I recently adopted a dog who I want to monitor when I'm away from home. So I got a cheap motion tracking in-home camera with cloud storage, and AI identification for people and pets. The AI functions never fucking worked. I already had a Ring camera.

Did a bit of research after realising the cheapo camera was shit, and went for a eufy stack to replace the Ring doorbell and tbr shitty in-house camera.

I now have:

• eufy Video Doorbell
• eufy HomeBase 3, with an added 1TB of storage
• eufy IndoorCam C220

This gives me

• local storage for both cameras on the HomeBase.
• the HomeBase also gives you local AI for (individual) person, (general) pet, vehicle, and package identification. I haven't tried the vehicle identification.
• streaming in the app for both cameras should work in 2k. I have it set to 1080p. It's good enough for me.
• continuous recording is an option. I have it set to motion alerts because
• the app gives you motion and doorbell alerts. You can configure how much information you want in the notifications, to prevent video's from passing through eufy's servers.

This is the right approach. Normies won't pay attention to any "your privacy is at risk" argument. But showing them examples (plural, as 1 instance won't do shit either and will just be dismissed) of people getting fucked by all the surveillance COULD make some of them take it into consideration (no guarantees).

I do not agree that people that allow these devices into their homes are idiots. I see them more as "ignorantly lazy".

That's right. But how detrimental asbestos is took time to be made abundantly clear and known, plus "authorities" got involved, so the sheep listened. With surveillance, the same "authorities" want the public to be ignorant so that they can keep it going without us countering it.

Similar situations, but certainly not equal.

Ubiquiti. Cloud gateway max (router + NVR) for $200 with no storage, add your own 2tb nvme, get a ubiquiti doorbell for $300. Little pricy, but simple to setup and all the footage lives locally on the cloud gateway max. No subscription, and you can add more cameras later. The cloud gateway max is an excellent 2.5G router. Slap on a WiFi 7 access point for $200 more and you got yourself a killer home network.

This is highly unlikely to be able to notify you of someone ringing the door. It's doable, but takes some tinkering which most people are not able to do because of all the reasons mentioned in previous comments.

Reolink devices still reach out to a bunch of different servers across the world as soon as you connect them to a network.

Always isolate an IP doorbell or camera on its own access point or virtual network, where it can't see or interact with other devices on your local network, and then block it from WAN access.

i use wyze, been solid for years esp for the price. local SD storage is a huge plus for me and the streaming quality is good and loads insanely fast. i have a handful of blink cameras around the property but never use them anymore bc the interface and UX is so shit

This is the choice if you want to buy the equipment and it works out of the box. Its cheaper if you want to sort of build your own setup but requires more maintenance and setup.

Hard agree. What does a video doorbell connected to the internet solve? I'm concerned that people dont trust their neighbors to this extent. Sort of a canary in the coal mine type thing.

To be honest china is more likely to come to their defense than american police are.

Just bought a Reolink rln46 NVR and four cameras. I don’t have the doorbell, but every other feature you requested works flawlessly. It records 24/7 in 4K but can stream at lower resolutions if you want when you’re away from home on mobile. You can set what notifications you receive and when you want to receive them. You can even go back and search for events by type in the recorded video when they were never flagged for notification in the first place.
I’ve been thoroughly impressed and plan to add to the system in the coming months.

While this happened a few years ago, I'd still suggest to block it from accessing the internet/cloud in your firewall nonetheless.

Michael Tsai - Blog - Eufy Cameras Uploading to Cloud Without Consent

(mjtsai.com)

Even if it's not on eufy's end, there could always be a vulnerability.

I also use Reolink, including both the NVR and doorbell, and have been very pleased with it.

I think some people also think they need it because they order way too much junk from the internet but it's really just an indication of bad habits. If it's for security a single camera doorbell is definitely not adequate solution either.

I mean, you might think that but you underestimate how willing people are to give up their privacy and freedom just to feel safe.

Home assistant + frigate has been serving myself and my family on separate sites for about 2 years. It has definitely kicked my ass, but seeing "privacy friendly" reolink cameras constantly phone home on my firewall assured me it was worth it.
Wireguard tunnel in and you have remote access with practically no security concerns*

What does a video doorbell connected to the internet solve? I'm concerned that people dont trust their neighbors to this extent. Sort of a canary in the coal mine type thing.

It's not that I don't trust my neighbors, I don't trust anyone outside of those I personally know well.

Growing up around people who abuse hard drugs tends to destroy the trust you have in those around you after you have your shit stolen repeatedly. Both my wife and I had shit stolen from closed front porches when we were growing up, so I have cameras that watch the sides of my house. But I also built my system from scratch, so I am not worried about third party snooping/reporting.

Plenty of us have good reasons not to trust those around us. Especially in this day and age of terrorists walking around with state authority.

I don’t have a doorbell of any kind (the button isn’t even hooked up to anything). My neighbours are jerks but they won’t steal packages or anything like that.

We’re living in a low trust society that used to be a high trust society a few decades ago. I believe all of the problems you see in politics ultimately stem from this. Factionalism is tearing western society apart.

Reolink Doorbell ( Firewalled from connecting outside LAN) + Frigate (self hosted)

Yes I did this years ago in 2013, but the problem for my family was accessing the recordings (basically I never set up remote access outside of our LAN)