
Ring has now raised $100M for video doorbells - jsiminoff
http://fortune.com/2016/03/16/ring-raises-61m-funding/
======
DyslexicAtheist
_" Instead of getting a notification that there was motion at the front door
and getting a link to the video, the notification might let the homeowner know
that the homeowner’s child was at the door, signalling that little Aidan had
made it home from school."_

lot of products are being sold in the name of protecting your kids because
this is a common reasoning appealing to parents. Not sure how comfortable I'd
be growing up with parents who use surveillance capabilities like these and
never stop stalking me. I guess I might react in 2 different ways: 1)
constantly anxious over who is watching 2) ignoring the way I'm watched and
growing up as a "properly indoctrinated soldier" who agrees that surveillance
is not a problem and privacy is not a right because you shouldn't have
anything to hide anyway.

What bothers me most though is that we make our kids believe that big brother
will always watch out for us.

~~~
brbsix
It's a sad fact of life that people only accept tyranny from their government
after first having accepted tyranny from their parents as children.

~~~
deepnet
"Give me the child till the age of seven and I will show you the man."

Ignatius of Loyola

~~~
harywilke
There is an interesting documentary series based on that quote. Started in
1964 and every 7 years after.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_Series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_Series)

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jerf
If you're at home, does this go up to the cloud and then round-trip to your
phone, or does the video stay on your local wifi?

There's a part of me that cynically wants to just guess that it does always go
up to the cloud, but it's also silly (read "expensive") to ship video up to
the cloud just to potentially ship it right back down to the very same wifi
network, so maybe not.

(Of course I assume the cloud does proxy it if you're not home, because $90
million probably isn't anywhere near enough to actually take on trying to make
IPv6 work for consumers reliably enough to make this work. Sad.)

~~~
joenathan
It goes up to the cloud and then back down to you.

~~~
dba7dba
All this cloud nonsense... One day someone will come up with an appliance type
device that one can keep at home to act as the personal cloud environment. One
day...

~~~
ec109685
A NAS?

~~~
dba7dba
NAS that is stupid simple to set up. 99% people don't know how what NAS is...

------
shostack
Are there any companies out there making smart doorway camera and such like
this that just work off your home wifi network, and can stream directly to
your phone or store to local media (or cloud media like Gdrive, Dropbox, etc.)
without requiring a subscription?

I really don't want that data hitting some random company's server (setting
aside issues with trusting other cloud storage providers), and I just don't
feel like adding any more recurring payments to the list. I want one and done.

~~~
yardie
You can already do this with a Synology, QNAP, G-drive, etc. and an IP
streaming camera. Most of them have a hybrid cloud service where you get a URL
to your NAS and can download files, run services remotely (torrent for
example), or stream camera footage.

And its been like this for years. Ring seems a little more polished. But I'd
prefer the privacy of keeping that information on premise.

~~~
shostack
Are there any good tutorials out there on how to hook all of this up? Not
super sure of the best thing to Google for this.

~~~
yardie
The camera service is built-in. The Synology series is really good at getting
you started. You don't need Google it has wizards that will walk you through
it.

This is from a few years ago, but their cloud service consists of punching an
outgoing port from your home or office and giving you a permanent address to
access your files from. There were some backup synchro options as well but I
only used streaming videos and music which I replaced with Plex.

Also it has SSH access if you want to install packages through that method.

------
Animats
Looks a lot like this $58 item on Alibaba.[1] Is Ring just a reseller with an
app?

There are remote controllable door locks. This doesn't interface with them.
Nor does it talk to the home security system. The home IoT guys need to get
more organized about this.

[1] [http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Outdoor-battery-
operat...](http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Outdoor-battery-operated-
wireless-security-camera_60287794922.html)

~~~
Sanddancer
It doesn't look like it. The model you linked is just a camera, not a camera
and doorbell. I also totally agree with you on there needing to be much much
much more standardization on IoT stuff. Right now, everyone's separated into
their own fiefdoms.

~~~
daveguy
Yeah, that is just a wifi+3g camera. It takes a lot of engineering and quality
control to add a button and a buzzer. I think the fiefdoms will crumble when
we get an open-source open-hardware home-cloud device. Yes, I should wash my
mouth out with soap for all those buzzwords, but you probably get the idea.

~~~
Animats
_" Yeah, that is just a wifi+3g camera. It takes a lot of engineering and
quality control to add a button and a buzzer._"

Right. If you contacted this manufacturer in Shentzen, and said you wanted to
buy 10,000 units, but with a custom bezel and an extra push button, that
probably would not be a problem.

Or you could contact one of the other hundreds of video doorbell makers in
Shentzen.[1]

That's probably where Ring's unit comes from, after all.

[1]
[http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_...](http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=camera+doorbell+security+systemscamera_60290784333.html?spm=a2700.7724838.0.0.aVDKFE)

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Osiris30
Thats a lot of sales - 50k/month. There are so many competitors here - NetAtmo
(1), August, and several others (3). This is isn't like investing in GoPro 5
years ago,... Isn't this more like Cisco investing in Flip camera in 2009 (4)
??

(1) [https://www.netatmo.com/en-
US/product/presence](https://www.netatmo.com/en-US/product/presence) (2)
[http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/14/august-unveils-a-
homekit-...](http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/14/august-unveils-a-homekit-
enabled-lock-keypad-and-doorbell-camer/)) (3)
[http://www.mysmahome.com/FEATURE/5344/7-must-see-smart-
video...](http://www.mysmahome.com/FEATURE/5344/7-must-see-smart-video-
doorbells-of-2015-2016.aspx) (4) [https://gigaom.com/2011/04/12/stick-a-fork-
in-flip-smartphon...](https://gigaom.com/2011/04/12/stick-a-fork-in-flip-
smartphones-killed-the-video-star/)

~~~
michaelbuckbee
Looking at their product line and the statements they're making - I'm thinking
they are heading towards competing with hOme security services. That move
would push them into a much higher margin business and make this make more
sense.

