Any time someone says an ultra cheap monitoring device is subscription free I just picture an odd man running a curio shop telling me his wares don’t cost money
The actual hardware cost of these devices is actually minimal. Basically any wifi capable microcontroller, a camera and depending on implementation some storage (or a micro sd-card holder). So that price is only cheap in comparison to existing products.
For reference, said microcontroller with basic camera can be had for like 3$ or something.
Retail pricing dictates a $3 component cost is $12. And that $3 would have to include packaging and assembly costs. And the plastic case and button. £17 is tough to hit with all that, especially if there is an SD card included or any software development to ensure any kind of security.
The 3$ isn’t a component price but also retail already.
…and do they sell data, including video, to law enforcement and insurance?
Sincerely, A person who recently was in a fender bender and was not surprised at all when Progressive shared “incident footage” from a Ring camera across the street at a location completely unrelated to the fender bender
(They ARE selling your data, folks. NEVER trust big tech to act in your best interest)
I stopped my Ring subscription but kept the doorbell camera.
It wasn’t until a year later when I was moving and the house was almost completely empty (still had internet/wifi setup) and I looked at the wifi app and saw that the ring doorbell still had significant data usage.
They were clearly still capturing my doorbell video.
They also, if you don’t turn it off, default to allowing other Amazon devices to use YOUR Ring to access the Internet.
It’s a rebranded Tuya device, and they don’t sell your data to any law enforcement or insurance.
They do however comply with Chinese laws and all your data is readily available for the Chinese government.
That hardly seems like a relevant concern to any US or other international buyers though
All your data from this device being stored on servers in China that are accessible to the Chinese government isn’t a relevant concern?
What are they gonna do? Send the Chinese police to break down my door and ship me to El Salvador? At least china is less likely to just give that info to the people who can actually commit violence against me.
Personally I don’t care which state actor it is, I don’t want any of them to have easy access to my data.
If they want it, they should work for it.
Umm… that could have just been the other driver asking the person for their footage from the camera they saw.
Not everything is a conspiracy dude, that’s commonly done after any incident lmfao.
I have cameras and plenty of people have asked me for random footage for thefts and collisions, none being a company or insurance, always the person affected…
Edit, sorry I guess once the police did, but still there’s nothing odd or weird about what happened to you.
Except it literally is a conspiracy (An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.) and actually happening. Debatably it’s legal, rightful, and not subversive. I think most people would disagree though. It’s not like people are just guessing this is happening. We know the data is being sold, to the police/government, and presumably also to other companies.
In this case, it might not involve the surveillance company selling or sharing anything. All an insurance adjuster has to do is knock on doors in the area and ask the home owners if they are willing to share any video footage they have.
And yes, people do this all the time. I work in this industry.
I really hate to stand on the side of the data hoarding conglomerates, but there’s a significant chance they were not involved in the release of that video.
Just to be clear in most places it’s not legal to have a video camera pointed at the street (or your neighbors’ houses). Not that this has been enforced at all. But if somebody wanted to pursue you legally for that they could.
What places?
Usually it’s a misinterpretation of the law, they are not meant to interfere with security and law enforcement. There’s always exceptions, usually it’s how they trigger or store the data. If it’s automatically wiped, usually no laws have been broken for example.
Don’t know about most places but regarding Germany, OP is correct. It’s verboten to film property of neighbours, public places or places shared with neighbours with your statically installed surveillance camera. You have to get consent of filming neighbours and you have to put up signs informing persons like delivery drivers that they’re getting filmed. That’s what my short search resulted in.
Where I live for instance. Like I said it isn’t enforced.
What country? I’m sure there’s exceptions that you don’t know about, the laws normally don’t disallow their use, it’s in how the data is stored.
A security system that doesn’t record, but is watched by someone would be legal anywhere for example. Just the fact that there’s one, means sweet fuck all.
Sure, but people STILL knock on the doors. They likely didn’t participate in a conspiracy to get it, sorry.
And the companies are funded by the CIA and other feds.
It’s on purpose because if the government did it outright people would get made… So instead they are killing all trust in American government by hiding behind other companies.
The same thing the government is doing with crypto and other surveillance and ai…
Listen to some Whitney webb on YouTube she’s all about talking about that stuff…
Pretty sure it’s basically project 2025… America is funding these Epstein crime family types to basically build a new world lifestyle of most aspects of life being tracked more than they already are.
From the listing:
Answer your door from anywhere in the world with this remote viewing Video Doorbell.
So I assume you’re not expected to self-host this. Which means they have to run and maintain servers. And $16/person ain’t covering the cost of this device + servers indefinitely.
It’s a rebranded Tuya doorbell. So there aren’t any subscriptions, though you will be giving them all your data.
Which means they have to run and maintain servers.
I’d bet money that it works just like similar devices from Reolink. Local recording to SD Card or NVR. If you want cloud recording then you’re paying a monthly subscription.
This device from Aldi is at a very low pricepoint but it’s specs are garbage. 480p recording? In 2025? C’mon…
Then you wouldn’t be able to “answer your door from anywhere”…
You would if you pay the subscription.
Right, but not if you didn’t. Which would be false advertising.
answer your door from anywhere*
*Monthly subscription required
Look at the listing. There is no such caveat.
