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mrb 18 hours ago [-]
I am super sensitive to over engineering. For my doorbell I wanted something that lets me play a custom bell sound. You would be surprised that 99% of the solutions out there are complete over engineered stacks that depend on wifi devices, Internet access, connecting to various cloud services... So I built my own: a basic wireless button sends a radio 433 MHz signal, and my receiver is plugged inside the house and triggers an off-the-shelf playback PCB module that reads an MP3 off an SD card and plays it on a speaker wired to the module. No Wifi, no Internet, no cloud, no apps. And the rare times I want to change the sound, I update the MP3 on the SD card.
Edit: there are very, very few products on the market designed as simply as this, just an R/F signal triggering local playback. I think the only commercial doorbells designed like this I found were an out-of-stock product, and a UK device designed for 230V that would have required a bulky adapter to work for me in the US.
sdcfgy 16 hours ago [-]
As a former embedded systems engineer, my door bell is two long bits of wire, a bell, a push button and two C cells.
My light switches are similarly complicated.
SwtCyber 16 hours ago [-]
Two wires and two C cells? Careful, someone is going to put a subscription layer in front of that
bigiain 15 hours ago [-]
"Only works with Juicero brand C cells."
dreamcompiler 9 hours ago [-]
I can squeeze off-brand C cells by hand.
deepsun 6 hours ago [-]
I would want my light switches to be off when I click a special button at my bed, so when I want to bed I "turn off everything, and make sure garage is closed". Unfortunately two wires don't work there.
reaperducer 14 hours ago [-]
As a former embedded systems engineer, my door bell is two long bits of wire, a bell, a push button and two C cells.
I know a guy who lives is a 1700's-era house. His is a bell, a pulley, and a string.
donandon 14 hours ago [-]
Which part of that system is connected to wifi? I guess kinetic energy from the bell can be enough to send a zibee message
abc123abc123 12 hours ago [-]
Nonsense, complete over engineering. I have a door, and people knock on it.
shakna 12 hours ago [-]
I have an overengineered wifi doorbell, and I've yet to have a delivery where it was used over knocking on wood.
al_borland 10 hours ago [-]
I haven’t had a delivery person knock in quite a long time. Package deliveries haven’t knocked in close to 20 years. I’ve even noticed DoorDash drivers don’t even knock anymore, they awkwardly stand in front of the porch and try texting. I now open the door as they are walking up to the porch to avoid that. I don’t know if it’s a policy or some kind of shared anxiety, but I find it really weird.
darrylb42 8 hours ago [-]
I had one food delivery driver call me while standing in the middle of the street. Seemed like he was afraid to approach and knock or ring. So strange.
triceratops 8 hours ago [-]
Do you perhaps live in a place where people answer the door with a gun in their hand?
fwip 6 hours ago [-]
Some people get really weird if you approach their house in a way they don't like. I imagine if that happens a few times to you as a delivery driver, you might be more cautious.
al_borland 5 hours ago [-]
I know people like this, but would assume if they ordered a delivery that the person would be expected and not a cause of alarm. If someone can’t handle a person coming to their door, they shouldn’t be allowed to use delivery services.
cube00 3 hours ago [-]
> would assume if they ordered a delivery that the person would be expected and not a cause of alarm
The problem is they've probably gone to the wrong house before and met an owner who got defensive.
dawnerd 11 hours ago [-]
Seriously. Everyone that id want to actually press the button just pounds on the door. The door to door people in particular have figured out they can’t be easily told off.
abyssin 11 hours ago [-]
I used to live in a small rural city, in a shared house where the door was never locked. On market day, there would be this woman coming in to do her weekly laundry. I was never given the key to that house.
opan 15 hours ago [-]
Is it still easy to get C cells? I probably would've used an 18650 or some AAs.
simonjgreen 14 hours ago [-]
Current delivery and longevity still put C and D cells over AAs, that’s the main reason they are/were common in doorbells. And while 18650s would be equivalent to a C, they would require a charger most people don’t own already, as well as the usual liion safety issues. I’ve heard horrors of folks putting 18650s in to nimh chargers with sprung terminals :/
As for availability, they are certainly very obtainable where I am in UK. Shops and Amazon etc have them.
sdcfgy 14 hours ago [-]
No issues here in UK. 18650s have high self-discharge rate so are useless for standby applications. AA's are, well, AA's. So you'd have to replace them more often. Not what you want to happen with a door bell.
dreamcompiler 9 hours ago [-]
I use adapters for AA cells. It's just a plastic tube the size of a C cell that you snap an AA into. I have to replace them more often but I use rechargeable AA cells so waste is not an issue.
raverbashing 13 hours ago [-]
Wow two wires? Sometimes people could make do with only one!
anal_reactor 14 hours ago [-]
Nah, for light switches I'm all-in Philips Hue because it's both pretty and convenient. Plus LEDs synchronized with that via House Assistant.
everdrive 10 hours ago [-]
Almost any smart product these days starts with a couple of basic assumptions:
- All consumers own smartphones and like using them
- Consumers have no idea how their home networking works
- Consumers could not move a file from their computer to an SD card (or something similar)
So, everything is done by the app: you install the app, the smart device broadcasts a wifi network. This allows you to use your phone to give the smart device your wifi password. Then the remote servers handle everything else.
There's nothing in between. You're either an actual engineer, as mrb describes, or you're just beholden to cloud services that are terrible and also are guaranteed to disappear in 0-3 years.
rtkwe 9 hours ago [-]
There are some intermediates but they're often not that well supported. I have a door bell with a traditional app but it also exposes a normal IP camera stream and has a community (I assume) home assistant integration that lets me perform actions when one of the doorbells not connected directly to a chime trigger.
lukeify 17 hours ago [-]
You are super-sensitive to over-engineering, so you over-engineered your requirements and ultimately your end product, just in a different methodology and framework.
mrb 15 hours ago [-]
The requirements are not over engineered. They are what they are. Wireless and configurable chime. They are fixed parameters.
But my implementation of these requirements is absolutely not over engineered. I argue it is the simplest and most reliable it could be done.
4 hours ago [-]
whstl 15 hours ago [-]
“I was only following the requirements” at this point must be the Nurnberg defence of over engineering.
If it quacks like a duck, doesn’t matter what you call it: it was over engineering.
mrb 15 hours ago [-]
It would be over engineered if one could design a system providing similar functionality using less hardware and less software.
I challenge you to design a wireless doorbell that has a user-configurable chime, in a way that uses less software or less hardware than mine. You couldn't.
In fact, if you did market research like me you would find that 99% of similar products have vastly more complex hardware or software or services being them. They break when there is no Internet. Some work without Internet but don't work when the local Wi-Fi is non functional. They don't immediately get back online after a power outage. They need regular software updates during which the chime can't play. These are over engineered things. Not my product, because mine has none of this complexity or faults.
whstl 14 hours ago [-]
Challenge accepted: "Similar functionality" here is the same doorbells that have existed for over a century. Done. :)
If the requirements and constraints come from you, then saying "those are the requirements" doesn't settle anything. And is the same excuse people use for the over-engineered solutions you don't seem to like.
It is over-engineering compared to a regular doorbell, period.
mrb 13 hours ago [-]
You completely missed the part that the chime needs to be user-configurable, ie. play a custom MP3 file.
You don't provide that.
whstl 12 hours ago [-]
I didn't miss it. I have acknowledged the requirements and have challenged them.
What I am stating is that "it was in the requirements" is not a "get out of jail card" when someone says it's over-engineered.
All I'm saying is that it's a very comfortable position to abstract away personal responsibility and say "I'm not over-engineering, that's what X wants", but that's exactly how we get the over-engineered Linux-plus-wi-fi doorbells.
mrb 7 hours ago [-]
You still fail my challenge: design a wireless doorbell that has a user-configurable chime (eg. MP3 file provided by user), in a way that uses less software or less hardware than mine. You couldn't.
Then I want you to justify why commercial products offering this feature have 10-100 times more code or 10 times more complex hardware just to do what my doorbell does :-)
whstl 7 hours ago [-]
And you're still failing the challenge of understanding my point, over and over.
The person who gave an opinion about whether this is overengineered or not was Lukeify, not me:
> You are super-sensitive to over-engineering, so you over-engineered your requirements and ultimately your end product, just in a different methodology and framework.
It's still over-engineering to a lot of people, including lukeify, regardless of there existing something worse, regardless of any "it was the requirements" defence.
Over-engineering something is fine. Especially a personal project.
Just own it.
anon7000 6 hours ago [-]
This is was a really unproductive thread to read. As an observer, gotta say I don’t agree with your point. Custom chimes and not having a wire are both extremely reasonable requirements to follow.
What if the default chime triggers some PTSD? (Probably doesn’t, but it could happen!) What if the landlord doesn’t want you to drill a hole through the side of your house and it doesn’t come with a doorbell?
The solution isn’t “over engineered” it’s just “engineered” (not an off the shelf product)
whstl 6 hours ago [-]
> Custom chimes and not having a wire are both extremely reasonable requirements to follow.
I never said otherwise?
Perhaps it was unproductive because you’re assuming I’m making a point while I’m not?
My point was entirely that other people can call this “over engineered” due to feature creep.
The person who called it over engineered in the first place wasn’t me.
I appreciate that you and other people seem to want to discuss doorbells, and someone else seems to want to discuss christmas lights, but I am not really interested in that.
I am arguing a general point (“feature creep can lead to overengineering”), not this specific product.
trial3 11 hours ago [-]
you’ve successfully over-engineered the whimsy and joy out of their original idea
whstl 11 hours ago [-]
I never claimed I wasn't over-engineering the line of thought, though. :)
I'm perfectly fine with people having fun or over-engineering stuff, I'm just pointing out that it's still over-engineered in the end. Which is 100% fine!
close04 10 hours ago [-]
> "it was in the requirements" is not a "get out of jail card"
How do you define objectively as an engineer if "play MP3" is too much? A doorbell is a sound outputting device only, being able to select the sound seems like a reasonable extension. Is a digital doorbell overengineered when analog electric ones worked just fine for almost 2 centuries? Or were these overengineered when mechanical doorbells worked for many more centuries before? What if I attach a light to the doorbell, is that over engineering?
Or are you just fighting to save face after missing the point completely and making that tasteless Nurnberg trial parallel?
buran77 11 hours ago [-]
Don't overthink it. If you judge the engineering then you look at how the implementation reflects the requirements, not whether the requirements are good.
Over-engineered simply means there is much more in that implementation than the baseline needed to tick off the requirements.
whstl 11 hours ago [-]
I disagree. IMO this mindset is not how you make good engineering or good products.
As an engineer (the traditional kind), I don't really appreciate nor can I afford the "not my problem" attitude of doing engineering in a vacuum, because in the end it's my responsibility.
buran77 10 hours ago [-]
> As an engineer (the traditional kind)
Isn't everybody? Your whole case rests on the insistence that OP's core requirement is no good. Not for any objective engineering reasons, just because you think so.
