Reading articles like that make me very happy I'm in the self-hosted Home Assistant ecosystem. I couldn't imagine _someone else_ deciding two things that used to work together no longer do for me.
Is there a good watering hole for self-hosted home assistant development? I was at a Micro Center this evening and saw a AIY Google Voice Kit (not sure if it phones home) and a Matrix Creator (very interesting) plus a lot of other doodads that one could use to build same.
I just don't want to spend a year trying to cobble together my own software.
How to use home assistant:
1. buy any compatible smart thing listed as compatible on the home assistant website
2. Buy a raspberry pi and any necessary RF adapters.
3. Install home assistant on the raspberry pi and edit the config.yaml file to work with your devices.
It was much easier than I expected, and works with more DIY things as well (like 315/433Mhz RF Sockets).
This is such BS. "If you own one of our systems, nothing changes for now." They've completely disabled the RBoy integration that allows SmartThings access to work for Blink Cameras, it's already been done. There's a huge uproar over at the SmartThings forum about it.
Glad you're making that sweet acquisition cash Blink founders but you really screwed over your users.
Would be too strange a coincidence if not, and with the increasing level of device support on Echos will be interesting to see whether they stop supporting Smartthings hubs there as well.
Amazon has their own delivery service, bought wholefoods, and now bought blink. Blink has a doorbell offering plus the camera's that you already know of. It's not a stretch to have groceries delivered all the way to your fridge and put blink cameras all over the house to make sure the delivery guy walks back out when he's done.
Amazon is definitely pushing the boundaries of what amount of privacy people are willing to exchange for convenience. I was shocked that so many people I knew bought Echos... wiring your entire house for video doesn't seem that much crazier.
Wiring your house for video is not crazy at all. Wiring it for video where you have to rely on the security of cloud provider (especially a free one) is what's crazy.
Wiring the interior of your house to a network connected device, whether cloud or not, sounds crazy to me anyways. I realize 95% of the "hacked" webstreams are due to people not changing the default password and forwarding the port, but there are enough security vulnerabilities aside from that where I wouldn't feel comfortable with them installed indoors.
The security on most IoT products is terribly lacking. I don't blame you for being wary of them.
I have a bunch of cheap WiFi cameras, but they don't require a cloud service to operate so I can segregate them all onto a WLAN/VLAN that doesn't have access to the internet. This is a reasonable measure to secure these devices, but for cloud-required cameras (like the Blink appears to be) this isn't an option at all.
Of course, by taking the vendor's cloud service out of the equation I either have greatly reduced functionality or I have to spend time (and money) to build out that functionality locally. The route I've gone has Zoneminder doing motion detection, recording, and storage, with an IPSec VPN to provide remote access.
It's not perfectly secure (nothing is), but it's a lot better than the default.
> Wiring your house for video is not crazy at all.
What's the benefit of wiring your house for video?
And who gets to watch what feed?
At what age should parents stop watching their kids' bedroom?
If there are no cameras in the bedrooms / restrooms that leaves only the corridors and maybe the main living room? But a lot of things can happen in a living room that should not be watchable by anyone who has admin access.
I mean, it's not just about privacy. There's also security concerns involved in the decision to wire up your home for video.
I have a camera pointed straight down at the entry area/living room of my apartment. I'm on the 1st floor with a streetside entrance. I sure as hell want to see why my alarm system went off and if it's a real emergency, privacy be damned.
Absolutely! Wiring your house for video is awesome, for a huge array of potential reasons.
I bought a cloud-connected Nest camera to use as a baby monitor. Quickly realized how awesome it would be to have cameras in (almost) all rooms in my house, so I threw the Nest in the trash (terrible product) and got a few Amcrest cameras and hooked them up to a good, well-maintained Mac IP camera app called SecuritySpy[1].
It's great, and completely private, as it (obviously!) should be.
It's also way faster (obviously!) and lower latency when using it on the local network, than viewing video feeds routed through some advertising company's servers in the cloud, even on gigabit fiber.
I know this is an expression, but the idea of throwing out a $250 wireless camera seems excessive. Of course, adding a camera to every room in a house seems excessive too. I'm curious why you felt you needed cameras in every room? What's the "awesome" part?