The article never makes the claim that you can access it from anywhere in the world. Literally nowhere in the entire article does it ever make a comment even remotely suggesting that that’s a possibility.
you can make very cheap to maintain peer to peer solutions
you can use a STUN server to discover your public IP and use a method called UDP hole punching to open a port others can connect to. STUN servers are very cheap to run: they don’t actually handle the data; just provide a kind of handshake service in the middle for coordinating
this is often used for peer to peer video chat etc
I’m sure you can. Do you think that’s what they expect their users to do? Or that it’s something they’re going to facilitate?
there are public STUN servers: just like DNS, STUN is a fairly critical part of modern infrastructure
peer to peer real time video is a fairly solved problem. the fact that we have google/amazon/zoom/etc in the middle isn’t because it’s necessary
that having been said, STUN servers are also incredibly cheap to run… i wouldn’t consider it exactly off the cards for a company that’s selling products to support a public STUN server indefinitely… it’s not quite as simple as them having to pay tens of thousands /mo in infrastructure costs to keep the lights on: it’s more like $100/mo, which at numbers that small you’d make back in just interest on the sales you made… but i reckon it could go something like “support for 10 years” and then they release an update that lets you set your own STUN server; perhaps defaulting to a public, free one
any chance this can be done through your router/modem, where your phone app connects to external ip of router and is the “server end point” for your doorbell?
I mean it’s certainly possible, it’s just a matter of whether the doorbell firmware/software will support it. And the answer is almost always no.
Where does it say that
“From the listing”
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DDNS/P2P with local storage?
“Doorbell with a subscription” is something so utterly stupid, an absolute misdevelopment.
Not so bad when you think about it …… Ring’s subscription isn’t too expensive and it gives you cloud storage and remote access. Bring on the hatred but I’ve found it one of the few worthwhile subscriptions
I believe this is only for the European market though. Aldi has stores in the United States, but I don’t believe it’s available here.
Are these even legal in Europe (the part that is not the UK…)?
I’m no expert, but I believe this is down to the individual member states.
In my country (the NL) it is technically not allowed to film the public street with an automated camera, which effectively makes Ring and equivalents illegal to install in most places
Practically this is not really enforced though, so you see them everywhere anyway.
It’s indeed not enforced here, but on top of that the police would really like to know that you have cameras filming public space.
Not so they can do something about it, but so they know they can come to you to ask for footage if something happens.
Turn off the motion sensor and only use the push activation, that wouldn’t break the “auto” recording portion. There’s always exemptions, security and law professionals wouldn’t be left without a way to assist themselves.
I think yes, as long as it only sees within your private property.
Front yards don’t have the expectation of privacy… that applies to backyards doesn’t it?
Why wouldn’t they be? Is it illegal to record people without their permission in the EU or something? Clueless American here.
Yes, with fix mounted cameras. You can walk around and record with your phone etc though.
Stop putting bloody cameras bloody everywhere bloody hell!
Especially IoT ones controlled by massive corporations
Security researcher here. I’m assuming this to be some low cost chinese easily hacked thing.
Yup, it’s a rebranded Tuya device.
Do you have a recommendation for consumer-priced outdoor cameras/doorbells? Seems like a minefield.
I don’t have input on cameras specifically, but I have gone pretty deep into trying to understand how to maximise security and interoperability in smart home stuff, through open source control.
A starting point for the you-in-control app to use for smart devices is Home assistant. I was surprised by how easy it was to set up self hosted smart home stuff, largely because there’s loads of guides that build around home assistant. So whether a particular camera works with home assistant is a good starting search filter
Only cameras I recommend are not consumer priced :/ Axis. You do get full access, can run your own code and offline etc.
Reolink for the cameras and deny them internet access. You can tell them to record to internal SD Card and / or setup an NVR like Frigate. If you don’t want “roll your own” headaches and have the money for it then use gear from Ubiquiti and UniFi Protect.
Thanks, I’ll take a look.
So exactly the same, but a lot cheaper?
Can’t say anything about Ring unfortunately, haven’t analyzed them myself :/
Nah, they make them in the stockroom out of leftover shipping boxes and old VCRs.
£17.
how about i dont need a video doorbell and i can use my eyeballs and look out the window
Good luck doing that in my place.
i get it that tech is cool and stuff, but as ive gotten older, ive learned not to rely on it as much
Yeah, but you literally cannot see where the doorbell is at my place. It’s a physical impossibility. I live on the second floor of a two flat with an enclosed entryway. No window anywhere in the building can see who rang the doorbell. Glad that works for you.
i didn’t have a doorbell when i was still with my ex, and the only way i could see someone on the otherside was a spyhole. at my parents, i just look through the window
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I always thought it would be cool to have a doorbell that, when pressed, would flash a red light on the person standing there and then a machine voice would say ‘Target Acquired’.
No subscription fee yet. Enshittification hits everything eventually.
It uses an SD card for data. But why read an article.
It says subscription-free, writes to AN SD card, and implies no cloud storage. It could very well be þat it requires no internet connection, in which case þe only limiter to using it in þe US would be power. Eiþer it’s battery powered, or doorbell line powered (like many smart doorbell devices in þe US). Doorbell lines in þe US are 12V (or 24V - I don’t remember which exactly), but if it’s battery powered I can’t see why you couldn’t use it in þe US - batteries are þe one truly universal international standard.
It’s probably too much to hope for zwave or someþing, but even if its WiFi, it looks as if þey’re positioning it to be cloud-service-free. Looks interesting.
It’s not cloud free and requires online activation with the Tuya app. (I assume based on other Tuya WiFi devices)
Well, þat sucks.
I mean being able to “answer from anywhere” definitely implies WiFi. Whether that is required for baseline operation, I dunno.
640x360. They claim it’s 480p. Maybe oy half-interlaces? Hah