I have a simple question that any engineer can answer in a heartbeat. Is a Christmas tree light installation with a bunch of series connected incandescent lights (I'm talking literally one of those classic Christmas lights set with absolutely no extra components or complexity beyond wires, bulbs, and plug) over engineered? Could you do it with even less engineering?
whstl 9 hours ago [-]
> Your whole case rests on the insistence that OP's core requirement is no good
I never said it wasn't good.
I just said it led to over-engineering a doorbell.
"Good" or "bad" are words you're putting in my mouth.
buran77 9 hours ago [-]
Now you're trying to weasel out of this (whstl out?).
I was trying to be diplomatic and use "good/bad" as shorthand for "should be part of a well engineered (not over/under) product or not". You don't like it, then let me use what you actually said: engineers who implement all the requirements given to them are like the Nazi soldiers who executed the people they were ordered to execute. Neither good nor bad, just over executing, right?
I asked you a question because it was an easy way to apply your logic on something concrete, so you can see that if it fails on something so simple, maybe it's not actually useful at all. You pretended not to see it like a fine engineer with responsibilities. Tripped on a Christmas light.
whstl 8 hours ago [-]
I am also trying to be diplomatic and I would like for a more charitable interpretation of my messages.
My whole point is that "something being in the requirements" is not a shield against something being considered "over engineering" by others. There's nothing more to it.
rantingdemon 13 hours ago [-]
OP stated it requires a user configurable chime. This is not a regular doorbell.
ncruces 11 hours ago [-]
Yes, and the person engaged with them is pointing out that more complex solutions exist because someone added other requirements.
Maybe “I want a configurable chime” is just a less popular requirement than “I want to be notified on my phone even if I'm not at home.”
Also, Excel is famously complex because, despite most users only using 20% of the features, no one uses the same 20%, so if you want cover close to 100% of the market, you need to ship features that are useless to most of your users.
whstl 10 hours ago [-]
> Yes, and the person engaged with them is pointing out that more complex solutions exist because someone added other requirements.
Precisely.
The Wi-Fi and Linux solution that was called over-engineered just happened to have different requirements. Engineering is a collaboration, not blindly solving very specific problems.
close04 9 hours ago [-]
> Excel is famously complex because, despite most users only using 20% of the features, no one uses the same 20%
I think you're comparing 2 very different scenarios here.
Excel is solution engineered to meet every requirement under the sun, for every possible user.
"The doorbell" is something designed and built by 1 person to meet exactly their own requirements.
whstl (the other commenter) insists that he is better suited than the benefiter and builder of that doorbell to decide what is a good requirement and he's willing to make tasteless jokes comparing anyone who doesn't agree with his assessments to Nazis on trial at Nurnberg [1]. You'll notice that whstl didn't even ask why the requirement exists in the first place, just concluded it's wrong (it's something they teach you on day 1 of engineering school, build whatever you want, better if you don't ask questions where the answer might inconvenience you).
When you have a requirement would you take the word of someone on the internet just saying it's not a valid one?
> "The doorbell" is something designed and built by 1 person to meet exactly their own requirements.
Nothing wrong with that.
Also nothing wrong with people going to great lengths to build an Excel replacement that fits their exact requirements like glove, by ignoring 99.9% of what makes Excel … excel.
The issue is calling Excel over engineered for catering to everyone else:
> You would be surprised that 99% of the solutions out there are complete over engineered stacks that depend on wifi devices, Internet access, connecting to various cloud services...
Even if all some people wanted was a custom sound on their doorbells, I bet many of those people will want to transfer the sound using a smartphone rather than an SD card they can't modify with a computer many don't own. And, given that capability, even more people will want to be notified of a ring on their phones, and then why not when they're outside (maybe on the backyard) away from the LAN, and then why not while they're at work, and so on and so forth.
The “over engineered” solutions are actually engineered to cater to everyone else, that is all.
And to make whstl's point: I find it much easier to justify internet and cloud to support a doorbell that's genuinely more useful (rings remotely) than SD cards and custom hardware to justify something as … frivolous as changing the bell's sound.
PS: I just spent $70 modding a $20 Casio watch. I loved every second of it.
9 hours ago [-]
streetfighter64 13 hours ago [-]
Godwin's law was invoked quickly. It's not very hacker spirit to hear a story of somebody putting together a cool hardware solution to do something they wanted, and then complain that they wanted the wrong thing.
> check out my hand-embroidered curtains, it's got exactly the flower pattern I wanted
> yeah well you shouldn't want flowers on your curtains, just buy plain white ones from the store
whstl 10 hours ago [-]
I'm not really passing judgement on the project itself, or its validity, and I think it's cool. I'm perfectly fine with someone saying "I over-engineered this" or "I hand made this". I do this all the time myself...
I'm just pointing out that "it's in the [my own] requirements" in this case does not really make something "not over engineered".
HelloMcFly 10 hours ago [-]
Is building a bookshelf with adjustable shelves is "over-engineered" because a single fixed plank would hold books just as well? Who gets to be the arbiter on which requirements are the "real" requirements?
whstl 10 hours ago [-]
It should be considered fair to say that some things are over-engineered in relation to others. This is a matter of (hopefully informed) opinion after all.
Also opinions will change after time, or after analyzing the problem space better.
GP also said that lots of product in the market are over-engineered, so I don't see why my view (that this is an over-engineered doorbell) is controversial at all.
streetfighter64 7 hours ago [-]
It's controversial because your definition of "over-engineered" is different from most other people's understanding of the term. Most people would take it to mean "using more complex systems than needed to achieve a given outcome", while you are defining it more like "using any system at all to achieve an outcome that I consider unnecessary".
The former definition is somewhat objective in that it can be tested and proven, while the latter definition is entirely subjective and sort of meaningless. I could just as well state that any doorbell is over-engineered since you can just knock.
> GP: The minimum of 5+x^2 is closer to 5.5 than 10
> You: If you were minimizing 3+x^2 you could get an even lower value
whstl 7 hours ago [-]
I am not saying every product has to be the absolute minimum, that's an absurdist interpretation of what I mean.
I am saying that people can call something "overengineered" and "it was the requirement" is not a defence.
Maybe what I mean is: Feature creep does contribute to overengineering. That's not controversial in the engineering community at all.
dxdm 10 hours ago [-]
Where would you draw the line for a sufficiently simple implementation of sufficiently simple requirements? A door knocker? A door?
whstl 10 hours ago [-]
I don't think there should be a line.
But it should be considered fair to say that some things are over-engineered in relation to others.
It should also be considered ok to call things over-engineered. OP himself did.
dxdm 10 hours ago [-]
Of course you can call things over engineered, but seem to want to include questioning the requirements, specifically also those of the example we're talking about.
Once you start that, you also need to stop somewhere. For example, we could even question the need for a door in the first place. Not saying that we should, but if you want to take over defining other people's requirements, you're putting this on yourself.
So if you don't want somebody else to call you out for over engineering somebody else's requirements, where do you stop?
It's not an enviable position to be in. :)
whstl 9 hours ago [-]
I am just saying over and over that the over-engineering part itself can come from a "requirement", which seems to be the contentious position here.
Some other people mentioned the doorbell project was over-engineering and I just agreed with them.
dxdm 7 hours ago [-]
I agree that requirements need to be kept in check to avoid over engineering. However, I think it's hard to decide for other people far away what their requirements ought to be.
So I don't agree that you can call mrb's basic wireless doorbell "overengineered" for requirements reasons alone without opening yourself up to the same scrutiny that you're applying to him.
whstl 7 hours ago [-]
> I agree that requirements need to be kept in check to avoid over engineering
Then we are in agreement!
The person who originally called it "overengineered" wasn't me, it was another user.
I did joke that an electric doorbel "does a similar job" but that was to demonstrate that "similar" is also a judgement call.
I am just saying that lukeify or anyone can call it overengineered from their point of view, similar to how GP called commercial products overengineered.
close04 9 hours ago [-]
> I'm just pointing out that "it's in the [my own] requirements" in this case does not really make something "not over engineered".
You point that out without providing any context or criteria. So you're just pointing out your personal opinion, nothing resembling fact. In this case everything is over engineered. The doorbell is overengineered before even discussing mp3.
17 hours ago [-]
edude03 10 hours ago [-]
I think as a hacker/engineer type you’re more aware of what’s possible and because of that you expect more from things in your life. The flip side of that is that it makes features most people would never think of feel like table stakes and combined with the ability to build your own solution - IMO leads to over engineering.
throw234259 15 hours ago [-]
> You would be surprised that 99% of the solutions out there are complete over engineered stacks that depend on wifi devices, Internet access, connecting to various cloud services...
Interesting context you live in. Here in east europe, 90% of devices you find on eshops are cheap chinese buttons with AAA batteries, that emit signal and another reciever device that plays sound. The sound is not customizable, but it is super cheap stuff.
I would have to go out of my way, to find cloud connected doorbell.
mrb 13 hours ago [-]
"The sound is not customizable"
This is EXACTLY the problem! Try finding one that I can customize with my own chime and you will only find expensive, unreliable, over engineered stuff.
throw234259 8 hours ago [-]
Than you are perhaps under engineering. Buy generic button that integrates into smart home, and trigger sounds on your home theater.
Or buy 5, and decide which tone you like most.
kalleboo 14 hours ago [-]
In the past 5 or so years, there's also been the rise of the ones where the button uses the piezoelectric effect to generate the power for the radio so that the button doesn't even need any batteries. Just extremely basic and cheap.
utopiah 15 hours ago [-]
ZigBee button, double sided scotch tape, Zigbee dongle, HomeAssistant on RPi with a speaker.
mrb 15 hours ago [-]
That is exactly over engineered crap I want to avoid. I don't want my doorbell to depend on networking or a full blown Linux stack.
drnick1 14 hours ago [-]
To be fair, if you already have a Zigbee network, this is a rather cheap and elegant solution.
utopiah 13 hours ago [-]
Exactly, if you already have such a setup in place it's basically ordering a button online, e.g. https://sonoff.tech/en-eu/products/sonoff-zigbee-wireless-sw... then next day slapping it over your existing setup or sticking it on the wall then deciding what you actually want to do with it, e.g. phones notifications, sound on as feedback for mailman, logging events, etc then adjusting conditions e.g different sounds after sunset, dedicated audio if away but expect parcels, etc.
But honestly, even if you have nothing, if you know a bit what you are doing with IoT with HomeAssistant if you buy the right hardware (i.e. verified as working by others, e.g. the Sonoff ones typically) it's at most an afternoon of tinkering for a setup that will reliably work for years.
anakaine 15 hours ago [-]
Two wires, a button, a bell, and a battery pack.
perilunar 9 hours ago [-]
string, hole, brass bell.
whstl 9 hours ago [-]
String breaks. Hole attracts insects. Bell is too quiet or too heavy.
Now we're in "under-engineering" territory. Also not good.
vghaisas 15 hours ago [-]
Yeah this would have been my answer, except for one catch: what do I do with the existing integrated button on the Blink doorbell?
hobofan 13 hours ago [-]
I presume you want to keep the Blink doorbell for the camera functionality?
Then I guess 3d print a casing that just puts the ZigBee button on top of the integrated button?
vghaisas 12 hours ago [-]
Yeah, will probably have to consider something like that.
