> "Extended Video Storage: You can store your Ring videos for up to 180 days. Video storage defaults to 30 days."

They NEVER delete ANY video, just hide your access away. I had some footages way back in 2019 that I could still access, so long as I have the video's uuid.

They also made several updates to reduce image quality (added fake motion blur). The goal I guess was to 'enhance' privacy of passer by but in reality it also means unless the person of interest stands still facing the camera, the footage is worthless as a CCTV device. It's jarring to see crystal clear videos from 2019 vs the blurry mess that is today. I replaced the front door one with an Eufy, it has its own problem but at least it's not a complete POS like the Ring products.

I like the massive degradation of this service and the rise in cost. Hopefully this will slow down the adoption and normalization of mass surveillance in residential areas.

Cost increases combined with quality decreases is basically the story of Amazon at this point.

While I understand that Eufy had a security issue last year where a very small number of users were logged in the wrong accounts and saw other people's camera feeds, they quickly patched it and didn't beat around the bush about what was going on.

I have a Eufy Doorbell camera and their tilt-and-pan camera (to monitor my dog while I am at work). I've had no issues with saving videos from Eufy products. Everything is super clear because all of their new devices are 2k resolution cameras. My friends who have Ring or Nest say that the Eufy microphone and speaker sound so much better.

I also have an Eufy doorbell camera and am very happy with it. The image quality and people detection are great. The only quibble I have with it is that it won't use the original doorbell chime. It will only use the Eufy wireless chime even if wired to the original for power.

I have one also, it worked with my old door chime but I replaced my chime anyway as it would only ring 1 of the chimes.

I also like Eufy since the videos are stored onto SD cards. I guess that means that other than the still shots that are sent to your phone, an enterprising thief could smash the camera and steal the card and you would only have a single photo to go off of though.

Smashing and taking the doorbell isn't a concern of mine. I live in a very low crime area. The majority of crime that does happen is stealing from unlocked cars or open garages. The doorbell wouldn't help with either in my case since my door doesn't face my driveway or garage.

My townhouse is 4 stories. The 4th floor is where my pool table, dart board and home theater are located thus where I spend most of my time when I am home. I got the doorbell camera so I wouldn't have to navigate all the steps every time someone rang the doorbell.

Nest started their move to a worse plan last year and are now getting more forceful. I already dislike cloud cameras, and their app still has massive bugs in it that remain unfixed.

I'm moving to entirely non-cloud cameras. PoE and Wifi, mostly hardwired, to hard drives on my network rack. Upfront cost is higher but longterm worth it for additional privacy.

Can you share your favorite brands for the key components?

I'm going with Ubiquiti. I tried some of the cheap brands and was unsatisfied with their NVR solutions. Ubiquiti was the affordable and good business class option with HomeAssistant integration. I dropped details in a sibling comment.

I have ubiquity cameras around my property and they work great. I initially had just a UVC-NVR but upgraded to the DreamMachine.

I had headaches at first because my DreamMachine's SATA port was faulty and had a poor connection to the HDD. I used 4 different HDD's to prove this, and getting Unifi support to agree with me was about impossible. They ended up giving me an RMA with a "yeah, buddy.. I'm suuuuure it's the SATA port." I had to pay to post the RMA for a machine that never actually worked.

The exchanged DreamMachine has been working quite well for over a year now though.

If I were to do it again I'd buy it from a reseller instead of directly from Ubiquity for better product support.

I live in a humid area and all my Ubiquiti cameras died within a year. If the NVR powered off without a shutdown mongo would get corrupted, losing all recording metadata. I could import videos but what a pain.

I went with Hikvision and wouldn’t look back.

Not OP but I have a Ubiquiti 'UniFi Protect' system in my home that works well. Lots of different cameras to choose from, including a doorbell.

Thanks for sharing, though pricey, quick ROI based on Nest and Ring pricing.

What cameras are you thinking of using?

I've been looking at cameras from ubiquiti but I'm new to camera tech and have found it hard to find out "do they want me to use their service / subscription?" and etc.

Not OP, but i've recently set up 5 cameras, 2 more on the way. My system is Ubiquiti with the following hardware:

- UDM Pro

- 24 Port PoE Switch

- 3 G3 Instant (Wifi based Camera)

- 1 G4 Pro (4k Cam, optical zoom, etc)

- 2 G3 Flex (cheaper/simpler option to the G4 Pro for less important areas)

- 1 G3 Doorbell

- 2 Wifi 6 Lite AP

I've been mostly happy with it so far. My only complaint is that there seems to be a semi-common issue with scrubbing timeline history. Downloading the clip works fine, but the websocket driven UI seems to lock up - i suspect it is a UI Software issue.

Aside from their software i've been very happy. Also the cameras, i believe, serve standard RTSPS so if i get fed up with Ubiquiti software i might switch to something standard. Though i'll probably try changing the hard drive (something faster perhaps) or even a dedicated NVR in an effort to make the history scrubbing work better.

Seems like a minor issue that could probably be resolved easily if it was FOSS :/

Thanks for the feedback!

I think i'm going to try out Ubiquiti with a camera or two... one day. Unfortunately, Ubiquiti cameras at regular price are hard to find these days.

They're listed all the time - the Flex and Instants i bought very recently. I just ordered a Flex three days ago.

