I really regret buying into the Nest Cam ecosystem. I have 3 now. Sure, it's convenient to view things remotely, but I also run a NAS and I hate not having the option to record locally or serve the camera streams myself instead of relying on Nest's service or paying an outrageous price for recording.
The only reason I went with them in the first place is that they have a very good picture and viewing range.
A question more out of unfamiliarity more than anything, but is the market for at-home security cameras really that large? Then to overlap that with the market that can afford to pay the $10+/month to support it, I would guess you run kind of low on customers?
I mean I guess not since the product is coming to market -- I just personally don't know of anyone who uses one.
DIY home security is definitely a large market. Every house in America has some form of subscription-based home security system mostly consisting of door sensors and a monitoring service. If home security startups can make a good-enough product that lets users monitor their own homes, they can charge a much smaller fee and still be more useful than companies like ADT.
I see a lot of security system stickers on windows and doors, but I don't know anyone who actually has the subscription. Mostly the stickers are just marketing, I think.
I would not underestimate it. My immediate thought is "security moms" -- suburban mothers whose overarching priority is security (they came out pretty strongly for Bush in 2004, IIRC, which is when the name was coined). A similar demographic makes up a substantial segment of the SUV market.
It's clearly marketed to a not-technically-skilled market (the magnet is pretty brilliant - tool-free installation, if you can find a bit of metal) which probably intersects the above market to a certain extend.
> It's clearly marketed to a not-technically-skilled market
I'm not sure that is entirely true. I know of several people who work in IT and use them. Any decent outdoor IP camera is going to cost at least $100 and $10/month is worth the convenience for some people.
My own experience with cameras was using a foscam IP camera as a baby monitor a few years ago. Setup was fine but the UI was horrible - very slow and filled with lag.
> My immediate thought is "security moms" ... voted for Bush... substantial segment of the SUV market.
I think the market extends beyond a stereotype. None of the other people I mentioned above voted for Bush or even have kids. Personally, I've been looking for an outdoor camera to deter the random kids we have had try to break into a hot tub in our yard and to deter someone breaking into a car parked outside. I don't have time these days to mess around with a self hosted solution so this is a potential option.
A broader question I've had as I've been looking into these is: are there any low-cost alternative is that do NOT involve the cloud? I really don't want to send video from inside and outside my home across the Internet. I don't mind that I can't check it remotely. I'm more interested in giving my wife the ability to see what's outside without spending an arm and a leg or letting it go out onto the Internet.
The smartphone software that came with the camera will frequently lock up, so it's nearly impossible to tell whether our baby is actually sleeping quietly or the image has just frozen. Ditto for the browser-based cloud garbage. I've resorted to just accessing the feed directly (via http://192.168.1.xx/video.cgi, which is a streaming jpeg) but that tends to lock up as well.
That has been my experience with foscam IP cameras as well. The UI was horrible, they routinely lost the static IP's I had assigned, and it reached the territory of being something that caused more stress than it was worth. The only appeal of Nest for me would be a potentially more reliable experience.
Ive owned both dlink and a dropcams. The dlink cameras are absolute shit. Often disconnecting from wifi. Unable to handle the bandwidth to upload good quality video. Firmware and software along with admin web panel is absolute junk, poorly translated as if foreign contractors made it as hasty as they could. Dlink cameras are also cheap plastic crap and easily topple over. Dropcam has worked great for me even with Nest taking over. I have a server that I connected hackable cameras to, but multiple 1080p streams is not the easiest to handle affordably. As a hacker, even dropcam offers a pretty decently priced service for peace of mind. Dont get dlink tho whatever you do.
EDIT: I should mention I even bought the mydlink Camera Video Recorder (DNR-202L) and what a heap of shit. Clogged up my LAN somehow, despite the fact that dropcams have 1080p and don't have any effect. Cameras often lost connection to the DNR-202, and the quality that it could support had to be severely downgraded. D-links solutions are atrocious. Please, save yourself the money and time. The dlink stuff is cheap for a reason -- and well, not all of it is even cheap. I bought the wide angle rotating cam and it ran me $200. And it was just as terrible as the little dinky $50 dlink cameras. Ugh.
I've used Foscam's for wildlife watching round our house. they have outdoor cameras that seem pretty robust and aren't too expensive, although their software is a bit basic. They work reasonbly over wireless or Powerline networking.