DarmokTanagra 14 hours ago [-]
Pretty sure I have inherited some of your codebases.
engine_y 18 hours ago [-]
Over engineering is subjective / evolving.
You could have bought a bell...
selcuka 17 hours ago [-]
> You could have bought a bell...
Over engineering is about the solution, not the requirement:
> I wanted something that lets me play a custom bell
mrb 17 hours ago [-]
"You could have bought a bell.."
No because similar commercial products were either out of stock or not compatible with my AC voltage.
atoav 17 hours ago [-]
If you find one that meets your requirements that is an option.
Granted maybe your requirements are ridiculous. But I also had cases where I DIYed a solution because the commercially available solutions all either didn't fulfil the requirements and/or had anti-features that ruled out their use. I haven't had any regret so far with these solutions, with some of these being active for over a decade.
There may be over engineering, but replacing a bought solution that needs to connect to the internet and someone else's computer to ring a bell with a simple 433MHz sender and a MP4-player module isn't that. Do you know what is required for a device to even connect to a WiFi? That alone is more complex than the whole system the user built here.
methyl 15 hours ago [-]
> That alone is more complex than the whole system the user built here.
so what?
atoav 4 hours ago [-]
Your comment got downvoted, because on this site it is frowned upon to write lazy, confrontative and uninformative comments. If you don't have an argument that furthers the discussion consider not writing instead.
Simple systems have the advantage that there are less moving parts. Less moving parts means less chance of failure. That is a trade-off an engineer will sometimes take even if it means building a new thing, sometimes something with more moving parts is needed and that is okay as well.
Maybe your requirement is to have a doorbell that does work when the internet is out. Who knows? OP might live in a place where this happens more often. Or they might not and like the idea to never again have to think about their doorbell-manufacturers cloud and the latests exploits targeting that IoT product. There are many reasons why simple can be the right choice and any true engineer would say: "depends" instead of "so what".
wolvesechoes 16 hours ago [-]
> For my doorbell I wanted something that lets me play a custom bell sound
I fail to see the relation between a video doorbell and stopping a burglar. Burglars wear masks.
Also, a doorbell ringing on the outside of the door is not only silly but in case of an apartment complex highly annoying for your neighbors.
And make sure your neighbors like being monitored through your five services.
Personally I have a button outside my front door. It is connected with a copper wire to the other side of the door to a small device that sends out an audible notification. No cloud required.
ezfe 19 hours ago [-]
It's video surveillance, it makes it more likely they'll go elsewhere. That's literally the whole point of Ring.
ifwinterco 15 hours ago [-]
Physical stuff (window bars and a security door) is much, much more effective for that logic.
Burglars know they’ll probably be on CCTV somewhere anyway but nobody in their right mind is trying to smash through a security door or saw through some window bars when there’s a house up the street that doesn’t have them.
Obviously there are downsides (cost, aesthetics) but those solutions actually work, I’m skeptical that a fancy subscription doorbell makes much difference
swiftcoder 12 hours ago [-]
> Physical stuff (window bars and a security door) is much, much more effective
I've lived in a couple of countries where everyone has bars on all their windows due to perceived (in some case correctly, in other cases not) crime levels. It's... not great? I'd much rather live somewhere where I don't need to live in a prison compound.
al_borland 10 hours ago [-]
When I’m looking to move to a new area, I check out how much security the local banks have. The more there is between the customer and the bank teller, the worse the area. Comcast offices can also be a good litmus test for this. When McDonalds has bullet proof glass… you probably don’t even want to stop to eat there, let alone live there.
OGWhales 7 hours ago [-]
I don't find surveillance cameras better in that regard. I think physical security can look decent too, like wrought iron window security bars can actually look quite nice imo.
swiftcoder 5 hours ago [-]
> I don't find surveillance cameras better in that regard
Yeah, that's fair. I do prefer living somewhere that requires neither.
AngryData 18 hours ago [-]
People always say this, but is there any evidence it is true? Home burglars aren't exactly the cream of the criminal crop.
jjav 15 hours ago [-]
Burglars also know that they can pretty much pose and smile for the camera before covering it with tape and then breaking into the house, and the probability of consequences is very near zero. Unless they happen to break into the house of a well-connected politician or such.
Seem silly, but just try going to the police with crisp hi-res video of a burglarly and try to get them interested. I know people who have done it and all have failed. "We don't have time for this", "Value is not high enough to pursue", "Just call your insurance, not us".
artisinal 13 hours ago [-]
> they happen to break into the house of a well-connected politician or such
The other way round: If the son the mayor commits armed burglary, nothing happens. Happened in Amsterdam. According to her, her son was just messing around with friends.
I recently exchanged with a police agent in Belgium who specializes in the topic. Their heuristics is opportunity of action, namely how easy it is to get in and out without being caught on the spot. They said they do not really care about being recognized, only being noticed and stopped in action. Consequently the advice is to strengthen physical security first, i.e. have a big door with proper locks and close your windows. Everything else, including cameras, only comes after. Imagine you have 7min to get in and out, everything that slows you down means higher chance of getting stopped and thus considering another target instead.
My favorite burglar fact is robberies go way down when it’s raining. Thieves just don’t want the hassle of getting wet.
soco 13 hours ago [-]
Business idea: start your sprinklers on burglar detection, not your alarms.
tonyedgecombe 11 hours ago [-]
I remember reading somewhere that the one thing burglars are terrified of is finding someone home. They will spend a lot of effort to avoid that.
utopiah 9 hours ago [-]
Yes they mentioned that too, advising in fact to act on it. Obviously this is something home automation can very conveniently help with, e.g. if you are away, turn on a very visible from the outside light few minutes after sunset, turn it off few hours later. It's just another automation and you can switch it off when you are back from holidays.
soundworlds 16 hours ago [-]
I once worked at a school where someone tried stealing our security cameras.
Unfortunately for them, they had both of their kids' names tattooed to their neck, which helped reduce the number of possible suspects.
Wild watching back that footage the next morning.
Aurornis 17 hours ago [-]
From everything I've seen (which was a lot for a couple years due to my job) there were two types of burglars:
One type didn't care about any security system, even alarms. They would smash and grab as fast as they could and get out. They didn't have a plan other than to grab the first things that looked valuable. It might cost more to fix the building than to replace what they found.
The other type was trying to play it smart. As soon as they noticed the cameras or indications of a security system they'd leave. Lots of videos where a person was detected, looks up at the cameras, and then slips away to go find another house.
A lot of people start turning off alerts or never set them up properly, so they don't notice the second type of video unless they go looking.
SwtCyber 16 hours ago [-]
[dead]
cube00 18 hours ago [-]
Take a walk around the neighbourhood, plenty of houses still don't have any video surveillance.
There's no shortage of footage of people casing a place spotting the camera then wondering away. The smart ones look like they're any other lost delivery driver complete with package in hand. Thanks to the rise of gig work nobody has uniforms anymore. No that it really matters, plenty of stolen uniforms in play too.
teiferer 16 hours ago [-]
Anecdata is not helpful. Actually statistically significant numbers that are not presented by a home security firm. Everything else is just somebody trying to sell you stuff.
victorbjorklund 15 hours ago [-]
You don't need to be extremely bright to realize that it's easier to burglar a home with no alarm system and cameras than one with. And if your neighbor doesn't have cameras, but you do, many home burglars are going to be smart enough to know that it's better to not be seen on camera. I'm sure there are some who have too low IQ/too high to realize that getting caught on camera is a bad idea, but at least it's gonna work on some.
swiftcoder 12 hours ago [-]
> You don't need to be extremely bright to realize that it's easier to burglar a home with no alarm system and cameras than one with
You also don't have to be extremely bright to realise that a home with a fancy security system may be a higher-value target than the one without.
artisinal 19 hours ago [-]
Then go for a CCTV system with local storage for the whole apartment complex instead of a cloud based personal surveillance system.
Then you don’t need 5 cloud services and people can go back to knocking.
HDBaseT 18 hours ago [-]
When I break into peoples houses, I tend to take the NVR with me.
artisinal 16 hours ago [-]
Then hide the NVR in a locked utility room of the apartment complex.
KPGv2 18 hours ago [-]
People who break into houses are going for a few obvious high-dollar items. They're not searching for a server closet they don't know exists. They're looking for laptops, pharmaceuticals, jewelry. High dollar, portable items. not a strange-looking device hidden in a closet. And obviously you can put it in a rack that requires a key to open. They won't bother.
The_Blade 17 hours ago [-]
AI has driven so many highly paid software professionals into the Your Friends and Neighbors lifestyle
18 hours ago [-]
NuclearPM 18 hours ago [-]
NVR?
necovek 18 hours ago [-]
Network Video Recorder, a name for devices where IP cameras stream their video to to be stored on, usually, a hard disk drive.
Same thing as DVR for analog surveillance cameras, just with eth (usually PoE) ports.
19 hours ago [-]
t098i3 19 hours ago [-]
I used to have local teenagers messing around on my property and it completely stopped after putting up some lights and cameras. It stops most casual crime.
teiferer 15 hours ago [-]
Would they have continued with just the lights and without the camera? We don't know, but you assume so.
AngryData 18 hours ago [-]
Are you sure the teenagers didn't just get older and moved on?
cbg0 16 hours ago [-]
Do you think it took him a few years to install the cameras?
IanCal 16 hours ago [-]
My friend said this about diy
“If I say I’ll do something I’ll do it. There’s no need to remind me every six months”
customguy 15 hours ago [-]
there's a million stickers, calenders, whatever in German saying this about men :P
Do you think teenagers are going to illegally hang out on someone else's private property for years at a time? Their interests and habits are as ephemeral as the wing.
artisinal 19 hours ago [-]
We are talking about burglars.
t098i3 19 hours ago [-]
Yup, said teens would burgle stuff off my property.
mathisfun123 19 hours ago [-]
People steal things from stores which have had cctv for decades. I have no idea why people think these goofy webcams have any effect other than invading the privacy of your neighbors.
t098i3 19 hours ago [-]
I literally just said it solved my problem. Most casual crime is opportunistic, and cameras and lights add uncertainty to the opportunity. Most people aren't willing to chance the camera for an opportunistic score.
schumpeter 19 hours ago [-]
I’m not sure how it’s so hard for people replying to you, to understand, cameras are a deterrent. Crime is often opportunistic. I grew up in 80s Miami, the common tactic was knock on your front door to see if anyone’s home, when no one answers, they’d kick in the backdoor.
Cameras deter crime. Not ALL crime. Criminals aren’t stupid and will simply go burgle someone that isn’t recording.
teiferer 15 hours ago [-]
> knock on your front door to see if anyone’s home, when no one answers, they’d kick in the backdoor.
So now your front camera has somebody with an unidentifiable hoodie knocking and your back camera has somebody with an unidentifiable hoodie kick in the backdoor. How did the camera help exactly? Is the police really going to find somebody with this almost-invisible stain of dirt on the sleeve of the hoodie? Or are they rather going to say "oh well we'll keep an eye out" and that's the last you hear? My experience is the latter. Now you lost the worth of what they took plus all the money spent on your camera gear and the time setting it up.
