so what do we think of those doorbell cameras ?

DdBob

DdBob

Dogue in teh desert
Personally I don't think they are worth a shite because I have yet to see they are good for anything other than posting threads on Nextdoor. I see one daily "here's a guy who was looking sketchy at my front door " and that's all you get, then you see them walk towards the street and it's done. They don't take a wide views they don't pan around, they don't get a license plate number , etc
I have yet to hear of anybody catching a person with these.

What say you?
 
I will add that my bosses brother recently purchased a fake camera at Harbor Freight which looks very real and even has a green led. It's a high tech looking type one might find on a business from a security company...I think he said he paid 10 or 15 bucks for it. Seems like that would be more useful at least as a deterrant.
I guess a Ring camera could be useful if you had a creep neighbor or something and you aimed it where they were but only if you went to court, otherwise you could potentially get taken to court if you aimed it their way for invasion of privacy :facepalm:
 
I like being able to get a notification when we're not home so if I need to call the police or a neighbor about something, I can do it while the event is happening.

It's good for documentation after an incident has occurred too. My neighbor was able to hunt down some stolen property by identifying the vehicle the thief used and later finding it, which turned out to be located not far from our neighborhood.

edit: I don't have the ring but I have some wireless cams outside
 
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We have Ring. It's nice keeping an eye on things.
Who knew we had so many raccoons in our neighborhood? I have seen a skunk and a coyote too.
6 on the fence.
20210915_073917.jpg

Large skunk.
20210915_074332.jpg


Another nice feature on Ring is the microphone. You can go live and speak with anyone within earshot of the camera.
I made some custom brackets for ours. We have the solar charging cameras. They work well.
 
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Bought a Ring about a year ago and never got around to installing it. Turns out they need to be four feet up to see faces but the my old one is only three feet up, so I need to find a non-ugly way to add another foot to the cable.
 
They have busted a few porch pirates and misbehavior from fedex and UPS guys.

I don't have one though. Actually I do, it was included with the basic security package when we built the house, but we haven't contracted with a security firm to activate that stuff and do the monthly monitoring.
 
As a lark, I started using a few old cell phones (placed in small matte black boxes) as security cameras with the Alfred Camera app. Works great, haven't felt the need to upgrade to the Ring as of yet.
 
We have one and it's very handy. It's nice to know when a package is delivered or if I'm out back and someone is at the door.
I can see if someone is at the door that I don't want to talk to. When we're out of the house we can see that our daughter got home from school.
 
It is possible we might get one or two for outside monitoring only. We have nothing yet. Being an old geezer I have an innate distrust of technology that is easily abused by outside sources (like smart speakers).
 
Denverdave said:
It is possible we might get one or two for outside monitoring only. We have nothing yet. Being an old geezer I have an innate distrust of technology that is easily abused by outside sources (like smart speakers).
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You can always ones that record to a SD card and don't hook them up to your home network. No risk there.
 
As a stand alone solution... meh.


As part of a more comprehensive system.... awesome.

I have the Ring set to notify me when a humanoid gets at least half way up the driveway (yes there's a human option to prevent it from notifying about rabbits, cats, etc), and a different sound when someone actually presses the button, including our Alexa devices saying "There's someone at the door". We can talk to the front door via the Alexa, or view and talk over the phone or the Alexa screens.

I also have two other cameras as part of our security that I can look at the driveway with.

Both the deadbolt on the front door as well as the Garage door are part of my home automation. If it's our cleaning person, or someone coming to check in on our cats, I can open the front door.

If it's a UPS delivery I don't want at the door, I can open the front door and have them deliver it. (I'm changing the garage to include a marked area for deliveries, because one time UPS set the box too close to the garage door, and I had to call someone to move the box further into the garage so I could close it :annoyed: )

There's one camera that is set to always record motion in the Foyer, so I can see people entering and leaving via the front door or the garage. There's another camera that covers the majority of the garage interior.

The rest of the cameras cover the back yard, the patio, and the side yard. I do have one portable camera that I usually put someplace when we are going on vacation, to either check in on the cats, or whomever is coming over to feed them. Our younger friends and family think it's neat and have a conversation with us. My Mother-in-Law is creeped out by it so we watch but never talk to her. :lmbo:

The back patio has a battery powered combination lock in case we're ever locked out of the house or if the power goes out.