To overcome the software problems we use Sighthound to do the image recognition + storage. It's a local install on a PC/Mac no cloud needed.
One trick to note is that newer Foscam's send some telemetry stuff to the cloud but that's easily blocked with an outbound firewall rule.
There are lots of inexpensive ip cameras on the market. I use several to watch my animals from work.
There's a specification called ONVIF that most of them more-or-less implement that allows applications to discover cameras features like how to get the video stream and PTZ.
I use a Foscam 8921, which is a pan-tilt 720p camera and a Crenova something which is a 720 fixed dome. The Crenova is flaky, dropping frames but that may be because of the cable.
The foscam was ~$70 and the crenova was ~$40.
The 8921 is technically a indoor-only camera but it's lived in my chicken coop for over a year without an issue. It's away from rain but not hot and cold temperatures and dust. So it would probably work on a sheltered porch.
As far as software goes you can use an android app called "Onvifer" that discovers onvif cameras and let you view and control them. Or you can use zoneminder if you have lots of free time ;). I wasn't too happy with what I could find so I put together some hacks with ffmpeg, a setup that is slowly evolving into a custom video surveillance system.
I keep my cameras on a separate network without internet access. They all run linux and have open telnet ports. I treat them as hostile outsiders and only allow access from one machine that sucks video out of them but it's up to how paranoid you want to be.
Anyway in conclusion there are definitely low-cost options that don't involve the cloud.
EDIT: Also amazon sucks. You have no idea what you're getting when order from them with these types of products. Be prepared to return things.
I've cobbled together a solution involving D-Link cameras and a fork of motion[0], plus some scripts to move files around, that works really well for me. Remote access is handled by running a VPN server, but that's a general infrastructure thing, not anything specific to the cameras.
The D-Link cameras, at least the ones I use, all have a cloud service available, but they work just fine if you put them on a separate network that isn't able to access the internet. They all present what they see as an MJPEG stream that motion can consume, plus they have a built in web server to do the configuration.
Yes, there are other inexpensive options that are not cloud-based? As other users mentioned you could get a cheap ONVIF-compatible camera from Dahua or Hikvision for around $100. This can be paired with an inexpensive VMS. Check out http://www.ipconfigure.com/products/orchid - They provide a Free community edition of Orchid that runs on Raspberry Pi, or $69 per camera if you want to run on your own server/pc (Linux/Windows).
I gave my experience and even provided screenshots but it appears that the above commenter downvoted me for having a conflicting opinion. Downvotes are supposed to be used for offtopic or malignant comments. I hope we can get a reply so I can see the shortcomings of dropcams -- because so far they've worked very well for me, but little do I know, maybe there are some real big issues that are just not in my regular routine use cases.
Thanks, I didn't know that, I am mistaken then. I do wonder who downvoted me for providing objective information even if it is in support of a product from a company that has gone to shit internally. I agree that the CEO who recently got dumped was a real piece of work, and that the culture in the company became toxic. But Dropcam is still decent, can't really screw something up too badly that worked well to begin with. It's still something that I find worth it because its one less thing to worry about. I love my cats and it helps me watch them when I am on vacation or away.
I don't have permissions to downvote at all, I think you need a certain karma for that?
I genuinely did ask because I wanted to know. Even though my experience has been great, if there are say security problems I wasn't aware of or really poor customer service, I'd be keen to hear! (I'm considering buying more and would very much rather not if it's not that great, I'm a very new customer)
I bought the camera thinking (wrongly) that image quality was 90% of what I cared about. It does have a good image, wide field of view, and reasonable night-vision mode. But:
• Fundamentally idiotic design - can't save video except to ridiculously overpriced Nest cloud service.
• Browser UI requires Adobe Flash.
• Camera software (on both iOS and in browser) eventually will stall, showing what seems to be a live image but is actually a still image from when it crashed hours ago.
• Other times, camera view will gradually drift behind, so that what you see is actually several minutes behind real-time.
• You can set time zone, but only for regions (not many) that Nest marketing has approved, so when you take the camera on travels, its several hours off. E.g. I took it to Japan but the closest time zone I could set it to was Saudi Arabia. (WTF is wrong with these people? How is it possible to decide on that outcome when you have written a software UI to set the fucking time zone?)
