Comment on Is it time to ring the alarm on internet door cameras?

Septimaeus@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

• Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  As someone who self hosts I understand the economies of scale that would allow it to be much cheaper to make products tied to cloud service. But of course, that profit isn’t enough, and they all double dip into selling their customers’ privacy.

  source

  • Septimaeus@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I get what you’re saying, but I’m not talking about SaaS products. I’m talking about physical things on local networks that don’t need cloud access.

    For example, a common wall switch may use mqtt internally, but inexplicably railroad all commands through the online Tuya platform. The device requires a beefier ESP chip as a result. It must be capable of ethernet and async workflows for client platform auth, token refresh, and so forth. It may even cease functioning when it can’t reach the servers.

    By comparison, the strictly intranetwork equivalent has far simpler hardware that can run for months on a watch battery. And yet, the cloud-based product will basically always be cheaper, in spite of being more complex and requiring cloud infrastructure.

    So, how come? Yes economies of scale might apply to the hardware manufacturing, but certainly not to the cloud requirement. No economy scales quite like 0.

    source

    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      mqtt

      Doesn’t mqtt need a broker? (A server?) For me, putting mosquito in a docker or a pi isn’t a problem but that’s not plug and play for a regular person. Because once you introduce a server like that, it needs security patches and becomes a point of failure out of control of the iot vendor. I know I wouldn’t want to take the tech support call when the iot device doesn’t work and have to walk them through debugging a pi.

      source

      • Septimaeus@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Yes, I only used mqtt because it’s a common low-level protocol in smart appliances that’s comparatively simple. A more accessible example might have been Smart TVs being half the price of dumb ones (if you can even find them now) since the principle is the same.

        I agree that support is one of the main things cloud legitimately makes easier. Support personnel have more reliable case data, more robust central control, and so forth.

        And I think you’ll agree many smart home folks already have/had hubs and bridges (servers) floating around that obfuscate most of that complexity without the need for always-on WAN access. Remote maintenance (patches, firmware updates, etc) don’t necessarily preclude a plug and play experience.

        Whether this accounts for the cost and complexity differential consumers experience can be debated, but my point was simpler. Cloud-based products are artificially subsidized in at least two ways. The first is that they’re a loss leader facilitating platform lock-in, but the second is that rich usage data from intimate user contexts is quite valuable to the endless parade of marketing voyeurs.

        source
  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    And self hosting can also be cheaper, unless you’re a huge consumer of the service. How many people watch enough Netflix to make the sub cheaper than buying the media instead? We cancelled Disney Plus and bought the few series they like and we’ve already saved money.

    Economies of scale are absolutely a thing, but I think there’s a sweet spot where self hosting can be cheaper for a lot of people.

    source
• Quadhammer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Yeah I was thinking of doing my own cctv instead of paying someone to have access to my ring cameras. Okay now I need a raspberry pi, new cameras, a server, compatible software and some gumption. Havent got around to it

  source

  • RaoulDook@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    It’s not that hard, and you only need cameras and the raspberry pi.

    Pretty much any wifi camera that supports standards like RTSP or ONVIF can be made to work with open source camera stuff on the Pi. Also you can store the videos on the RPi’s storage (USB or SD)

    source

    • myplacedk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Great.

      1: How do I get an RTSP or ONVIF? Every time I try to buy one, the stuff that is recommended is no longer available, or practically only available in US. (I haven’t checked in months maybe years, but this is where I usually get stuck.)

      2: So I get a camera, and I have an rpi or PC-based server with storage. I can see a stream, but that’s just an extra eye. How do I turn this into a surveillance camera, so I get a notification when there’s movement, and an archive of people in the monitored area?

      source

      • RaoulDook@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        1. To get a camera with RTSP or ONVIF (video stream output) support, you look at the specifications of cameras that are available for sale. Web search engines should be helpful for this pursuit.

        2. To get the surveillance functions of your camera streams (recording, alerts, etc) you install software on the Raspberry Pi that aggregates and records / analyzes the camera feeds. Zoneminder, Shinobi, and Motioneye are some examples of that kind of software.

        source