Or are you saying doesn't matter, the deterrent is enough? Well then put up a fake camera for a fraction of the price. Works offline too.
mathisfun123 19 hours ago [-]
> Most casual crime is opportunistic, and cameras and lights add uncertainty to the opportunity. Most people aren't willing to chance the camera for an opportunistic score.
People have been stealing things from stores which have had cctv for decades. Your premises are manifestly false.
t098i3 19 hours ago [-]
It's a good thing I don't live in a store, then
mathisfun123 18 hours ago [-]
This comment used to say something about shooting people on sight, which perfectly tracks with the demo that owns these cameras.
Sure, theft still happens, but I don't see why home theft wouldn't be reduced by the presence of CCTV or other video surveillance.
CCTV doesn't work well when people feel like nobody is going to bother to check its footage (e.g. pocketing a $2 drink from a big-box department store). But when it comes to homes, there are much higher chances of captured footage being used and examined, so it may cause opportunistic burglars to look at other houses instead.
teiferer 15 hours ago [-]
Or it tells the burglar there is sth valuable that's being protected and to make sure to cut the fiber before they do anything.
cortesoft 19 hours ago [-]
The question isn’t whether people EVER steal when there is a camera, the question is whether they will still LESS.
Just because something doesn’t work 100% of the time doesn’t mean it can’t be effective.
cbg0 16 hours ago [-]
The reason why people steal from stores is because there are rarely consequences unless you get caught in the act. Most stores won't file a report over a can of tuna, it'll get chalked up to losses and prices will go up on tuna cans to cover the loss, as it's low friction.
Someone's private property getting trespassed/burgled will have a much higher chance of resulting in legal consequences.
victorbjorklund 15 hours ago [-]
The claim is never that it stops all crime. The claim is it stop some crime. That's like saying we don't need doctors because they can't cure everybody all the time.
KPGv2 18 hours ago [-]
> People steal things from stores which have had cctv for decades.
The crime there (shoplifting) doesn't begin until they leave.
In the case of a burglary, the crime begins when they enter.
Seems to be a pretty important distinction when discussing whether knowing a person is physically present on your property alerts you to a crime in progress.
gspr 15 hours ago [-]
I, too, am very sensitive about cameras invading the privacy of neighbors. But to be fair, it is perfectly possible that the cameras in question don't view anything outside of the property in question.
thesmtsolver2 19 hours ago [-]
And criminals have been caught using CCTV footage for decades.
t098i3 19 hours ago [-]
Famously the big companies like Target will let people steal until they cross the amount for a felony then throw the book at them
tobyhinloopen 18 hours ago [-]
You can have a camera doorbell using your copper wire.
With a video doorbell you can get notifications when a person enters your property. You can notify police or neighbors if it’s a stranger
kelvinjps10 8 hours ago [-]
It's about risk, even one time where we noticed buglers and just turn the lights on, they left. Just the fact they're getting noticed might be enough.
DarmokTanagra 14 hours ago [-]
Criminals don't just rob random houses.
If they are going through the trouble its because they know there is something of value in there and a camera is not going to stop them.
A camera is only going to dissuade crimes of opportunity, its basically just fancy lock.
talkin 12 hours ago [-]
> Criminals don't just rob random houses
False, opportunity theft is the most common form.
Better doors/windows/locks help the most, and help against both opportunistic and targeted.
DarmokTanagra 10 hours ago [-]
Perhaps where you live, in my country petty theft is extremely rare.
notrustincloud 11 hours ago [-]
lol.
the only robberies that get 'attribution' are cases where the criminals get caught. i.e. low hanging fruit and thus these statistics skew to opportunistic events.
however, unplanned opportunistic crime makes for good promotional sales of window bars and strong locks. just like safes with electronic keypads.
very few such devices will stop a premeditated theft... and what is the rate of recovery for stolen goods in most jurisdictions?
Tangurena2 11 hours ago [-]
> Burglars wear masks.
Around here, they wear hoodies and keep their hood up to obscure their face.
gosub100 10 hours ago [-]
I think you should complete the decision matrix regarding mask wearing:
Wear a mask and the victim is home: they know you are about to rob them and can prepare. Run away before the police come
Don't wear a mask and victim is home: make up a fake reason you pressed the doorbell, or up the ante to a home invasion and risk getting shot.
Don't wear a mask and the victim is not home: proceed with burglary but face is recorded for police.
Wear a mask and victim is not home: profit.
It's not as simple as covering up. Plus you still risk leaving finger prints and DNA
SwtCyber 16 hours ago [-]
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VladVladikoff 20 hours ago [-]
I’ve recently been looking into what older gen IoT devices I can buy used for cheap and are also hackable (some existing progress has been done before me is my bar).
My first adventure was with an Amazon Echo Dot 2, I picked up two off Facebook marketplace for $5 each and managed to vibe code my way into a working implementation of LibreEcho (which does not currently support the echo dot). I’ve got that wired into my home local AI brain so it can do tasks like add grocery items to shared notes, or download movies or TV shows (jellyseer+flexget+jellyfin+etc).
My next plan is to do a doorbell. I want it fully local only and I know there are providers who offer this brand new for $$$ but I love the idea of picking up cheap IoT devices and hacking them instead. My current candidate is EZVIZ DB1C but I haven’t bought it yet and definitely open to suggestions!
IanCal 15 hours ago [-]
What about building something from scratch? Or is it the repurposing you like?
VladVladikoff 3 hours ago [-]
I looked at that at first but man you can’t beat $5. I was looking at a build which was $200 in parts just to get started. It’s also no simple task to build a mic array that is separated from speakers and having a decent speaker cavity etc. my skills with speaker chamber design and 3D printing are no where near my programming skills.
Infiniti20 11 hours ago [-]
What’s your home local ai setup?
VladVladikoff 3 hours ago [-]
3090 GPU, Qwen atm, but probably going to switch models at some point.
KPGv2 17 hours ago [-]
Amazon had these little Dash buttons about 10 years ago. The goal was you would click one, and it would re-order that product from Amazon. Many were branded.
Basically just a wifi button. I hacked one so I could, in my brain fog, record the moment i started and finished feeding my infant by sending a ping to a server via a simple click.
There's a bunch up on eBay. Could probably 3M tape one beside your door.
Easy solution, esp if it's shielded from rain.
VladVladikoff 3 hours ago [-]
This is cool! I have wanted a button I could slap when I sit down at my desk that sets off an hour timer to get up and stretch.
vghaisas 15 hours ago [-]
Oh, can a Dash button talk to my Google home mini? I imagined it would be the same problem I currently have.
A zigbee button/doorbell would work well, but then we'd have two buttons on the front door unless we hid the Blink's integrated button somehow.
johnhtodd 19 hours ago [-]
I am constantly amazed that people rely on anyone else's compute infrastructure for things like doorbells, cameras, locks, switches, or sensors (network infrastructure is, at the moment, a seemingly acceptable integration for isolated communication.) There is inevitable over-pricing and capture by these companies; it's in their nature.
Add to this the security and downtime risks, and the equation really doesn't look good. Equipment that is tied to someone else's cloud is an astonishingly bad idea, but everyone has their own immediate (or even long-term) reasons for ignoring advice. "You get what you deserve."
18 hours ago [-]
whatisthiseven 11 hours ago [-]
> "I am constantly amazed that people rely on anyone else's compute..."
We live in a bubble. Reading stuff here means you understand things about computing barely 0.1% of the world population understands the possible consequences. Of that 0.1%, plenty do understand the consequences and still choose the convenience.
For these companies, they just need to convince everyone else, for whom they have no possible conception, understanding, or even words to imagine the Orwellian Rube-Goldberg-like machine that is modern day SaaS.
It isn't so much "get what you deserve", so much as society writ large is getting what it deserves for unregulated advertising slop and re-sale of consumer data.
qmr 17 hours ago [-]
The notion disgusts me. All of my shit is open source and locally hosted.
I couldn't find a front door camera I liked so I ended up building my own from parts.
Having worked for "the cloud" for years, I tell everyone I know, there is no cloud, there is only other people's hard drives.
DarmokTanagra 1 hours ago [-]
gross, everything I own is smelted from raw silicon that I sourced from the beach down the street.
VoidWhisperer 17 hours ago [-]
This seems way overkill. I understand that that the OP didn't want to pay a subscription, but a really quick google showed that Blink makes a $30 product that solves this exact problem (not being able to hear the doorbell inside), the Blink Chime, which plugs into an outlet and then connects to 2.4Ghz, not requiring a subscription.
I guess $30 for what is effectively a glorified chime for your door is a bit much, but considering the time it probably took to put together this (kind of over-engineered) and the (presumably) monthly cost of the VPS, it makes more sense.
Also, I feel like something like MQTT or another message broker could simplify this significantly, making the whole VPS /state endpoint unnecessary, without exposing your home mini pc to the internet, since the mini pc would connect to the MQTT (I think HA actually has a built in mqtt integration? although you'll still need to make something to process the message once the MQTT gets it) and the SmartThings API would also (assuming the processing after the SmartThings API is hit is customizable in some form)
vghaisas 15 hours ago [-]
Yeah, a Blink chime is definitely a solution. But after feeling like I got a great deal on a cheap doorbell, I didn't want to buy yet another thing from them. I also thought it would have been easy to play audio on the Google home and so I started tinkering and then got carried away.
MQTT was an option, but it actually felt like overkill to add an MQTT server on my VPS than just a tiny Express server. (But who am I to talk about overkill here.)
usagisushi 12 hours ago [-]
Everyone here is looking for a simpler solution, but the real fun is in its Rube Goldberg-ness.
Let it bounce around the globe 3 times through Tor, Iroh, Blockchain, Tailscale, Meshtastic, Thread, Zigbee, Bluetooth, WiFi, IrDA, NFC, TransferJet, FireWire, UART, SPI, I2C, and OneWire, using the free tiers of AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, IBM Cloud, and Baidu Cloud.
And it's 2026, don’t forget a game of telephone powered by free LLMs on OpenRouter.
P.S. Speaking of chimes, I found this page with a bunch of sound samples from a Japanese company. Strangely satisfying: https://qq-bell.com/media/x-plus-64sound
pezezin 5 minutes ago [-]
As a guy living in Japan who gets to hear those chimes every day, I loved the website, thank you for the link :)
bvan 11 hours ago [-]
This is analogous to what AI is turning into. Pretty soon, some folks won’t be able to tie their shoe laces without tech.
al_borland 10 hours ago [-]
Not AI related, but I’ve seen kids unable to tie their shoes because technology, in the form of elastic laces or various other laceless designs, have made it so the skill didn’t become a requirement.
I told a 10 year old to tie the strings on a hood like he’d tie a shoe (after he just jumbled the strings together in a failed attempt to get them out of the way instead of making any kind of knot). He told me he didn’t know how. I was a bit shocked, since at that age I was learning all kinds of different knots for fun, and the shoelaces seem like gateway into knots.
danparsonson 10 hours ago [-]
That's a great comment! Tying ones shoelaces without the aid of modern technology is not just old-fashioned (em dash) it's a key differentiator that highlights the growing divide between the generations in the age of generative AI!
etc.
