera (top seller on Amazon) is a Tianjin Hualai Technology camera https://www.hualaikeji.com/en/product

Roku just rolled our a similar cube-shaped cam (you can tell by the overall design).

There's very little real innovation happening in consumer cameras right now.

I mean, what exactly do you need innovated? I have a bunch of these cheap cameras (firewalled to only be accessible via LAN of course) that are nearly 6 years old now. They stream 2K video reliably, my DVR records for me, they have excellent quality night-vision via infrared, and I can access them via VPN. What's to improve here?

Smart camera. Attach a microphone and speaker with the camera. Any movement at odd times and you get a WhatsApp video call on your cell phone. You can watch the other person and can talk to him, "Hay! what are you doing at my home?"

I was wondering if that's already available or not.

Yes this is already available. Most major camera lines now offer 2-way audio (siren, voice) to do exactly that.

I don't. I am happy with 2k video in most cases, and good picture quality in low light conditions (accurate color is nice also). 2-way audio can be useful but not a deal breaker.

What I meant when I said there's very little real innovation is exactly that - the fundamentals are good enough (and have been for a few years), and the bulk of product innovation is in how to make cameras smart with AI - which only makes them slower. I like my cameras dumb and fast.

Better on-device identification of objects and motion would be useful. I care more about a person standing on my porch than I do the neighbor's cat.

Better local integration would also be useful. (Axis cameras have supported writing (and recycling) video on a local SMB share for a very long time, with nothing special required on the back end -- but they're not consumer products).

Improved image quality would also be useful. There always seems to be a certain softness and definite lack of fluidity in consumer cameras that has been solved in things like cheap smartphones and GoPros for a over a decade.

Tight integration with local home automation systems like Home Assistant would be great, so I can observe and control all of the things from a central point using my pocket supercomputer.

But otherwise: If all one wants from a camera is for it to take OK-ish pictures and send them down the pipe, then that's a reasonably-solved problem.

Other than Home Assistant, do you feel integrating with Apple Home and/or SmartThings ecosystem would be valuable?

I guess that depends on who's asking, and what kind of response they want.

At home, I don't use Apple Home or SmartThings. It is unlikely that I ever will.

I own an iPad that I use every day and my phone is a Samsung, but I already have already adopted enough ecosystems with Google Home, Alexa, and Home Assistant, and I'm working on minimizing or eliminating two of those because they're clown-based.

But I am a geek that likes to tinker with electronics and software. I recognize that I am an outlier.

But I will cheerfully pay extra for stuff that Just Works with Home Assistant without using the clown, and that would probably apply to cameras as well.

It sounds like the space is already fragmented (with multiple ecosystems competing for your devices and attention). We will look into Home Assistant compatibility.

This is really one of the use cases of TinyML. On-device ML to detect motion, etc. As microcontrollers are getting more powerful, more and more is possible. Just look at https://www.tensorflow.org/lite/microcontrollers

I mean, there isn't much the cameras have to do. They need an SoC that can process relatively low resolution video and output it over a network. Anything complex is intended to be done through a cloud service to sell a subscription. Consumers don't want to pay for expensive cameras, so they use an OEM that has designed a super basic camera that is built in high volumes to make use of economies of scale.

We've done exactly that with our cameras, I feel cameras are a commodity. Our Cameras are built by Uniview but run our firmware.

Outside of cameras (which also feel need to be very basic), we do have our own hardware design and manufacturing capabilities: video security hubs, PoE and WiFi relays.

Do you worry about the risks of using a Chinese OEM considering the rulings against Hik and Dahua for NDAA and the FCC? Seems like the smart move if you are using an OEM is to at least use one of the Taiwanese OEMs

Consumer grade cameras are definitely commoditized, but the higher end cameras with on camera analytics aren't.

Short answer - yes, and we've already taken steps to remedy that.

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