• Camera hardware unit crashes every once in a while and becomes unresponsive until power yanked / rebooted.
• Completely unintelligent about returning to a previous location -- you have to do the weird bluetooth-and-QR-code dance every single time you bring the camera back home.
• If you don't sign up for the stupid $300/year cloud service, then you get ads for it in the UI.
• Die Nest, die die die die die. (Yes, I root for them to go out of business, even though that would mean that my stupid cloud-dependent camera would cease working entirely...)
To give a counter perspective:
I have two of the old dropcams before Nest took over and released the Nestcam. The old dropcams are basically the same as the new nestcams except they lack the improved IR. They work flawlessly with Nest's new mobile apps (I have iPad and Samsung Galaxy Note 5.) Also the new web app works great as well. The web app is designed to scale on any screen, and looks a bit like it uses mobile UI, but it works fine so I don't think it's an issue. The only thing I've seen change, is that the old dropcam allowed sharing of cameras, via an invite list. Whereas now, with Nest, you have to either do fully public via a url, or totally private. Nest also enabled full 1080 whereas Dropcam had only 720 except when zooming in on a specific area, with "auto-enhance." (This made the camera only record a smaller FOV which sucked.) So they have made improvement, if only one.
There is also Nest Aware which can let you enable alerts/emails that you get when activity/motion/sound happens when you are gone (it will use your phone or other devices to detect when you leave.) You can also disable the cameras when you are home, if you are one of those paranoid people.
I am not paid or affiliated with Nest at all. I just have two cameras that I use mainly to watch my two cats. They have been great for my use. I have gigabit internet. I have not had any issues.
I used to be a big fan of Nest. I've owned the thermostat, protect, Dropcam Pro, and a Nest Cam. This product announcement leaves me very underwhelmed.
Since Nest took stewardship of the Dropcam products, there has been a noticeable decline in quality. The Nest App is not as fully featured as the Dropcam one was previously, and I seem to be having more and more connectivity issues, despite having improved Internet connectivity.
There isn't anything compelling about this new product that will lead me to "upgrade". One of my cameras is already pointed outdoors and it gets the job done for monitoring my entrances.
> The magnetic base attachment potentially makes the Nest Cam Outdoor very easy to steal, but Nest claims the screwed-in, permanently attached power cord will prevent people from walking away with your $200 camera.
I use the UVC Micro to watch an indoor entryway. Video quality is satisfactory but nothing to write home about. Hardware design is nice. Considered the NVR but went with a small Linux VM instead.
I use the Unifi NVR software[0] which ships with their hardware NVRs, running on a Debian VM within my home network. This works nicely with their iOS app[1].
The new UVC-G3[2] is rated for outdoor use, but appears to be preorder-only for now[3].
This sounds like what I need. I was going to use a r-pi to run a small server to connect other security things to outside clients, but I guess I'll just build a box running debian and load it with a bunch of storage to hold video recording.
that is ideal! I guess their reseller's would not appreciate having that link listed along side their names. I understand the reseller model but it seems an ancient practice.
For products of some sophistication, OEMs still use value-added resellers (VARs) because they want to address a larger market than those that can setup Linux VMs, configure advanced firewall rules, etc. Many businesses also want some sort of local support if something goes wrong.
I'm partial to the Hikvision 4MP IP cameras and Blue Iris dvr software. What is great about Blue Iris is you can mix and match IP camera from different OEMs and it doesn't require any plug-ins to view live streams or recorded footage from any web browser. The only issue I've been running into is having too many 2k res cameras at 20+ FPS eats up a lot of CPU on DVR PC. Don't know if the Unifi DVR software is better optimized or if it only works with Unifi gear.
Magnetic mount only? Access trough cloud service? $200? Seems like something that should be marketed in TV Shop shows. Anyway I highly recommend https://zoneminder.com/ even old laptop with built in camera can be decent playground for it then buy some cheap Chinese IP cameras with WiFi and make separate VLAN for them on router cut off from internet access (some of those cameras are doing home ping back or even sending images to Chinese servers). For $200 you can buy 2 to 4 of them, old lappy and you're done.
I don't think the Nest cameras (or others like them) are marketed at the same people who want* to set up their own VLANs, install software onto old laptops, and find a bespoke way to monitor the whole thing remotely.
