Discussion

How Things Work

ge96: This is just curiosity, no sides, the refund bitIf Amazon did their part, put the package on your door, it was stolen, is that their fault?

dabluecaboose: [delayed]

mgash: If you have video evidence showing that Amazon just left your package out in the open then someone came up and nabbed it I'm sure Amazon would just send you a replacement if only to keep you happy as a customer.

cromulent: I have a Unifi doorbell and it takes great photos of the local badgers, foxes, and other wildlife. They are stored locally. Love it.

watersb: Do you store them all in the same pen, or do you have to keep them separated?

cromulent: Still trying to catch them. They keep drinking my cider and eating my chickens.

stackedinserter: Ring or any corpo-cloud-controlled cameras are shit, but I want to know what happens around my house when I'm not watching.

kennywinker: It mostly just sits there.

alexfoo: A lid is a must.

RcouF1uZ4gsC: > But what if someone steals your Amazon package off your front steps? Well, what if they do? I guess you would have to get a refund. I guess you might suffer an extremely minor inconvenience. I guess it could be an opportunity to reflect on the painful predations of poverty under capitalism, which creates economic desires, renders people unable to satisfy them, and then taunts them with constant visions of abundance in which they cannot share. True, it is a tragedy of unimaginably small proportions that someone has stolen your box of paper towels. Would you let them steal your optimism, as well?This kind of rhetoric is counterproductive. Telling people that package thieves are just misunderstood, is going to get people to do the opposite of what you suggest.

kennywinker: Those people were going to do the opposite already. They are already doing the opposite. If you have some better rhetoric that will convince them otherwise then in all honesty I look forward to reading your blog post.

Macha: It feels like given that Amazon give you no agency in when the package arrives, and also no guarantee of forewarning, then they've given you no option to prevent the package remaining on your doorstep, the liability should morally lie with them.(Legally, could be more cloudy depending on jurisdiction, but I'm sure their tendency to say packages will require a signature on delivery but then to leave them on the doorstep with the driver's signature alone probably does them no favours)

gerdesj: I have several Reolink cams around the place, including a doorbell. They are on a VLAN called SEWER. I also have a VLAN called THINGS, which is for general IoT and SEWER is for those devices that scare me the most!SEWER and THINGS don't get to see the internet at all, except via Squid. DNS A records with ntp in them resolve to the IPs of my equipment.It is a bit crap that you need to be a networking and IT consultant to make this stuff mostly safe. If you can't, then getting the claw hammer out seems to be indicated.

clcaev: I’d like is a simple (loud) intercom doorbell with remote ringer. It seems these don’t exist anymore unless you spend 1k or so. I can buy a “smart” one, put electric tape over the camera, and make sure there is no local memory stick. Even so, they try connect centrally; my firewall seems to work … somewhat (so much work to make a VLan)I love the Software Conversancy’s OpenWRT One… perhaps we can make something similar here, a doorbell that is privacy focused? A simple iPhone/Android intercom app usable only on my LAN would be lovely. I’m not deaf but flashing light attachment would also be welcome.We shouldn’t have to surrender our privacy for simple conveniences.

dd8601fn: HomeKit Secure Video devices. Block the device's internet access at your router. Apple can't see the video, it doesn't go to Amazon or Flock, nothing counts against your iCloud storage.Easy Button option for us lazy folks.

skeeter2020: If it's that important, you should watch then.

skeeter2020: I believe the rhetoric is intentional; that the author had no plan to convert that audience from whom you will pry their ring doorbell out of their cold, dead hands.

branon: I understand where the author is coming from but this bends a little too far towards "recording outside your door is bad and you should feel bad because you are a horrible paranoid person" for my taste.The reality is that a lot of societies or locales are not high-trust and it makes sense to take steps to insure oneself/family/possessions.Installing cameras on your property does not necessarily mean you have a destructive attitude, or that you are storing and cataloging events and treating everything with suspicion and paranoia. It's a set-and-forget system that the majority of users probably don't think about on a daily basis. You install them in the hopes that you'll never have to use them.I would rather see "_Amazon Ring_ is bad and you should feel bad, get a better surveillance system"

dd8601fn: I don't think I'm overly paranoid. I do still have a HomeKit compatible encrypted video doorbell that cannot talk to any outside vendor.Once in a while it has turned out to have been good to have. Never critical, but good to have. And I don't have to give everything to [Amazon/Ring|Flock|local PD|whoever]... unless I choose to.

clcaev: Amazon gives you the choice to deliver on a specific delivery day. Sadly, they often deliver earlier… and proclaim it as a good deed.

grebc: What does a surveillance system actually give you? Have you dealt with Police after break in & robberies?I was a building manager for 6 years and Police took the footage over 10 times during my tenure, nothing was ever recovered by the police and recognised offenders were never bought to any sort of justice.

branon: The surveillance system gives you the footage. If police can't do anything with it, that's unfortunate, but not the fault of the surveillance system.In this instance I'd say the surety and closure provided by the ability to simply review the footage is an important aspect for potential victims.

quietsegfault: I use my non-ring, local-only front door camera to track the local cats.

gerdesj: Bell wire is really thin and you can run a low voltage line around your house that is nearly invisible. That's the old school, physical option and is not to be sniffed at if it does the job.If you want to get something safe and smart (IoT) then you have to think like an engineer. You also need to decide if you are going to do one thing - a doorbell, or if you want disco lights by the pool and the rest.For a doorbell, you need a button at the door and a chime or whatever inside the house to indicate the button has been pushed. Already you have to potentially deal with delivering power at a place that might be hard, door frames/walls, wires, batteries, weather, positioning and lots more. Then you need to get the signal to a chime.My previous doorbell was a chime that I wired into a switched and fused spur (I ran a 5A rated twin and earth out of a light socket into a back box with a switched socket faceplate and it has its own fuse) into the nearest lighting socket and a bell wire that ran out to the button. That was fine and simple but not too smart!I have PoE switches and my IT gear is mostly in the attic. I put a backbox with an ethernet socket in the attic and ran solid core down through the roof/wall etc to near to where the door bell is on the inside of my house and put another backbox with ethernet face plate on it. I then run a short (3m) patchlead inside some trunking and through the front door frame and into the back of a Reolink PoE powered doorbell. I also have Home Assistant running as a VM on a Proxmox box.Somewhere between those two setups sounds like where you want to go. I went for PoE because I also have UPS for my switches and other infra but wifi may be fine for you for comms but you still have to do power and I'm not a fan of battery powered door buttons but that might be a design decision for you.You mention VLANs and I really recommend that you look into them. They are a core building block of networking. However, I also get that becoming a network expert is not on everyone's score card. Then again, you are hanging around on HN and probably tending towards ... nerd!Even a simple doorbell can become pretty sodding complicated and that is why we have some people wondering what on earth all the fuss is about and others advocating to smash the looms ... sorry, doorbells.

clcaev: Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I ended up running PoE and a VLan but it was expensive and time consuming. The Reolink iPhone app is invaluable if you are disabled. Often I get medications needing a signature and being able to chat with delivery person is so very helpful.

nickthegreek: It tells me when packages are on the porch. This is the main value add for me.I’ve been debating adding a camera pointed a bit more outward, as there at least 5 2 car accidents a year at the intersection outside my house of a 1 way road without a stop sign and a 2 way narrow city road with a stop sign. At least 1 of these accidents every 2 years ends up hitting my neighbors house.

charlie-83: What types of things do you want to be able to see?

stackedinserter: I will know when you buy your first house.

tzs: What is the audience it is for?