What a time to be alive
vghaisas 3 days ago [-]
I thought it was finally time to write up the story of my absurd home doorbell implementation, especially because the upcoming Samsung SmartThings API pricing means things will have to change soon.
Suggestions welcome!
wrs 19 hours ago [-]
I have a similar problem, except I needed to ring the actual doorbell. Currently I'm using a HomeKit-compatible video doorbell that communicates over proprietary radio to its wifi gateway that triggers a HomeKit automation (which presumably runs on my Apple TV as the hub) to turn a Shelly relay on for one second to do the same thing as pressing the doorbell button. I think this all ends up just using my internal network, but who knows. Thank goodness the Shelly relay can get a wifi signal while stuffed into that electrical box in the basement ceiling.
(The actual doorbell button is still there too, so it's a crapshoot which one somebody decides to use in the first place. And yes, many video doorbells have a "chime adapter" to take care of this, but our house's doorbell wiring made them run in fear.)
pdonis 20 hours ago [-]
We have a Ring doorbell that hooks into the actual chime that the old doorbell used, so it still preserves the old doorbell's functionality[1]. I can understand not wanting to buy into the Ring ecosystem (we started using them before they were bought by Amazon), but maybe there are cheaper doorbells that also do that? All we had to do to make the old chime work with the Ring doorbell was install an extra widget that came with the Ring doorbell inside the chime; the Ring doorbell's instructions explained how to do it. It just needed a screwdriver and a few minutes' work.
[1] More precisely, we did until we moved to a manufactured home that did not even have a doorbell installed, after which I had to do some jiggering (now we have a Ring chime that the doorbell can talk to over the house's LAN). But the setup I describe above worked fine for a number of years in the house we were in before.
vghaisas 15 hours ago [-]
Oh our London flat has no pre-installed doorbell at all! This is surprisingly common and everyone just knocks.
But yes, there were definitely other ways to solve this problem.
BLKNSLVR 20 hours ago [-]
I'll have to check the latency of my 'smart' doorbell now. I have occasionally heard the doorbell, taken the obligatory time to find the key to unlock the door to find that it was just a package delivery, but enough time had passed that the courier was nowhere to be seen.
(Yours wasn't a latency issue though, what kind of latency do you get with your 5-cloud services chain?)
Also, interesting about the SmartThings API access moving to a subscription model: https://hackaday.com/2026/07/28/samsungs-smartthings-api-ter... (this link is in the article - the cost is only for third party usage, not if you're directly using the SmartThings app).
vghaisas 15 hours ago [-]
It takes a few seconds, but a lot of that is just the HA polling interval.
qmr 17 hours ago [-]
My suggestion is throw it all in the trash.
This is absurdity.
artisinal 19 hours ago [-]
> the upcoming Samsung SmartThings API pricing
Imagine paying a Korean company five bucks a months so you can get a notification on your phone that your fridge needs a new water filter.
People really need to touch grass.
jen20 19 hours ago [-]
Why does it matter that it’s a Korean company?
10729287 10 hours ago [-]
The idea behind it was probably "Some company on the other side of the world"
artisinal 10 hours ago [-]
Exactly. I’m not racist against Koreans. I’m racist against foreign conglomerates.
artisinal 18 hours ago [-]
Money and personal data going out of the country is not a good thing.
disillusioned 19 hours ago [-]
So... you already owned Google Home minis... why not buy Google's Nest doorbell, which rings every Google Home device out of the box with none of the absurdity? If you have a Google 4k TV Streamer, it even pops up on your TV when someone rings the doorbell...
vghaisas 15 hours ago [-]
When I started my search, I thought this £30 doorbell would be good enough and I wouldn't need the £180 Nest doorbell. Little did I know...
ajross 18 hours ago [-]
Indeed the Nest integration is pretty solid.
That said, the author might also consider installing an actual doorbell, which is a device their home should have had decades ago. You'll also want something to provide power to the Nest, so this is almost free.
pcblues 14 hours ago [-]
Don't use web security cameras to stop crime.
Every service wants your personal information.
Every service charges a subscription.
The crime will still happen.
Use a physically protected motion action video recorder. No web.
The burglary will happen and you will have evidence.
No software upgrades. Never obsolete.
YMMV
trueno 13 hours ago [-]
gotta get claude to write the garbage nextjs vercel app that plays the recorded video online ofc you're smart and you tell him to build a login screen but your no auth vercel edge function accepts requests from anyone. oh and you let openclaw run the show and it puts the videos in your free cloud flare blob. you show your friends and family the app you made, you offer to build them one too, everyone claps
steveBK123 12 hours ago [-]
The part where it worked for 18 months before something software broke is perfect 2020s tech.
pier25 10 hours ago [-]
I had a smart plug by Kasa that I used to turn on the espresso machine from bed. It all worked offline via wifi. One day out of the blue the app required you to create a user to be able to use it and that was the end of it. This should be illegal.
steveBK123 9 hours ago [-]
I think I spend more time debugging my "smart home" (which is mostly used for turning lights on&off) than any time saved from using it.
My dad had the old Radio Shack plug 'n power stuff when I was a kid and it .. just worked for decades.
Lesson there.
teiferer 16 hours ago [-]
1. You over-engineered this, so you don't get to complain that it's over-engineered.
2. Buglary risk reducing when you install a camera is a myth. A very convenient myth though for those selling you any of the components in your over-engineered thing.
phyzome 12 hours ago [-]
Wow. Sounds much more reliable than a real doorbell & and a piece of tape over the Blink's button saying "-> use other doorbell".
8fingerlouie 9 hours ago [-]
I haven't tried it, but with newer ESP32's supporting Matter and Zigbee, you could potentially create a device with ESPHome that Alexa can "trigger" when the doorbell rings, which in turn can trigger HA, eliminating both the VPS and SmartThings in the process.
nunez 7 hours ago [-]
This was me a few years ago, but the admin job I gave myself maintaining this stuff eventually got old. These days, I use native HomeKit for everything. Preferably over Matter/Thread, but HomeKit is a requirement. No HA. If it doesn't native work with HomeKit, it doesn't run in our house.
I’ve used a Ring doorbell for over a decade and have never been able to get it to work with a physical doorbell. In two different house, with additional power dongle and after replacing transformers, every time I have it trigger the mechanical doorbell power drops enough to brown out the Ring leaving it in an unusable state until I power cycle it (which means disconnecting the transformer in the garage, at the bell, or behind the ring; all of which require disassembling something). I’ve searched for solutions and have come up empty, but have a similar problem to the linked article. My phone is typically on silent and I ignore the notification due to notification fatigue.
I like just about everything about the device, but I just want to have a normal door chime again.
CrzyLngPwd 15 hours ago [-]
I can't imagine how much energy is wasted on what should be, a trivial thing that might run on a 9v battery for 10 years, or, like I had in a house I owned, a door bell that uses no battery at all...just a rope and a bell.
bharatsuthar 15 hours ago [-]
Maybe I'm just too primitive but I let dogs handle it. I homestead in a remote Indian village and many stray dogs I look after instinctively take care of my property. There are false positives sometimes but that's okay. I like it when they alert me for potential small intrusions around my house, like snakes, monitor lizards etc.
sph 15 hours ago [-]
> many stray dogs I look after instinctively take care of my property
Their ancient wolf-dog ancestors howl with approval. That's why we domesticated them after all.
xxs 14 hours ago [-]
The activation, door knob can be trivially implemented with just piezo-crystal pulse and some radio (433MHz). No battery required, either.
DarmokTanagra 14 hours ago [-]
Wait until you hear about the data centers worth of cat pictures we generate as a species.
kelvinjps10 8 hours ago [-]
These services are really hard to integrate. I Wanted to build a script that would use the alexa announce feature and there is no way to do it easily. I have the Alexa because I got it gifted but I might switch to my own thing.
BigTTYGothGF 9 hours ago [-]
As far as solutions go it seems strictly inferior to the classic "a dog".
tehlike 19 hours ago [-]
Reolink poe+frigate
praccu 14 hours ago [-]
I built my own motion activated stairwell lights using an ESP32 and Home Assistant. Works pretty well.
So then I decided to set up some LED strip lights for my office with really nice wireless buttons from IKEA.
I confirmed that the buttons and the lights both were zigbee compatible, but I missed that one supported only Thread and the other only Matter. So now I have two identical antennas, each handling a different protocol.
sgarland 9 hours ago [-]
Matter is a communications standard, not a protocol. You can have Matter over Thread, Matter over WiFi, etc.
WRT IKEA, if they’re the Thread-only device, I found one page [0] claiming that some of them can be forced into Zigbee mode.
Every individual product is "easy", but the moment you want two ecosystems to talk to each other you become a part-time distributed systems engineer
stickfigure 19 hours ago [-]
The interesting thing here is that Samsung thinks they are going to get people to pay for API access to their smart devices, when "app access" is free. We are now past the point where LLMs can automate the apps. You don't even need to write the code, the LLM will do it for you.
As a recent owner of a Samsung fridge, I'm really curious to know what the plan is here. The probability of me paying a monthly for my refrigerator is exactly zero.
DarmokTanagra 11 hours ago [-]
Go to a party with a diverse group of friends and ask people what an API is.
cortesoft 19 hours ago [-]
Is app access really free, or do you have to pay for a developer account or something?
17 hours ago [-]
xxs 16 hours ago [-]
I have got a cheap candy-land made doorbell that's operated via piezo crystal switch (non-battery, non-power-line) and 433MHz freq. It has some melodies and volume built-in,
The design is simple and easy to hack (and build something else). There are rather cheap light switches that operate on the same principle and can be used.
harel 15 hours ago [-]
We have a Ring door bell (well, 2 of them plus 2 cameras) and also 2 chimes. Those chimes do one thing: they ring inside the house, one on each floor, when the door bells ring. Seems expensive and over complicated and it is. But it works quite well and has been very useful on many occasions.
zkmon 14 hours ago [-]
We are in the era of techfluenza that suffocates and removes normal ways of living.
Banditoz 20 hours ago [-]
It's crazy these things don't have much interopability with third parties.
Is it so difficult to expose a MQTT thing or some other random HTTP server, default off but configurable in some developer settings, that could be used to control the device/read state? It would certainly make the minority that is us power users happy.
cortesoft 19 hours ago [-]
There are plenty of devices that support a lot of integrations.
However, those companies don’t make the kind of perpetual revenue that bring in capital, and the companies that make the devices that don’t make you pay for their service end up not lasting as long as those that do.
Sadly, it seems that the prudent business decision is to lock your customers into your ecosystem.
VTimofeenko 19 hours ago [-]
Not exactly home gamer stuff, but there are devices like the Axis cameras which can push to a configured mqtt.
Generally ONVIF is the protocol one should be looking for in a camera, it indicates that the edge device can play ball with a central server (Frigate, Blue Iris, etc). Profile M specifies the metadata into external mqtt:
what's the latency when someone pressed the button and you hear the bell?
mrweasel 15 hours ago [-]
I was going to ask, because any latency means picking up packages at a random pick-up point.
