I'd be shocked if the Ring doorbells were materially more secure.
I sit firmly in the "only smart device is my printer and I keep a loaded gun next to it in case it makes a weird noise" camp.
I sit firmly in the "only smart device is my printer and I keep a loaded gun next to it in case it makes a weird noise" camp.
You can put it on a separate VLAN with no internet access and watch it via your own app eg Home Assistant, Frigate, Zoneminder or whatever.
Making automations and scripts is getting easier every update, but it has a small learning curve as the logic can get complex and you sometimes need to know details like entity IDs or raw states. And there are some simple missing features that some people are very used to. Home Assistant is improving that sort of thing constantly, but sometimes the device APIs do not allow all functionality without the OEM apps.
For example, the two biggest camera-related things that are missing in my opinion is that the camera viewer does not allow zoom or two way talk. It uses the native browser media player, and on both a Samsung tablet and all iOS devices, this means that you cannot zoom and pan around the image. This is obviously not an issue if you embed a dashboard such as Frigate into the HA UI, which IIRC supports both two way talk and zoom. But YMMV.
Home Assistant is quite a beast but start off simple and work on. It will repay you every step of the way. The first hurdle is to get it on the internet and usable via the app. Get that sorted and you are well on your way.
Make use of dynamic DNS to register a name to IP address and Lets Encrypt to sort out a SSL cert. There are add ins for both of those.
You can also subscribe to Nabu Casa and external access and a few other things will be taken care for you. 31 day trial and https://www.nabucasa.com/pricing/
• <https://old.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/aloi5v/pro...>
I regret it now but a few years back someone had moved into a home, dumped their Ring doorbell that came with the house, and we shoved it on our house. When we went to set it up Ring blocked the setup attempt because it was account bound.
... Apparently if you call Ring to release it (they can), frontline CS can see the entire log of when the doorbell was online, when it was last rung, and used that information to go "oh, it hasn't been rang in like eight months" to decide that I wasn't some criminal and that I can set up the doorbell myself.
But the printer comment was actually a reference to a meme about how different groups of people relate to technology.
Nobody on the Internet can ring my doorbell because it's a dumb button that connects to a dumb, literal bell.
CTRL+T, doordash.com, McDonalds, "ring doorbell please", pay, done.
I know this isn't what you mean, but, humans are buttons (or button pressers?)
Now do 40 pages, front-and-back, with your smartphone.
I have not once in my entire life had to scan 40 pages at once. I bet I've never done more than 15 at once.
For the once in a blue moon that I need to scan 40 double-sided pages I'd just go to my local print shop.
- Banking/Investment documents (I actually sent a fax to a bank last year because $REASONS)
- Foster-care related stuff
- Sending tax documents to my accountant
There's a lot in there, rental contracts, policy documents, w2 forms, that I might actually benefit from having scanned and digitally available on my computer. I feel that being able to search through these documents would have saved me some amount of trouble over the years.
Hell, if it were easy enough, I might actually scan all those receipts I bring home and then throw away.
Plus living in a village, closest printing shop is maybe 10 minutes by drive. Scanner and good printer is a basic need in 2026.
They're all e-signature.
... but I think that was a fax machine.