* Want meaning 'not just technically capable, but who want to expend the time to set up & maintain this'
Does it require a cloud service to operate? Will it work if I put it on a WiFi network that can't access the internet? Does it present an MJPEG stream that I can consume with other tools to do recording and monitoring locally?
My current cameras meet all this criteria. They've got a cloud service available, but they work just fine even if they are unable to phone home.
Can anyone explain the value of a magnetic mount when the power cable has to be screwed down? It's not like you need to be able to quickly detach and move the camera, and it could still look nice and sufficiently "Nest-y" with a mechanical base. Am I missing something?
Would've been nice if they'd made a battery-powered one. I've a couple of Netgear Arlo cameras and am a big fan. They're wireless and battery powered and I was pretty dubious about the claimed battery life. However I've now had them for four months and they're still showing as 3/4 full.
https://www.arlo.com/
I don't know, after seeing the video [1] from Brad Fitzpatrick about his experience with Nest products, I'm not sure I'd ever consider them.
Side note: if you watched the season premiere of Mr. Robot last night, there was a scene that reminded me of Brad's video (I'll say no more for fear of spoilers)
One of the biggest issues with Nest is that they pretend to be a serious company that takes cares of your home needs (security/monitoring, fire & gas prevention and heating) but their products are toy like in that respect.
However I own 3 cameras and the fire alarm. The fire alarm, is worthless, I eventually disconnected it given the large amount of false positives.
Then there are the cameras. I travel a lot so wanted a system that allowed me to monitor my home remotely for security purposes. However, I soon found out they are pretty much gimmick and any burglar will by-pass their security. If you own a nest cam, be aware that if the cam is disconnected from your Wifi, it will take 30 MINUTES FOR NEST TO NOTIFY YOU.
What did I learned? Burglars will power off the electricity in you house upon entry - to prevent alarms etc from sounding. This will bring you Wifi and your cameras down. Don't worry, 30 minutes later, or approximately 20 minutes after burglars have left, you'll know.
You'll also only be able to set notifications via email and push, so if you are sleeping you're out of luck. I was thinking of hacking a system with Twilio to do an automated call upon the email being received, but after finding out that it would take 30 minutes to even be notified I gave up.
Nest is cool, easy to setup and the cameras look nice, but they are toys. Other products might be hard to setup, look uglier but work. I'd rather they did both, but if I have to chose between ugly and works, and beautiful but doesn't - i'll take the first.
This is what most security companies do if they are any good. A battery backup with cell connection. Can easily replicate it yourself using a mobile hotspot on an old phone. Along with some usb battery packs. Pretty cheap and easy to make a solution. (Under $50)
The premise is that having this on the cloud is supposed to make it easier and not require this complex setups. For instance, not needing a recording station in the house that can be stolen or a Telco chipset with an alternative power source.
If you do this on the cloud, you can call from a cloud provider and record outside the house. Nest could easily call you from Twilio after 1 minute of being disconnected and it will achieve the same.
Dropcam isnt a security cam. Its for checking on cats or kids. If you need security UPS then you can rig up a battery pack and a backup mobile hotspot with an old phone. I dont see how Nest could reproduce this anyways without adding a simcard and gsm to their cams.
It would require me to back-up the ISP router, the Apple Wifi router and 3 cameras - so 5 UPS. Yet even if I did that, given that my Internet connection comes via fiber, if they cut the Fiber, I am still out-of-luck.
It's as if an alarm company said, we will notify you after 30 minutes if someone comes into you house.
74 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 144 ms ] threadAnyone who buys this is nuts.
The only reason I went with them in the first place is that they have a very good picture and viewing range.
I've deployed them for my uncle at some of his rental properties in less desirable parts of town for the security of his tenants.
I mean I guess not since the product is coming to market -- I just personally don't know of anyone who uses one.
It's clearly marketed to a not-technically-skilled market (the magnet is pretty brilliant - tool-free installation, if you can find a bit of metal) which probably intersects the above market to a certain extend.
I'm not sure that is entirely true. I know of several people who work in IT and use them. Any decent outdoor IP camera is going to cost at least $100 and $10/month is worth the convenience for some people.
