Take it as you will, but some of the comments in the article are saying that the only things left active are the wifi functionality to remotely switch the device on again, and that the 'camera' part is completely disabled as you'd expect.
So at the moment, it's a bit less ominous than the title suggests.
That said, I do find it irritating how many devices seem to want to be on permanent 'standby' nowadays, especially given all the talk about wasting electricity. Or the related worries about spies being able to remotely activate devices because they're not completely off.
It says it stops transmitting the video to the cloud service. It doesn't say it turns of the camera part. In fact, from the power draw and the ABI article it seems the only things being turned of are the camera indicator led and the motion detection. Recording seems to continue at 1080p.
I don't like paying money for devices and services that are able to steal my data and/or spy on me.
I would like a security camera that is not able to connect to the outside world (when I'm back, it would allow me to see what was happening when I was out). I guess it should be allowed to the local network.
Any normal surveillance system. E.g. an Axis IP camera with ZoneMinder (not that great but FOSS) or one of several commercial network video recorder (NVR) options running on a machine somewhere. Ubiquiti even makes IP cameras and an NVR appliance now. Any decent NVR will also support remote video streaming, you might need to configure your network appliances appropriately.
Don't do analog. It's cheaper but it's not really worth it, you should get at least 720p these days (that means IP) and I'd reckon analog equipment won't be easy to buy for very many more years.
Don't do wifi. You need to get power to the camera anyway, so run ethernet with PoE. All these WiFi surveillance cameras are crazy, jammers are pretty easy to obtain and burglars are going to start using them. In a business installation, you should segment the cameras from the rest of the network, with VLANs or separate switches. Dual-home your NVR or lock it down at a firewall. It's just good practice.
The current trend of cloud-based surveillance is something I find very strange. It's more convenient in some ways than a local DVR or NVR but that comes at a big cost, including often monthly service fees! I think it's really only because of a lack of sufficiently consumer-friendly NVRs. There might be some money there for someone who takes that on.
I think there is an ever increasing market for reverse engineered services for products like this. I would love to have a local instance of their back end running, that I would be in total control of.
That way I could choose to make it work externally or not, or even have it working when there is not external internet connectivity.
The problem is, the perceived value of these companies is having access to the video. I'm sure it won't be long before they start auto analysis the video for "faces" or "products" or what TV/Music you listened as a "feature". At which point we slowly start to boil...
I recently built one with my raspberry pi and the camera module. It was stupidly easy, all the difficult parts (motion detection, saving short video recordings) are all done for you.
I upload everything to s3, and set notifications on the bucket to my phone. If motion is detected, I get an email within a few seconds.
If you're serious about not being spied on, the only reasonable thing to do is to build it yourself. Luckily, these days, that's very easy and cheap.
CM30|10 years ago
So at the moment, it's a bit less ominous than the title suggests.
That said, I do find it irritating how many devices seem to want to be on permanent 'standby' nowadays, especially given all the talk about wasting electricity. Or the related worries about spies being able to remotely activate devices because they're not completely off.
PeterStuer|10 years ago
listic|10 years ago
I would like a security camera that is not able to connect to the outside world (when I'm back, it would allow me to see what was happening when I was out). I guess it should be allowed to the local network.
Does anyone have a recommendation for a good one?
jcrawfordor|10 years ago
Don't do analog. It's cheaper but it's not really worth it, you should get at least 720p these days (that means IP) and I'd reckon analog equipment won't be easy to buy for very many more years.
Don't do wifi. You need to get power to the camera anyway, so run ethernet with PoE. All these WiFi surveillance cameras are crazy, jammers are pretty easy to obtain and burglars are going to start using them. In a business installation, you should segment the cameras from the rest of the network, with VLANs or separate switches. Dual-home your NVR or lock it down at a firewall. It's just good practice.
The current trend of cloud-based surveillance is something I find very strange. It's more convenient in some ways than a local DVR or NVR but that comes at a big cost, including often monthly service fees! I think it's really only because of a lack of sufficiently consumer-friendly NVRs. There might be some money there for someone who takes that on.
robmcm|10 years ago
That way I could choose to make it work externally or not, or even have it working when there is not external internet connectivity.
The problem is, the perceived value of these companies is having access to the video. I'm sure it won't be long before they start auto analysis the video for "faces" or "products" or what TV/Music you listened as a "feature". At which point we slowly start to boil...
rasz_pl|10 years ago
The whole point is to have offsite backup. Very first thing more sophisticated thugs do is disable and steal your DVR setup:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/the-chut...
fredley|10 years ago
I upload everything to s3, and set notifications on the bucket to my phone. If motion is detected, I get an email within a few seconds.
If you're serious about not being spied on, the only reasonable thing to do is to build it yourself. Luckily, these days, that's very easy and cheap.
kbart|10 years ago
oh_sigh|10 years ago
swiley|10 years ago
rasz_pl|10 years ago
upstandingdude|10 years ago
I am Senior Vice President of making spiteful comments at my house.
callesgg|10 years ago
SixSigma|10 years ago