My office is in the other end of the house, and most package delivery service press the doorbell and starts working away instantly. While that's also a bit extreme, I can't expect them to stand around for more than ~30 seconds.
DarmokTanagra 11 hours ago [-]
for me its (length of wire/signal propagation speed through copper wire) + (distance from buzzer/speed of sound)
vghaisas 15 hours ago [-]
It's just a few seconds and a lot of that is the HA polling interval.
techteach00 14 hours ago [-]
I prefer burglars more than cameras.
t098i3 19 hours ago [-]
I take it the house wasn't wired for a traditional doorbell and you didn't want to drill the necessary holes in the doorframe and wall?
tamimio 19 hours ago [-]
>an over engineered
It’s not, that’s called a duct tape solution, which is the opposite of engineering, that’s poor design and bad practice, there are so many failure points and moving parts that it’s eminent it will fail. The engineering design should be reliable, simple, and efficient. Instead of that cluster chaos you made, you could have had a relay wired inside the bell that simultaneously trigger a normal and simple electric-based bell, so it works for you and the other person.
senectus1 19 hours ago [-]
in the age of LLM's this is all too common.
"look at what i can do with the assistance of an LLM"
shows an rube goldberg construction sure it works. but geez support and security is a nightmare.
DarmokTanagra 11 hours ago [-]
A lot of these people are making healthy 6 figure salaries and have been told how smart they are their entire lives.
Fizz43 14 hours ago [-]
That's a cool solution, im lazy and would just put a little sign asking to knock.
jwr 14 hours ago [-]
I got so tired of every hardware device requiring cloud services, accounts, logins, privacy policies, etc. that I started building my own. I think the tipping point was a phone app to control a Panasonic air conditioner. It could just communicate with the air conditioner over Bluetooth, after all, the air conditioner was never more than 3 meters away from me. But instead, Panasonic chose to build a cloud services platform, so you need internet access, you need to create an account with an appropriate password, agree to data processing, accept the privacy policy, accept privacy policy updates, etc.
Once you do all that, your spouse comes and asks for a way to control the air conditioning too…
This whole "you need to create an account" is a virus that needs to go away. It should be possible to control a local device without accounts, privacy policies, and other crap.
nathell 15 hours ago [-]
But this way, you can handle door spam by greylisting the bell and playing it only when it is pressed by a motivated enough person; say, 5 times or more. For an average of 1 cloud service per press.
sgarland 9 hours ago [-]
I assumed this would be a rant against cloud services, but alas, no.
I do find it doubtful that OP couldn’t skip most of their setup, though; if you have HomeAssistant (which they do), and there’s a direct path from Blink -> Alexa, I’m fairly certain HA could then handle triggering the Google Home Mini devices on its own.
Or, you know, doorbell chimes.
donandon 14 hours ago [-]
Wow. We are living in the future
pjmlp 17 hours ago [-]
The wonderful reality of Web services.
st_goliath 17 hours ago [-]
> And that’s the story of how I upgraded my flat’s front door experience from depending on 0 cloud services to 5 cloud services.
Up next: How many cloud services does it take to turn on the lights?
Now rip it back out again and replace it with a better, local solution.
___
Fwiw, I did buy some dahua thing for this, for which I now run an asterisk that hangs up on every call and switches a USB relay to ring the actual bell.
Equally jank, but locally contained jank.
deepsun 16 hours ago [-]
Dude would be much easier to make a custom doorbell with a microcontroller with wifi (Pico or ESP32). With ESP32-CAM even have a video feed / screenshots.
Today it's never been easier to make custom stuff -- 3dprinting and even PCB manufacturing can be done as a service, no need to buy. Although I would use a dev board microcontroller for $7, so no need for PCB.
And doorbell case also doesn't have to be 3d printed, can make it from wood or metal, if you prefer.
addag 19 hours ago [-]
Peak Home Alone behavior right here.
lstodd 17 hours ago [-]
I wonder is there a market for portable EMP guns to disable crap like that? I mean, it's pretty trivial to make one out of shocker, some foil and a ditched microwave oven and it will kill most any electronics on sight.
dreamcompiler 9 hours ago [-]
Dumb appliance: You buy it, it works as expected for 30 years and then you replace it.
Smart appliance: You buy it, it works more or less as expected for 1 year, then it fails in new and exciting ways, and then you replace it with a dumb appliance.
bradley13 16 hours ago [-]
Our situation isn't quite that extreme, but sometimes "modern" tech is just ridiculous. For home automation, every manufacturer has their own protocol. "Matter" has just confirmed what XKCD has to say: https://xkcd.com/927/
Add to that: every manufacturer wants to run their own servers and their own cloud service. I don't want my data strewn throughout the internet. For most devices, there is zero reason they couldn't work entirely within the LAN. Plus, we all know that half of those services will die in a few years, forcing us to replace perfectly good devices.
graemep 15 hours ago [-]
> we all know that half of those services will die in a few years, forcing us to replace perfectly good devices
That is a feature, not a bug.
DarmokTanagra 14 hours ago [-]
I might as well live on a different planet than some of the commenters here.
I cannot imagine ever thinking that a 3rd party web connected camera running 24/7 in my home would be a good idea.
crabbone 14 hours ago [-]
Here's my experience with doorbells:
I inherited an electrical one from the previous owner. It ran on... battery. (Why would anyone do this is beyond me, but it turns out to be very common where I live.) The battery died and I needed a replacement. If I wanted to replace it with something that connects to the power cables inside the house, I'd need to drill a hole in the front wall (made of brick and mortar) and find the closest cable to connect to... And I was too lazy to do that.
On the street I live, there are mostly old houses. Some of them have a bell that exposes a handle on the outside that you need to pull in order to ring the bell inside the house. Some have a "door hammer" (is it what it's called?), a decorative, usually shaped as a ring in an animal's mouth, hammer that's attached to the middle of the door one would use to knock on a metal plate used for this attachment.
I bought an actual cast iron bell and attached it near the door above the mailbox.
What happened is that people seem to doubt so much the functionality of an obvious bell that they prefer knocking on the door to pulling the thread attached to the bell. That's what most package delivery service people do.
jijji 15 hours ago [-]
try to get the doorbell to send the webhook locally to Home Assistant, bypassing steps 2, 3 and 4
senectus1 19 hours ago [-]
this is one reason I haven't replaced my aging eufy stuff.
next round of outdoor cams and doorbells are going to be wholly selfhosted.
if they live for another 9 months I'll have the budget for it.
jimt1234 19 hours ago [-]
> ...then it would also helpfully play a sound on the doorbell...which we could not hear.
Sounds like a feature more than a bug.
wonnage 19 hours ago [-]
Not sure if Blink is more locked down but Ring works alright with just Homebridge + HomePods
qmr 17 hours ago [-]
Jesus this is stupid.
DarmokTanagra 10 hours ago [-]
There are people in these comments unironically suggesting running an express web server for a doorbell lmao.
Edit: there are very, very few products on the market designed as simply as this, just an R/F signal triggering local playback. I think the only commercial doorbells designed like this I found were an out-of-stock product, and a UK device designed for 230V that would have required a bulky adapter to work for me in the US.
My light switches are similarly complicated.
I know a guy who lives is a 1700's-era house. His is a bell, a pulley, and a string.
The problem is they've probably gone to the wrong house before and met an owner who got defensive.
As for availability, they are certainly very obtainable where I am in UK. Shops and Amazon etc have them.
- All consumers own smartphones and like using them
- Consumers have no idea how their home networking works
- Consumers could not move a file from their computer to an SD card (or something similar)
So, everything is done by the app: you install the app, the smart device broadcasts a wifi network. This allows you to use your phone to give the smart device your wifi password. Then the remote servers handle everything else.
There's nothing in between. You're either an actual engineer, as mrb describes, or you're just beholden to cloud services that are terrible and also are guaranteed to disappear in 0-3 years.
But my implementation of these requirements is absolutely not over engineered. I argue it is the simplest and most reliable it could be done.
If it quacks like a duck, doesn’t matter what you call it: it was over engineering.
I challenge you to design a wireless doorbell that has a user-configurable chime, in a way that uses less software or less hardware than mine. You couldn't.
In fact, if you did market research like me you would find that 99% of similar products have vastly more complex hardware or software or services being them. They break when there is no Internet. Some work without Internet but don't work when the local Wi-Fi is non functional. They don't immediately get back online after a power outage. They need regular software updates during which the chime can't play. These are over engineered things. Not my product, because mine has none of this complexity or faults.
If the requirements and constraints come from you, then saying "those are the requirements" doesn't settle anything. And is the same excuse people use for the over-engineered solutions you don't seem to like.
It is over-engineering compared to a regular doorbell, period.
You don't provide that.
What I am stating is that "it was in the requirements" is not a "get out of jail card" when someone says it's over-engineered.
All I'm saying is that it's a very comfortable position to abstract away personal responsibility and say "I'm not over-engineering, that's what X wants", but that's exactly how we get the over-engineered Linux-plus-wi-fi doorbells.
Then I want you to justify why commercial products offering this feature have 10-100 times more code or 10 times more complex hardware just to do what my doorbell does :-)
The person who gave an opinion about whether this is overengineered or not was Lukeify, not me:
> You are super-sensitive to over-engineering, so you over-engineered your requirements and ultimately your end product, just in a different methodology and framework.
It's still over-engineering to a lot of people, including lukeify, regardless of there existing something worse, regardless of any "it was the requirements" defence.
Over-engineering something is fine. Especially a personal project.
Just own it.
What if the default chime triggers some PTSD? (Probably doesn’t, but it could happen!) What if the landlord doesn’t want you to drill a hole through the side of your house and it doesn’t come with a doorbell?
The solution isn’t “over engineered” it’s just “engineered” (not an off the shelf product)
I never said otherwise?
Perhaps it was unproductive because you’re assuming I’m making a point while I’m not?
My point was entirely that other people can call this “over engineered” due to feature creep.
The person who called it over engineered in the first place wasn’t me.
I appreciate that you and other people seem to want to discuss doorbells, and someone else seems to want to discuss christmas lights, but I am not really interested in that.
I am arguing a general point (“feature creep can lead to overengineering”), not this specific product.
I'm perfectly fine with people having fun or over-engineering stuff, I'm just pointing out that it's still over-engineered in the end. Which is 100% fine!
How do you define objectively as an engineer if "play MP3" is too much? A doorbell is a sound outputting device only, being able to select the sound seems like a reasonable extension. Is a digital doorbell overengineered when analog electric ones worked just fine for almost 2 centuries? Or were these overengineered when mechanical doorbells worked for many more centuries before? What if I attach a light to the doorbell, is that over engineering?
Or are you just fighting to save face after missing the point completely and making that tasteless Nurnberg trial parallel?
Over-engineered simply means there is much more in that implementation than the baseline needed to tick off the requirements.
As an engineer (the traditional kind), I don't really appreciate nor can I afford the "not my problem" attitude of doing engineering in a vacuum, because in the end it's my responsibility.
Isn't everybody? Your whole case rests on the insistence that OP's core requirement is no good. Not for any objective engineering reasons, just because you think so.