My own experience with cameras was using a foscam IP camera as a baby monitor a few years ago. Setup was fine but the UI was horrible - very slow and filled with lag.
> My immediate thought is "security moms" ... voted for Bush... substantial segment of the SUV market.
I think the market extends beyond a stereotype. None of the other people I mentioned above voted for Bush or even have kids. Personally, I've been looking for an outdoor camera to deter the random kids we have had try to break into a hot tub in our yard and to deter someone breaking into a car parked outside. I don't have time these days to mess around with a self hosted solution so this is a potential option.
The smartphone software that came with the camera will frequently lock up, so it's nearly impossible to tell whether our baby is actually sleeping quietly or the image has just frozen. Ditto for the browser-based cloud garbage. I've resorted to just accessing the feed directly (via http://192.168.1.xx/video.cgi, which is a streaming jpeg) but that tends to lock up as well.
EDIT: I should mention I even bought the mydlink Camera Video Recorder (DNR-202L) and what a heap of shit. Clogged up my LAN somehow, despite the fact that dropcams have 1080p and don't have any effect. Cameras often lost connection to the DNR-202, and the quality that it could support had to be severely downgraded. D-links solutions are atrocious. Please, save yourself the money and time. The dlink stuff is cheap for a reason -- and well, not all of it is even cheap. I bought the wide angle rotating cam and it ran me $200. And it was just as terrible as the little dinky $50 dlink cameras. Ugh.
To overcome the software problems we use Sighthound to do the image recognition + storage. It's a local install on a PC/Mac no cloud needed.
One trick to note is that newer Foscam's send some telemetry stuff to the cloud but that's easily blocked with an outbound firewall rule.
There's a specification called ONVIF that most of them more-or-less implement that allows applications to discover cameras features like how to get the video stream and PTZ.
I use a Foscam 8921, which is a pan-tilt 720p camera and a Crenova something which is a 720 fixed dome. The Crenova is flaky, dropping frames but that may be because of the cable.
The foscam was ~$70 and the crenova was ~$40.
The 8921 is technically a indoor-only camera but it's lived in my chicken coop for over a year without an issue. It's away from rain but not hot and cold temperatures and dust. So it would probably work on a sheltered porch.
As far as software goes you can use an android app called "Onvifer" that discovers onvif cameras and let you view and control them. Or you can use zoneminder if you have lots of free time ;). I wasn't too happy with what I could find so I put together some hacks with ffmpeg, a setup that is slowly evolving into a custom video surveillance system.
I keep my cameras on a separate network without internet access. They all run linux and have open telnet ports. I treat them as hostile outsiders and only allow access from one machine that sucks video out of them but it's up to how paranoid you want to be.
Anyway in conclusion there are definitely low-cost options that don't involve the cloud.
EDIT: Also amazon sucks. You have no idea what you're getting when order from them with these types of products. Be prepared to return things.
http://deercam.tumblr.com/about/
The cam lasted about a year out there until it quit working after an electrical storm. It lived through a lot of rain, wind, and Alabama humidity.
That said, the subscription prices are rather insane.
The D-Link cameras, at least the ones I use, all have a cloud service available, but they work just fine if you put them on a separate network that isn't able to access the internet. They all present what they see as an MJPEG stream that motion can consume, plus they have a built in web server to do the configuration.
[0] https://github.com/Mr-Dave/motion
http://elinux.org/RPi-Cam-Web-Interface
It's so horrible, in more ways than I would have imagined that a camera could possibly suck, that it's completely redefined my understanding of awful.
It's caused me to rethink many other purchases way outside of the category, from blenders to TVs to cars.
Absolutely don't ever buy a Nest product, unless your aim is to do experimental anitmaterialism therapy.
I may be mistaken, but I don't think you can downvote replies to your comments.
I genuinely did ask because I wanted to know. Even though my experience has been great, if there are say security problems I wasn't aware of or really poor customer service, I'd be keen to hear! (I'm considering buying more and would very much rather not if it's not that great, I'm a very new customer)
• Fundamentally idiotic design - can't save video except to ridiculously overpriced Nest cloud service.
• Browser UI requires Adobe Flash.
• Camera software (on both iOS and in browser) eventually will stall, showing what seems to be a live image but is actually a still image from when it crashed hours ago.