------
andrewflnr
Hopefully they use the money to fix nonsense like this:
[https://www.pentestpartners.com/blog/steal-your-wi-fi-key-
fr...](https://www.pentestpartners.com/blog/steal-your-wi-fi-key-from-your-
doorbell-iot-wtf/)

An attacker at your door has physical access to your Ring device, which can be
leveraged into access to your wifi network (unless they fixed this already).

~~~
LogicX
Your link indicates at the bottom that they already fixed this issue.

~~~
andrewflnr
Ah, whoops. When I first found the article for a paper I was writing, I was
just skimming for details of the attack.

------
hijp
I like this a lot because of its inconspicuous design. Are there any other
security cameras that aren't bulky?

You can get an iphone 6s camera replacement for around $40, it seems like the
quality is far superior to the current consumer security cameras on the market
- so why are ring and nest the only options?

~~~
brbsix
I've had the same wish, but AFAIK cell phone cameras use proprietary
interfaces and are not very useful on their own. They require a GPU and
chipset. You'd have to include nearly the entire phone to make use of an
iPhone 6s camera.

~~~
Sanddancer
Most cell phones actually use off the shelf sensors and interfaces. It's an
easy way to allow differentiation -- have the same mainboard, but different
screen sizes, cameras, etc for different lines. I can't find info on the 6s
exactly, but previous lines used standard Omnivision imaging chips that spoke
over the same CSI-2 interface used by everyone else, and found even on boards
like the raspberry pi.

~~~
brbsix
Do you know of anyone who's successfully used an iPhone camera in a hobby
project? I looked around a bit and wasn't able to find anything. Here's
someone with some older camera modules...[0] Didn't sound too hopeful. I'm not
an expert on the subject though, you may be right.

[https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/22963/using-...](https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/22963/using-
other-camera-modules-to-build-custom-webcams)

------
AlexMuir
A little under $1 for every home in the US [0], so far.

[0] [http://www.statista.com/topics/1618/residential-housing-
in-t...](http://www.statista.com/topics/1618/residential-housing-in-the-us/)

~~~
seizethecheese
Yeah, and at $199 per house this is a massive market. They say they are at
50,000 units per month, so around $10 million per month in sales, which they
say is growing at multi-hundred percent yearly. Doesn't seem obviously
foolish.

~~~
brk
It depends on how you look at it. Right now Ring is the primary company in
this market, but if they get real traction it would be easy for Google to add
a button to a Nestcam and make a Nestbell. There are Chinese companies
flooding the security market with low-cost and good quality equipment.

Ring got a $200M valuation. Assuming investors would be happy with a modest 5x
valuation, Ring is going to have to sell several million doorbells to make
that happen.

~~~
seizethecheese
Yeah, Ring seems similar to GoPro in this respect. I'd bet investors in GoPro
at this stage did pretty well though.

------
Nux
An interesting and not very encouraging video review by Tech Moan
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VvTzmp08OE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VvTzmp08OE)

I'd rather buy the batteryless (non-Ring) one
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9CpalDdd04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9CpalDdd04)

~~~
geomark
That's a really thorough review he did in that YouTube video. Quite
interesting.

------
scaramanga
In korea, video panels are just wired in to every apartment, even really cheap
ones.

It's pretty cool because you can get video feed from the front door (or ground
floor elevator door if the building is open and has a front desk). As well as
from your front door.

Also it tells you when you have mail, or a package waiting for you, and you
can push a button and call the elevator to your floor.

It's got a panic button too.

Oh, and often there's a panel for in the bathroom, as well as behind the
inside of your apartment door. So you can buzz people up even while you're
taking a crap.

~~~
scaramanga
charming overview here
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGMxw3r5cnw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGMxw3r5cnw)

------
mrpippy
They had a gaping security hole in the product for who knows how long
(revealing the configured WiFi SSID+PSK to anyone with physical access to the
back of the unit): [https://www.pentestpartners.com/blog/steal-your-wi-fi-key-
fr...](https://www.pentestpartners.com/blog/steal-your-wi-fi-key-from-your-
doorbell-iot-wtf/)

------
joenathan
Preordered the Doorbot, the first gen Ring doorbell, it was very buggy and
unreliable, I would get maybe 1 of 10 rings on my phone.

The second gen unit has been very reliable, and the video quality is night and
day better than first gen. Although there can be a little lag of about 10
seconds or so from when the doorbell is rang till it rings on my phone.

~~~
michaelmior
My parents got one of these a few months ago. It's been very unreliable to the
point where they decided to put back their old doorbell just to make sure they
know when someone comes to the door. Been on the phone with tech support
multiple times and they haven't really been able to help.

~~~
joenathan
May be a WiFi issue, you need to make sure you have a solid WiFi network too.
In a crowded neighborhood that can be hard to do.

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sshykes
What is the deal with a battery powered video doorbell?

Is there really a powerful enough battery to make it work for a useful amount
of time?

Are people really willing to charge or replace the batteries as often as is
required (likely every few days or a week at the very least, by my back-of-
the-envelope calculation)?

~~~
steven2012
The battery makes it useful for people like me. My current doorbell is placed
in a location that would render my Ring useless so the battery lets me place
it at a better place.

It lasts about 6 months for me which is good enough.

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srcmap
Can I unlock the door remotely?

If not, it is just a simple security camera system with motion detect
capability, right?