I have a simple question that any engineer can answer in a heartbeat. Is a Christmas tree light installation with a bunch of series connected incandescent lights (I'm talking literally one of those classic Christmas lights set with absolutely no extra components or complexity beyond wires, bulbs, and plug) over engineered? Could you do it with even less engineering?
I never said it wasn't good.
I just said it led to over-engineering a doorbell.
"Good" or "bad" are words you're putting in my mouth.
I was trying to be diplomatic and use "good/bad" as shorthand for "should be part of a well engineered (not over/under) product or not". You don't like it, then let me use what you actually said: engineers who implement all the requirements given to them are like the Nazi soldiers who executed the people they were ordered to execute. Neither good nor bad, just over executing, right?
I asked you a question because it was an easy way to apply your logic on something concrete, so you can see that if it fails on something so simple, maybe it's not actually useful at all. You pretended not to see it like a fine engineer with responsibilities. Tripped on a Christmas light.
My whole point is that "something being in the requirements" is not a shield against something being considered "over engineering" by others. There's nothing more to it.
Maybe “I want a configurable chime” is just a less popular requirement than “I want to be notified on my phone even if I'm not at home.”
Also, Excel is famously complex because, despite most users only using 20% of the features, no one uses the same 20%, so if you want cover close to 100% of the market, you need to ship features that are useless to most of your users.
Precisely.
The Wi-Fi and Linux solution that was called over-engineered just happened to have different requirements. Engineering is a collaboration, not blindly solving very specific problems.
I think you're comparing 2 very different scenarios here.
Excel is solution engineered to meet every requirement under the sun, for every possible user.
"The doorbell" is something designed and built by 1 person to meet exactly their own requirements.
whstl (the other commenter) insists that he is better suited than the benefiter and builder of that doorbell to decide what is a good requirement and he's willing to make tasteless jokes comparing anyone who doesn't agree with his assessments to Nazis on trial at Nurnberg [1]. You'll notice that whstl didn't even ask why the requirement exists in the first place, just concluded it's wrong (it's something they teach you on day 1 of engineering school, build whatever you want, better if you don't ask questions where the answer might inconvenience you).
When you have a requirement would you take the word of someone on the internet just saying it's not a valid one?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49506886
Nothing wrong with that.
Also nothing wrong with people going to great lengths to build an Excel replacement that fits their exact requirements like glove, by ignoring 99.9% of what makes Excel … excel.
The issue is calling Excel over engineered for catering to everyone else:
> You would be surprised that 99% of the solutions out there are complete over engineered stacks that depend on wifi devices, Internet access, connecting to various cloud services...
Even if all some people wanted was a custom sound on their doorbells, I bet many of those people will want to transfer the sound using a smartphone rather than an SD card they can't modify with a computer many don't own. And, given that capability, even more people will want to be notified of a ring on their phones, and then why not when they're outside (maybe on the backyard) away from the LAN, and then why not while they're at work, and so on and so forth.
The “over engineered” solutions are actually engineered to cater to everyone else, that is all.
And to make whstl's point: I find it much easier to justify internet and cloud to support a doorbell that's genuinely more useful (rings remotely) than SD cards and custom hardware to justify something as … frivolous as changing the bell's sound.
PS: I just spent $70 modding a $20 Casio watch. I loved every second of it.
> check out my hand-embroidered curtains, it's got exactly the flower pattern I wanted
> yeah well you shouldn't want flowers on your curtains, just buy plain white ones from the store
I'm just pointing out that "it's in the [my own] requirements" in this case does not really make something "not over engineered".
Also opinions will change after time, or after analyzing the problem space better.
GP also said that lots of product in the market are over-engineered, so I don't see why my view (that this is an over-engineered doorbell) is controversial at all.
The former definition is somewhat objective in that it can be tested and proven, while the latter definition is entirely subjective and sort of meaningless. I could just as well state that any doorbell is over-engineered since you can just knock.
> GP: The minimum of 5+x^2 is closer to 5.5 than 10
> You: If you were minimizing 3+x^2 you could get an even lower value
I am saying that people can call something "overengineered" and "it was the requirement" is not a defence.
Maybe what I mean is: Feature creep does contribute to overengineering. That's not controversial in the engineering community at all.
But it should be considered fair to say that some things are over-engineered in relation to others.
It should also be considered ok to call things over-engineered. OP himself did.
Once you start that, you also need to stop somewhere. For example, we could even question the need for a door in the first place. Not saying that we should, but if you want to take over defining other people's requirements, you're putting this on yourself.
So if you don't want somebody else to call you out for over engineering somebody else's requirements, where do you stop?
It's not an enviable position to be in. :)
Some other people mentioned the doorbell project was over-engineering and I just agreed with them.
So I don't agree that you can call mrb's basic wireless doorbell "overengineered" for requirements reasons alone without opening yourself up to the same scrutiny that you're applying to him.
Then we are in agreement!
The person who originally called it "overengineered" wasn't me, it was another user.
I did joke that an electric doorbel "does a similar job" but that was to demonstrate that "similar" is also a judgement call.
I am just saying that lukeify or anyone can call it overengineered from their point of view, similar to how GP called commercial products overengineered.
You point that out without providing any context or criteria. So you're just pointing out your personal opinion, nothing resembling fact. In this case everything is over engineered. The doorbell is overengineered before even discussing mp3.
Interesting context you live in. Here in east europe, 90% of devices you find on eshops are cheap chinese buttons with AAA batteries, that emit signal and another reciever device that plays sound. The sound is not customizable, but it is super cheap stuff.
I would have to go out of my way, to find cloud connected doorbell.
This is EXACTLY the problem! Try finding one that I can customize with my own chime and you will only find expensive, unreliable, over engineered stuff.
Or buy 5, and decide which tone you like most.
But honestly, even if you have nothing, if you know a bit what you are doing with IoT with HomeAssistant if you buy the right hardware (i.e. verified as working by others, e.g. the Sonoff ones typically) it's at most an afternoon of tinkering for a setup that will reliably work for years.
Now we're in "under-engineering" territory. Also not good.
Then I guess 3d print a casing that just puts the ZigBee button on top of the integrated button?
You could have bought a bell...
Over engineering is about the solution, not the requirement:
> I wanted something that lets me play a custom bell
No because similar commercial products were either out of stock or not compatible with my AC voltage.
Granted maybe your requirements are ridiculous. But I also had cases where I DIYed a solution because the commercially available solutions all either didn't fulfil the requirements and/or had anti-features that ruled out their use. I haven't had any regret so far with these solutions, with some of these being active for over a decade.
There may be over engineering, but replacing a bought solution that needs to connect to the internet and someone else's computer to ring a bell with a simple 433MHz sender and a MP4-player module isn't that. Do you know what is required for a device to even connect to a WiFi? That alone is more complex than the whole system the user built here.
so what?
Simple systems have the advantage that there are less moving parts. Less moving parts means less chance of failure. That is a trade-off an engineer will sometimes take even if it means building a new thing, sometimes something with more moving parts is needed and that is okay as well.
Maybe your requirement is to have a doorbell that does work when the internet is out. Who knows? OP might live in a place where this happens more often. Or they might not and like the idea to never again have to think about their doorbell-manufacturers cloud and the latests exploits targeting that IoT product. There are many reasons why simple can be the right choice and any true engineer would say: "depends" instead of "so what".
But... why?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing
Also, a doorbell ringing on the outside of the door is not only silly but in case of an apartment complex highly annoying for your neighbors.
And make sure your neighbors like being monitored through your five services.
Personally I have a button outside my front door. It is connected with a copper wire to the other side of the door to a small device that sends out an audible notification. No cloud required.
Burglars know they’ll probably be on CCTV somewhere anyway but nobody in their right mind is trying to smash through a security door or saw through some window bars when there’s a house up the street that doesn’t have them.
Obviously there are downsides (cost, aesthetics) but those solutions actually work, I’m skeptical that a fancy subscription doorbell makes much difference
I've lived in a couple of countries where everyone has bars on all their windows due to perceived (in some case correctly, in other cases not) crime levels. It's... not great? I'd much rather live somewhere where I don't need to live in a prison compound.
Yeah, that's fair. I do prefer living somewhere that requires neither.
Seem silly, but just try going to the police with crisp hi-res video of a burglarly and try to get them interested. I know people who have done it and all have failed. "We don't have time for this", "Value is not high enough to pursue", "Just call your insurance, not us".
The other way round: If the son the mayor commits armed burglary, nothing happens. Happened in Amsterdam. According to her, her son was just messing around with friends.
https://nltimes.nl/2019/08/14/amsterdam-mayor-explains-15-yo...
You can get more information, including a free home audit, at https://polbru.be/prevention-contre-le-vol/?lang=fr in French and https://polbru.be/diefstalpreventie/ in Dutch, sorry no English links.
My favorite burglar fact is robberies go way down when it’s raining. Thieves just don’t want the hassle of getting wet.
Unfortunately for them, they had both of their kids' names tattooed to their neck, which helped reduce the number of possible suspects.
Wild watching back that footage the next morning.
One type didn't care about any security system, even alarms. They would smash and grab as fast as they could and get out. They didn't have a plan other than to grab the first things that looked valuable. It might cost more to fix the building than to replace what they found.
The other type was trying to play it smart. As soon as they noticed the cameras or indications of a security system they'd leave. Lots of videos where a person was detected, looks up at the cameras, and then slips away to go find another house.
A lot of people start turning off alerts or never set them up properly, so they don't notice the second type of video unless they go looking.
There's no shortage of footage of people casing a place spotting the camera then wondering away. The smart ones look like they're any other lost delivery driver complete with package in hand. Thanks to the rise of gig work nobody has uniforms anymore. No that it really matters, plenty of stolen uniforms in play too.
You also don't have to be extremely bright to realise that a home with a fancy security system may be a higher-value target than the one without.
Then you don’t need 5 cloud services and people can go back to knocking.
Same thing as DVR for analog surveillance cameras, just with eth (usually PoE) ports.
“If I say I’ll do something I’ll do it. There’s no need to remind me every six months”
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=mädels+wenn+ein+mann+sagt+e...
Cameras deter crime. Not ALL crime. Criminals aren’t stupid and will simply go burgle someone that isn’t recording.
So now your front camera has somebody with an unidentifiable hoodie knocking and your back camera has somebody with an unidentifiable hoodie kick in the backdoor. How did the camera help exactly? Is the police really going to find somebody with this almost-invisible stain of dirt on the sleeve of the hoodie? Or are they rather going to say "oh well we'll keep an eye out" and that's the last you hear? My experience is the latter. Now you lost the worth of what they took plus all the money spent on your camera gear and the time setting it up.
Or are you saying doesn't matter, the deterrent is enough? Well then put up a fake camera for a fraction of the price. Works offline too.
People have been stealing things from stores which have had cctv for decades. Your premises are manifestly false.
CCTV doesn't work well when people feel like nobody is going to bother to check its footage (e.g. pocketing a $2 drink from a big-box department store). But when it comes to homes, there are much higher chances of captured footage being used and examined, so it may cause opportunistic burglars to look at other houses instead.