• Other times, camera view will gradually drift behind, so that what you see is actually several minutes behind real-time.
• You can set time zone, but only for regions (not many) that Nest marketing has approved, so when you take the camera on travels, its several hours off. E.g. I took it to Japan but the closest time zone I could set it to was Saudi Arabia. (WTF is wrong with these people? How is it possible to decide on that outcome when you have written a software UI to set the fucking time zone?)
• Camera hardware unit crashes every once in a while and becomes unresponsive until power yanked / rebooted.
• Completely unintelligent about returning to a previous location -- you have to do the weird bluetooth-and-QR-code dance every single time you bring the camera back home.
• If you don't sign up for the stupid $300/year cloud service, then you get ads for it in the UI.
• Die Nest, die die die die die. (Yes, I root for them to go out of business, even though that would mean that my stupid cloud-dependent camera would cease working entirely...)
There is also Nest Aware which can let you enable alerts/emails that you get when activity/motion/sound happens when you are gone (it will use your phone or other devices to detect when you leave.) You can also disable the cameras when you are home, if you are one of those paranoid people.
I am not paid or affiliated with Nest at all. I just have two cameras that I use mainly to watch my two cats. They have been great for my use. I have gigabit internet. I have not had any issues.
You know you have a problem when you have to put a wifi access point next to the camera to get it to stay online.
Since Nest took stewardship of the Dropcam products, there has been a noticeable decline in quality. The Nest App is not as fully featured as the Dropcam one was previously, and I seem to be having more and more connectivity issues, despite having improved Internet connectivity.
There isn't anything compelling about this new product that will lead me to "upgrade". One of my cameras is already pointed outdoors and it gets the job done for monitoring my entrances.
Oh, there's a reason for that. Fadell's leadership was so horrible that a lot of the dropcam team ended up quitting after being acqui-hired.
Nooooooope.
stating that the fact the thief will be on video is IMO a stronger deterrent if there's one at all.
If the camera can be knocked off the base and left hanging in a position that can't see anything, then the camera is useless.
https://www.ubnt.com/unifi-video/unifi-video-camera-g3/
(Not affiliated)
The new UVC-G3[2] is rated for outdoor use, but appears to be preorder-only for now[3].
[0] https://www.ubnt.com/download/unifi-video/unifi-nvr
[1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/unifi-video/id964967062?mt=8
[2] https://www.ubnt.com/unifi-video/unifi-video-camera-g3/
[3] http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1244761-REG
* Want meaning 'not just technically capable, but who want to expend the time to set up & maintain this'
[0] http://www.lavrsen.dk/foswiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHome
My current cameras meet all this criteria. They've got a cloud service available, but they work just fine even if they are unable to phone home.
I have to recharge my Homeboy about once every two months.
https://www.homeboy.com/
Side note: if you watched the season premiere of Mr. Robot last night, there was a scene that reminded me of Brad's video (I'll say no more for fear of spoilers)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpsMkLaEiOY
However I own 3 cameras and the fire alarm. The fire alarm, is worthless, I eventually disconnected it given the large amount of false positives. Then there are the cameras. I travel a lot so wanted a system that allowed me to monitor my home remotely for security purposes. However, I soon found out they are pretty much gimmick and any burglar will by-pass their security. If you own a nest cam, be aware that if the cam is disconnected from your Wifi, it will take 30 MINUTES FOR NEST TO NOTIFY YOU.
What did I learned? Burglars will power off the electricity in you house upon entry - to prevent alarms etc from sounding. This will bring you Wifi and your cameras down. Don't worry, 30 minutes later, or approximately 20 minutes after burglars have left, you'll know.
You'll also only be able to set notifications via email and push, so if you are sleeping you're out of luck. I was thinking of hacking a system with Twilio to do an automated call upon the email being received, but after finding out that it would take 30 minutes to even be notified I gave up.
Nest is cool, easy to setup and the cameras look nice, but they are toys. Other products might be hard to setup, look uglier but work. I'd rather they did both, but if I have to chose between ugly and works, and beautiful but doesn't - i'll take the first.
If you do this on the cloud, you can call from a cloud provider and record outside the house. Nest could easily call you from Twilio after 1 minute of being disconnected and it will achieve the same.
It's as if an alarm company said, we will notify you after 30 minutes if someone comes into you house.