Not only did it give me peace of mind but two specific examples come to mind. One was when the garbage company’s truck picked up my trash can, and never put it back down (the whole thing fell into the back of the truck). I was able to get a replacement can for free, otherwise I wouldn’t have had any clue where it disappeared off to.
The second time was when my first Steam Deck was stolen in-transit. You could tell from the very hollow sound the box made when the delivery person threw the box onto the porch. It helped prove that it wasn’t stolen off my porch (side note, screw UPS, bunch of thieves, I also had another Steam Deck stolen from one of their drop boxes, last time I ever used one, by one of their employees. No recourse at all, I just had to eat the ~$700. Also, Valve, stop shipping the Steam deck in an incredibly obvious box).
Same concept though, local NVR, remote access via WireGuard.
No. Unless your camera is being held by a human being who can take action.
Cameras do not prevent crime. That's just marketing.
All they do is let people watch crimes after they've happened, and share the videos to spread fear to other people, which then sells more cameras.
If doorbell cameras prevented crime, the internet would be full of videos of people trying to steal packages, then changing their minds when they see the camera.
Instead, it's all just recordings of a crime that has already been committed.
I may also have a nice rock for sale, we'll see how it goes.
But I wonder how much of that will wear off once everybody has one.
But we're talking about doorbell cameras here, not giant boxes in the sky with flashing strobe lights on them.
A thief doesn't know if there's a doorbell camera on a particular home until they're already on the porch and recorded.
When a thief wants to steal something, they usually stop trying to steal that thing once they become aware they are being monitored. Even if they only realized once they reached the porch.
It's not a guarantee, but it's something. And it provides a trail to follow if something is stolen (or worse).
Maybe your thief moved away.
Most burglars work in their own neighborhoods.
In some states in the US, it is not illegal for a cop to have sex with someone they have arrested. Ain't that just dandy.
The Polish situation could be an upgrade.
That’s why police looks to piece together from a larger surveillance network. Maybe you can’t see the face on the home camera but in another camera down the road, or a license plate on the getaway car down the street, or an accomplice without disguise. They want everyone to have cameras and then they can abuse the system.
Friends showed me high quality close up footage of someone stealing their bike. Absolutely useless, all you saw was an average guy that you wouldn’t recognize if you walked past on the street.
No cloud involved if you run your own VPN.
Or even better, _just a little_ cloud involved if you expose through Cloudflare tunnel for just you and whoever else needs to access it.
Some countries have laws for this, as in you can only point the camera so that you don't catch everyone. This can have downsides, e.g. if you have no (even short) front yard and your (organization's) door is directly on the curb - but I completely agree that this is just tough luck, the privacy of random people walking on public property past private property should not be filmed.