Just because something doesn’t work 100% of the time doesn’t mean it can’t be effective.
Someone's private property getting trespassed/burgled will have a much higher chance of resulting in legal consequences.
The crime there (shoplifting) doesn't begin until they leave.
In the case of a burglary, the crime begins when they enter.
Seems to be a pretty important distinction when discussing whether knowing a person is physically present on your property alerts you to a crime in progress.
With a video doorbell you can get notifications when a person enters your property. You can notify police or neighbors if it’s a stranger
If they are going through the trouble its because they know there is something of value in there and a camera is not going to stop them.
A camera is only going to dissuade crimes of opportunity, its basically just fancy lock.
False, opportunity theft is the most common form.
Better doors/windows/locks help the most, and help against both opportunistic and targeted.
the only robberies that get 'attribution' are cases where the criminals get caught. i.e. low hanging fruit and thus these statistics skew to opportunistic events.
however, unplanned opportunistic crime makes for good promotional sales of window bars and strong locks. just like safes with electronic keypads.
very few such devices will stop a premeditated theft... and what is the rate of recovery for stolen goods in most jurisdictions?
Around here, they wear hoodies and keep their hood up to obscure their face.
Wear a mask and the victim is home: they know you are about to rob them and can prepare. Run away before the police come
Don't wear a mask and victim is home: make up a fake reason you pressed the doorbell, or up the ante to a home invasion and risk getting shot.
Don't wear a mask and the victim is not home: proceed with burglary but face is recorded for police.
Wear a mask and victim is not home: profit.
It's not as simple as covering up. Plus you still risk leaving finger prints and DNA
My next plan is to do a doorbell. I want it fully local only and I know there are providers who offer this brand new for $$$ but I love the idea of picking up cheap IoT devices and hacking them instead. My current candidate is EZVIZ DB1C but I haven’t bought it yet and definitely open to suggestions!
Basically just a wifi button. I hacked one so I could, in my brain fog, record the moment i started and finished feeding my infant by sending a ping to a server via a simple click.
There's a bunch up on eBay. Could probably 3M tape one beside your door. Easy solution, esp if it's shielded from rain.
A zigbee button/doorbell would work well, but then we'd have two buttons on the front door unless we hid the Blink's integrated button somehow.
Add to this the security and downtime risks, and the equation really doesn't look good. Equipment that is tied to someone else's cloud is an astonishingly bad idea, but everyone has their own immediate (or even long-term) reasons for ignoring advice. "You get what you deserve."
We live in a bubble. Reading stuff here means you understand things about computing barely 0.1% of the world population understands the possible consequences. Of that 0.1%, plenty do understand the consequences and still choose the convenience.
For these companies, they just need to convince everyone else, for whom they have no possible conception, understanding, or even words to imagine the Orwellian Rube-Goldberg-like machine that is modern day SaaS.
It isn't so much "get what you deserve", so much as society writ large is getting what it deserves for unregulated advertising slop and re-sale of consumer data.
I couldn't find a front door camera I liked so I ended up building my own from parts.
Having worked for "the cloud" for years, I tell everyone I know, there is no cloud, there is only other people's hard drives.
I guess $30 for what is effectively a glorified chime for your door is a bit much, but considering the time it probably took to put together this (kind of over-engineered) and the (presumably) monthly cost of the VPS, it makes more sense.
Also, I feel like something like MQTT or another message broker could simplify this significantly, making the whole VPS /state endpoint unnecessary, without exposing your home mini pc to the internet, since the mini pc would connect to the MQTT (I think HA actually has a built in mqtt integration? although you'll still need to make something to process the message once the MQTT gets it) and the SmartThings API would also (assuming the processing after the SmartThings API is hit is customizable in some form)
MQTT was an option, but it actually felt like overkill to add an MQTT server on my VPS than just a tiny Express server. (But who am I to talk about overkill here.)
Let it bounce around the globe 3 times through Tor, Iroh, Blockchain, Tailscale, Meshtastic, Thread, Zigbee, Bluetooth, WiFi, IrDA, NFC, TransferJet, FireWire, UART, SPI, I2C, and OneWire, using the free tiers of AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, IBM Cloud, and Baidu Cloud. And it's 2026, don’t forget a game of telephone powered by free LLMs on OpenRouter.
P.S. Speaking of chimes, I found this page with a bunch of sound samples from a Japanese company. Strangely satisfying: https://qq-bell.com/media/x-plus-64sound
I told a 10 year old to tie the strings on a hood like he’d tie a shoe (after he just jumbled the strings together in a failed attempt to get them out of the way instead of making any kind of knot). He told me he didn’t know how. I was a bit shocked, since at that age I was learning all kinds of different knots for fun, and the shoelaces seem like gateway into knots.
etc.
What a time to be alive
Suggestions welcome!
(The actual doorbell button is still there too, so it's a crapshoot which one somebody decides to use in the first place. And yes, many video doorbells have a "chime adapter" to take care of this, but our house's doorbell wiring made them run in fear.)
[1] More precisely, we did until we moved to a manufactured home that did not even have a doorbell installed, after which I had to do some jiggering (now we have a Ring chime that the doorbell can talk to over the house's LAN). But the setup I describe above worked fine for a number of years in the house we were in before.
But yes, there were definitely other ways to solve this problem.
(Yours wasn't a latency issue though, what kind of latency do you get with your 5-cloud services chain?)
Also, interesting about the SmartThings API access moving to a subscription model: https://hackaday.com/2026/07/28/samsungs-smartthings-api-ter... (this link is in the article - the cost is only for third party usage, not if you're directly using the SmartThings app).
This is absurdity.
Imagine paying a Korean company five bucks a months so you can get a notification on your phone that your fridge needs a new water filter.
People really need to touch grass.
That said, the author might also consider installing an actual doorbell, which is a device their home should have had decades ago. You'll also want something to provide power to the Nest, so this is almost free.
Use a physically protected motion action video recorder. No web. The burglary will happen and you will have evidence. No software upgrades. Never obsolete.
YMMV
My dad had the old Radio Shack plug 'n power stuff when I was a kid and it .. just worked for decades.
Lesson there.
2. Buglary risk reducing when you install a camera is a myth. A very convenient myth though for those selling you any of the components in your over-engineered thing.
I like just about everything about the device, but I just want to have a normal door chime again.
Their ancient wolf-dog ancestors howl with approval. That's why we domesticated them after all.
So then I decided to set up some LED strip lights for my office with really nice wireless buttons from IKEA.
I confirmed that the buttons and the lights both were zigbee compatible, but I missed that one supported only Thread and the other only Matter. So now I have two identical antennas, each handling a different protocol.
WRT IKEA, if they’re the Thread-only device, I found one page [0] claiming that some of them can be forced into Zigbee mode.
0: https://automatedhome.com/the-hidden-trick-inside-ikeas-new-...
As a recent owner of a Samsung fridge, I'm really curious to know what the plan is here. The probability of me paying a monthly for my refrigerator is exactly zero.
The design is simple and easy to hack (and build something else). There are rather cheap light switches that operate on the same principle and can be used.
Is it so difficult to expose a MQTT thing or some other random HTTP server, default off but configurable in some developer settings, that could be used to control the device/read state? It would certainly make the minority that is us power users happy.
However, those companies don’t make the kind of perpetual revenue that bring in capital, and the companies that make the devices that don’t make you pay for their service end up not lasting as long as those that do.
Sadly, it seems that the prudent business decision is to lock your customers into your ecosystem.
Generally ONVIF is the protocol one should be looking for in a camera, it indicates that the edge device can play ball with a central server (Frigate, Blue Iris, etc). Profile M specifies the metadata into external mqtt:
https://www.onvif.org/profiles/profile-m/
There's a solution to this!
My office is in the other end of the house, and most package delivery service press the doorbell and starts working away instantly. While that's also a bit extreme, I can't expect them to stand around for more than ~30 seconds.
It’s not, that’s called a duct tape solution, which is the opposite of engineering, that’s poor design and bad practice, there are so many failure points and moving parts that it’s eminent it will fail. The engineering design should be reliable, simple, and efficient. Instead of that cluster chaos you made, you could have had a relay wired inside the bell that simultaneously trigger a normal and simple electric-based bell, so it works for you and the other person.
"look at what i can do with the assistance of an LLM"
shows an rube goldberg construction sure it works. but geez support and security is a nightmare.
Once you do all that, your spouse comes and asks for a way to control the air conditioning too…
This whole "you need to create an account" is a virus that needs to go away. It should be possible to control a local device without accounts, privacy policies, and other crap.
I do find it doubtful that OP couldn’t skip most of their setup, though; if you have HomeAssistant (which they do), and there’s a direct path from Blink -> Alexa, I’m fairly certain HA could then handle triggering the Google Home Mini devices on its own.
Or, you know, doorbell chimes.
Up next: How many cloud services does it take to turn on the lights?
Here's a hint: https://imgur.com/a/light-bulb-moment-hIKUI48
But hey, it could be worse. For instance, you could be trying to send an e-mail: https://github.com/0x4447/0x4447_product_s3_email#what-will-...
Now rip it back out again and replace it with a better, local solution.
___
Fwiw, I did buy some dahua thing for this, for which I now run an asterisk that hangs up on every call and switches a USB relay to ring the actual bell.
Equally jank, but locally contained jank.
Today it's never been easier to make custom stuff -- 3dprinting and even PCB manufacturing can be done as a service, no need to buy. Although I would use a dev board microcontroller for $7, so no need for PCB.
And doorbell case also doesn't have to be 3d printed, can make it from wood or metal, if you prefer.
Smart appliance: You buy it, it works more or less as expected for 1 year, then it fails in new and exciting ways, and then you replace it with a dumb appliance.
Add to that: every manufacturer wants to run their own servers and their own cloud service. I don't want my data strewn throughout the internet. For most devices, there is zero reason they couldn't work entirely within the LAN. Plus, we all know that half of those services will die in a few years, forcing us to replace perfectly good devices.
That is a feature, not a bug.
I cannot imagine ever thinking that a 3rd party web connected camera running 24/7 in my home would be a good idea.
I inherited an electrical one from the previous owner. It ran on... battery. (Why would anyone do this is beyond me, but it turns out to be very common where I live.) The battery died and I needed a replacement. If I wanted to replace it with something that connects to the power cables inside the house, I'd need to drill a hole in the front wall (made of brick and mortar) and find the closest cable to connect to... And I was too lazy to do that.
On the street I live, there are mostly old houses. Some of them have a bell that exposes a handle on the outside that you need to pull in order to ring the bell inside the house. Some have a "door hammer" (is it what it's called?), a decorative, usually shaped as a ring in an animal's mouth, hammer that's attached to the middle of the door one would use to knock on a metal plate used for this attachment.
I bought an actual cast iron bell and attached it near the door above the mailbox.
What happened is that people seem to doubt so much the functionality of an obvious bell that they prefer knocking on the door to pulling the thread attached to the bell. That's what most package delivery service people do.
next round of outdoor cams and doorbells are going to be wholly selfhosted.
if they live for another 9 months I'll have the budget for it.
Sounds like a feature more than a bug.