There are also verbal commands and timers for locking the doors at night, making sure the garage door is closed, climate, turning lights on and off in different rooms, and a few routines like "Goodnight" that turns off all of the upstairs lights, turns on the TV in the bedroom, Tunes the Roku to Netflix, and illuminates the closet. :helper:

I've got a couple other things in mind including a linear actuator that can actually push the front door closed if I leave it open..... and the one I REALLY want to do is figure out some kind of track, cable system, or overhead wire to take the garbage to the street, and bring the can back up to the garage. :grin:
 
I like being able to see when someone rings the bell when I'm not home. Also my kids make super cute videos sometimes when they get home from school. Easily worth the $100ish up front and $30/yr for cloud storage.

Sent from my motorola edge plus using Tapatalk
 
tiger roach said:
They have busted a few porch pirates and misbehavior from fedex and UPS guys.

I don't have one though. Actually I do, it was included with the basic security package when we built the house, but we haven't contracted with a security firm to activate that stuff and do the monthly monitoring.
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if it's hardwired and installed by a contracted security company then it's probabably quite a bit better. I am registered with Nextdoor.com and as I said it seems everyday (I get the surrounding neighborhoods as well as my own and luckily most of these are not my neighb orhood) there is at least one or two of these posts a day, many times they show some guy walking off with an Amazon package and all you see is their backside. ;idk: with cops being the way they are now (at least here) you basically need a murder in progress for them to respond, I doubt that doorbell cameras are even on the radar for responses...probably way way down the line after missing cats or something.
 
B Valley said:
We have one and it's very handy. It's nice to know when a package is delivered or if I'm out back and someone is at the door.
I can see if someone is at the door that I don't want to talk to. When we're out of the house we can see that our daughter got home from school.
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what about getting a text for package delivery? That is what i do, everyplace where I order from has email alerts now and if it's UPS they have their own text...but USPS has notification as well. I just peek out the side window if I get a knock or I just don't answer :embarrassed:
 
baimun said:
As a stand alone solution... meh.


As part of a more comprehensive system.... awesome.

I have the Ring set to notify me when a humanoid gets at least half way up the driveway (yes there's a human option to prevent it from notifying about rabbits, cats, etc), and a different sound when someone actually presses the button, including our Alexa devices saying "There's someone at the door". We can talk to the front door via the Alexa, or view and talk over the phone or the Alexa screens.

I also have two other cameras as part of our security that I can look at the driveway with.

Both the deadbolt on the front door as well as the Garage door are part of my home automation. If it's our cleaning person, or someone coming to check in on our cats, I can open the front door.

If it's a UPS delivery I don't want at the door, I can open the front door and have them deliver it. (I'm changing the garage to include a marked area for deliveries, because one time UPS set the box too close to the garage door, and I had to call someone to move the box further into the garage so I could close it :annoyed: )

There's one camera that is set to always record motion in the Foyer, so I can see people entering and leaving via the front door or the garage. There's another camera that covers the majority of the garage interior.

The rest of the cameras cover the back yard, the patio, and the side yard. I do have one portable camera that I usually put someplace when we are going on vacation, to either check in on the cats, or whomever is coming over to feed them. Our younger friends and family think it's neat and have a conversation with us. My Mother-in-Law is creeped out by it so we watch but never talk to her. :lmbo:

The back patio has a battery powered combination lock in case we're ever locked out of the house or if the power goes out.

There are also verbal commands and timers for locking the doors at night, making sure the garage door is closed, climate, turning lights on and off in different rooms, and a few routines like "Goodnight" that turns off all of the upstairs lights, turns on the TV in the bedroom, Tunes the Roku to Netflix, and illuminates the closet. :helper:

I've got a couple other things in mind including a linear actuator that can actually push the front door closed if I leave it open..... and the one I REALLY want to do is figure out some kind of track, cable system, or overhead wire to take the garbage to the street, and bring the can back up to the garage. :grin:
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Sanyo-TV-Monitors-Scarface-3.jpg
 
Flamencology said:
Dude, you used them all the time when you ordered pizza and had it delivered to the gate.

How can you not remember this? How high were you?
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bro..yer place is an exception and needs one seeing how the main road is a 1/4 mile away and you have all the pool houses, etc to look after.
 
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