Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We saved $500k per year by rolling our own "S3"

engineering.nanit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 261 posts

Re: We saved $500k per year by rolling our own "S3"

#71

Post by sbrother »

varenc wrote: post #67
sbrother wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a happy customer, I picked nanit because it actually worked. We didn’t even use the “smart” features, but “you can turn on the app from anywhere you happen to be and expect the video feed to work” is unfortunately a bar that no competitor I tried could meet. The others were mostly made by non-software companies with outsourced apps that worked maybe 50% of the time. I wish we could have local-first and e2ee consum…

I self host my "baby monitor" with UniFi Protect on UCG-Max and a G6 Instant wireless camera. It's more work to setup, but pretty easy for a techie. It has the "turn on the app anywhere and it works" feature, and with a 2TB SSD I get a month+ of video storage. Because storage is local, it doesn't need to compress the video and I get a super clear 4K image. And I use Homebridge to expose the camera over Apple HomeKit…

Ok that’s really cool; I didn’t know you could set up Apple’s smart home thingy to forward a live feed to the cloud.

Re: We saved $500k per year by rolling our own "S3"

#72

Post by vachina »

VladVladikoff wrote: post #31

I’m mostly just impressed that some janky baby monitor has racked up server fees on this scale. Amazing example of absolutely horrible engineering. Also, just take an old phone from your drawer full of old phones, slap some free camera app on it, zip tie a car phone mount to the crib, and boom you have a free baby monitor.

In a capitalist society it is intuitive to outsource every ounce of effort to somebody else.

Re: We saved $500k per year by rolling our own "S3"

#73

Post by xboxnolifes »

hinkley wrote: post #17
nbngeorcjhe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small fraction of 1, probably? It sounds like a fairly simple service that shouldn't require much ongoing development

You're going to run a production system with a bus number of 1? I think you mean a small fraction of 3 engineers. And small fractions aren't that small.

The cost being a fraction of 1 does not imply it's one person. 3 people each spending 2 weeks a year on the service is still a fraction of 1.

Re: We saved $500k per year by rolling our own "S3"

#74

Post by varenc »

sbrother wrote: post #71
varenc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I self host my "baby monitor" with UniFi Protect on UCG-Max and a G6 Instant wireless camera. It's more work to setup, but pretty easy for a techie. It has the "turn on the app anywhere and it works" feature, and with a 2TB SSD I get a month+ of video storage. Because storage is local, it doesn't need to compress the video and I get a super clear 4K image. And I use Homebridge to expose the camera over Apple HomeKit…

Ok that’s really cool; I didn’t know you could set up Apple’s smart home thingy to forward a live feed to the cloud.

It's pretty cool! But homebridge is another service to run in a Docker container.. so even less user friendly. But it's definitely the primary way everyone that's not me accesses the baby camera. The out-of-home access requires a "HomeKit Hub" which can just be an Apple TV that's always plugged in. And HomeKit also has "HomeKit Secure Video" feature which is cloud based video storage, but with E2EE. But don't recommend their video storage really.

Re: We saved $500k per year by rolling our own "S3"

#76

Post by kdamica »

varenc wrote: post #59

In HN style, I'm going to diverge from the content and rant about the company: Nanit needs this storage because they run cloud based baby cameras. Every Nanit user is uploading video and audio of their home/baby live to Nanit without any E2EE. It's a hot mic sending anything you say near it to the cloud. Their hardware essentially requires a subscription to use, even though it costs $200/camera. You must spend an add…

We've used an offline Infant Optics baby camera for three kids and have never wished for any of the smart features that online cameras offer. You really just want to know whether they are asleep and when they are crying. I just don't see a good use case for recording all that video for most kids. (I'm sure there are special needs situations where it is helpful)

Re: We saved $500k per year by rolling our own "S3"

#77

Post by hshdhdhehd »

jen20 wrote: post #62
varenc wrote: post #59

In HN style, I'm going to diverge from the content and rant about the company: Nanit needs this storage because they run cloud based baby cameras. Every Nanit user is uploading video and audio of their home/baby live to Nanit without any E2EE. It's a hot mic sending anything you say near it to the cloud. Their hardware essentially requires a subscription to use, even though it costs $200/camera. You must spend an add…

This is the reason I refused to buy Nanit cameras, instead opting for unconnected models. E2E encryption is table stakes.

By the way you dont need a video (or hell even audio) baby monitor. Source: 2 kids.

Re: We saved $500k per year by rolling our own "S3"

#78

Post by LPisGood »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #53
Lucian6 wrote: post #38

[flagged]

Why do all your comments seem LLM generated? You do clearly have something to contribute, but it’s probably better to just write what you’re talking about than going through a LLM.

What do you see about this comment that seems particularly LLM generated?
Post reply on HN