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It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

blog.vghaisas.com

81–90 of 282 posts

Re: It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

#81
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally just said it solved my problem. Most casual crime is opportunistic, and cameras and lights add uncertainty to the opportunity. Most people aren't willing to chance the camera for an opportunistic score.

> Most casual crime is opportunistic, and cameras and lights add uncertainty to the opportunity. Most people aren't willing to chance the camera for an opportunistic score. People have been stealing things from stores which have had cctv for decades. Your premises are manifestly false.

The reason why people steal from stores is because there are rarely consequences unless you get caught in the act. Most stores won't file a report over a can of tuna, it'll get chalked up to losses and prices will go up on tuna cans to cover the loss, as it's low friction.

Someone's private property getting trespassed/burgled will have a much higher chance of resulting in legal consequences.

Re: It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

#82
I have got a cheap candy-land made doorbell that's operated via piezo crystal switch (non-battery, non-power-line) and 433MHz freq. It has some melodies and volume built-in,

The design is simple and easy to hack (and build something else). There are rather cheap light switches that operate on the same principle and can be used.

Re: It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

#85
post #49

I am super sensitive to over engineering. For my doorbell I wanted something that lets me play a custom bell sound. You would be surprised that 99% of the solutions out there are complete over engineered stacks that depend on wifi devices, Internet access, connecting to various cloud services... So I built my own: a basic wireless button sends a radio 433 MHz signal, and my receiver is plugged inside the house and tr…

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Re: It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

#86
post #79
post #49

I am super sensitive to over engineering. For my doorbell I wanted something that lets me play a custom bell sound. You would be surprised that 99% of the solutions out there are complete over engineered stacks that depend on wifi devices, Internet access, connecting to various cloud services... So I built my own: a basic wireless button sends a radio 433 MHz signal, and my receiver is plugged inside the house and tr…

As a former embedded systems engineer, my door bell is two long bits of wire, a bell, a push button and two C cells. My light switches are similarly complicated.

Two wires and two C cells? Careful, someone is going to put a subscription layer in front of that

Re: It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

#87

I fail to see the relation between a video doorbell and stopping a burglar. Burglars wear masks. Also, a doorbell ringing on the outside of the door is not only silly but in case of an apartment complex highly annoying for your neighbors. And make sure your neighbors like being monitored through your five services. Personally I have a button outside my front door. It is connected with a copper wire to the other side…

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Re: It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always say this, but is there any evidence it is true? Home burglars aren't exactly the cream of the criminal crop.

From everything I've seen (which was a lot for a couple years due to my job) there were two types of burglars: One type didn't care about any security system, even alarms. They would smash and grab as fast as they could and get out. They didn't have a plan other than to grab the first things that looked valuable. It might cost more to fix the building than to replace what they found. The other type was trying to play…

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Re: It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

#89
Good.

Now rip it back out again and replace it with a better, local solution.

___

Fwiw, I did buy some dahua thing for this, for which I now run an asterisk that hangs up on every call and switches a USB relay to ring the actual bell.

Equally jank, but locally contained jank.

Re: It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

#90
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's video surveillance, it makes it more likely they'll go elsewhere. That's literally the whole point of Ring.

People always say this, but is there any evidence it is true? Home burglars aren't exactly the cream of the criminal crop.

I once worked at a school where someone tried stealing our security cameras.

Unfortunately for them, they had both of their kids' names tattooed to their neck, which helped reduce the number of possible suspects.

Wild watching back that footage the next morning.

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