Check daily, usually first thing morning. https://old.reddit.com/r/UbiquitiInStock/ is handy, but i've often found stock when it wasn't posted - so i think my morning check is a bit better than the stock posts.

edit: to be clear, i've bought all of my stuff (within the last year) from Ubiquiti directly. No 3rd party inflated prices

TY!!!

I use a little self hosted thing to ping me when stuff goes in stock: https://github.com/dgtlmoon/changedetection.io

I'm a fan of Reolink's cameras but they are basic.

I actually use mine with an SD card inside and just use their app (it's all free).

It's a little pricy at $50 a pop but their RL-520 haven't failed me. They even put out an update to upgrade the web dashboard from their older flash to something modern.

Was about to write almost exactly the same post. Thanks!

Ubiquity Dream Machine Pro - downside here is no hard drive redundancy but the all in one solution is nice, with remote access if you want (or you can disable it at the device level and roll your own).

A PoE switch. You can get a ubiquiti one if you want a fancy UI but any good managed switch is fine. Used switches are perfectly acceptable.

If you plan to use Wifi cameras, you'll need an Access Point (AP). Again, go for ubiquiti if you want the fancy UI but any decent AP will work.

Cameras. Here you will need to go with Ubiquiti brand to use their software/network video recorder (NVR).

Router (Dream Machine) -> PoE Switch -> AP and Cameras

You can probably do your own Cat6a runs for your PoE cameras, just know it's recommended to use passthrus and not ports for PoE (I still use ports, it still works fine, :shrug:). Otherwise hire someone or stick to Wifi cams.

You can upgrade to a dedicated NVR and do redundant drives which is desirable since HDDs fail quite a bit. Regardless do use surveillance rated drives (Purples or SkyHawks).

Optional addons: Put the cameras in a locked down VLAN for security. You can also optionally integrate with HomeAssistant to tell cams to not record when you are home/awake/etc.

The long term maintenance cost is a headache including the remote connection, but not including stuff like network partitioning.

An Axis system is nice, but it will cost you.

The problem with non-cloud cameras, I think, is that burglars can, and likely will steal them. This kind of defeats the purpose of a security system.

The only camera brand I have experience with is Axis Communications (very, very nice cameras, but very, very expensive too). There may be more options now, but back when I was playing with them I was able to configure the camera to record to a Samba share (instead of, or in addition to recording to an SD card).

I also have setup the server that grabs those recordings to sync with a VPS through Syncthing, along with an encryption key that the VPS doesn't know, so it only hosts an encrypted payload. If I need to retrieve the recording, I can simply add another host to the VPS and input the encryption key on the new host and it will grab everything decrypted.

Did you know that security camera's have existed long before the cloud? Developed first, per wikipedia in 1927 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television

They are not a common vector for burgling.

The cameras are mostly meant to give me warning of someone breaking in while I am home and give me situational awareness across the house in the event of an entry.

Push notifications while I am away or being able to review people casing the place or such are bonuses.

Is it just me or did Ring seem more appealing when all it did was ping your phone with a video of who was at your door at the time? It seems that it's gone from a device whose purpose was convenience to one whose purpose is now primarily is sucking up hours and hours of video that ring can choose to share with anyone at a moments notice (see their policy on making the videos available to law enforcement without notifying the owner of the camera).

I went from being interested in buying one because it would indeed be convenient for me to see who is at the door while I'm stuck at my desk on a conference call to being legitimately creeped out whenever I hear someone has one installed.

It started as its own company and vision of simple security until Amazon gobbled it up for another vertical (or expanding their currents) and now it's just a shit show.

Very few companies are keeping it simple in favor of hyper growth and limitless money.

As with everything in tech, the products will eventually pander to the needs of those with the deepest pockets. And those aren't individuals paying £50/yr. They want a piece of "enterprise" customers, and few have bigger budgets per head than the police.

This is exactly why I ended up going with a Ubiquiti Unify setup for my cameras and smart doorbell. After getting insanely annoyed with Nest and their price increase/feature reductions I just went all in on my own set up.

I doubt UI will ever charge monthly for their services because you need to buy the hardware and run it locally. Of course they can, but I'm banking on them not doing that.

God, fuck these guys. Seriously. And thanks to the hardware lock-in, their greed will generate a ton of e-waste.

This has been mounting across the entire sector. My wyze and adorcams have had features stripped from the free plans and price increases recently too.

You can buy low-cost programmable IP cameras from the manufacturer. It's very easy to set up something similar to a Wyze cam with no recurring service fee. Just don't expose these devices directly to the internet because you probably won't get security updates.

A few years ago, I bought a few cameras from Vivotek to keep an eye on my dog. I had to set up a VPN for video streaming, but it works.

Lately, our Ring has been unable to load recorded or live video at least half of the time we try to access it. Sounds like it's a great time to cancel.

We're looking to replace with another product and are considering the Eufy products. I like the fact that all video is stored locally. Does anyone have any experience with Eufy doorbells?

Wait, is Amazon collecting videos from my doorbell without my knowledge?

I don't have any Ring plans, etc. I get a notification on the Ring app on my phone, that's all.

I bought a house with a few Ring cameras installed. I'll have to see if I can record without a subscription.