Yeah, more precisely, I threw the Nest camera in the "junk box containing items I might end up trying to sell on e.g. craigslist if I ever find the time, which I probably actually won't, so the best outcome would likely be that one day somebody visiting would want the item and it could give it to them, or else it ends up in the literal trash some future day"...
But the Nest camera really is a terrible, awful product for many reasons (fundamentally flawed cloud-required design, additional horrid latency caused by software bugs, awful and dreadful user interface, etc). I hesitate to even give it to anybody.
However, trying it did make us realize we did want not just one camera, but a bunch. The cameras can send audio both directions, so they function as intercoms. Any computer, phone, tablet or TV that we have in the house can be used to check what's going on in another part of the house, and optionally talk to the people there.
Now when we have kids parties, we no longer have to send one adult upstairs with the kids to make sure they keep the nerf gun and plastic sword battles safe (for the kids, and for the house)--we can just relax in the living room and put the upstairs rooms on the TV.
Likewise, we can set the baby down in any room, and keep tabs on him while cooking or working or whatever.
The citizens of my little surveillance state also like the cameras -- the kids are used to them and use them ("mom! I want some water!") and my wife and I use them to keep tabs on each other, too. Am I at home? Oh yeah, there I am at my desk. So she never sends me messages like "Hey are you home? Is the baby awake?" any more.
The cameras also, of course, function as regular security cameras; capturing any action that occurs while we aren't there and storing the video remotely.
This was all fantastically easy to set up in 2017, too (compared to the security camera systems I set up at my businesses in decades past). The big issue is, of course, security in the other direction. But as long as you put the cameras themselves on a separate (preferably wired) network, and don't let them connect to the Internet (don't trust camera firmware!), it seems like it can be done reasonably securely.
I mean I might get hacked, sure. Maybe a zero-day comes out for my camera control software that exposes the video feeds over HTTPS, and an attacker can see inside my house and spy on me. That's not a good outcome, and I prefer to avoid that. But the cloud cameras from Nest, or Blink, etc. essentially come pre-hacked to share your video feeds with the large corporations that own them.
The thing that bothers me most is.. Don't people want cookies any more??? When I go grocery shopping, I get a cookie from the bakery. I need to look at them all and pick out the best one. That's how it works! Although I'm sure Amazon will have a solution for that soon enough as well!
To give a data point, I have never bought anything fresh from the bakery while grocery shopping unless it was part of the intended shopping list for that day.
Amazon has already been using machine learning to separate fresh vs. moldy strawberries; I'm sure AI will be able to identify the freshest cookies better than humans in the near future.
If you're talking about ordering online they won't give you the most fresh items. They'll give you the ones which are still sell-able as fresh ie. almost moldy. Once those are gone, they'll give you the next one in line, but not the most fresh as you might pick yourself if you were in a physical store. Because those will still be sell-able tomorrow or the day after, but these which are almost bad aren't.
What this means is that when you buy an item which almost nobody buys fresh, like say apricots or coconuts (the case here, YMMV) and its easily perishable then you may end up with food which you gotta consume very soon once you receive it. If you buy an item in high demand with a high turnover rating you're probably good to go though.
Fresh is overrated anyway. Get a large freezer. I got all my bread in freezer, all bought on sale (50% discount). We generally toast it, but having it out of the freezer overnight also works. Same with frozen fruit (berries esp) and some frozen veggies. It doesn't deteriorate either, and stays quite tasty (better than canned, generally). And its cheap!
I’m having difficulty finding any reference online to them using machine learning to sort fruit. It also seems odd they would given they are a distributor/retailer and not a grower/wholesaler.
Automated package lockers are a relatively new thing in the US. Most apartment buildings don't have them, especially ones that weren't built in the last few years.
In terms of Amazon lockers, they're also not that common outside of cities. Some are on private property where you need access to the building to access it. Even when they are available near you, a lot of them will be full around the holidays. I had a package that I sent to an Amazon locker where it got automatically returned to their warehouse because the locker was full when the driver tried to deliver the package.
In my apartment building, there are package lockers along with the mailboxes, and the empty package lockers have keys in them. When you get a package, the key is removed and put in your mailbox. You thus try the key in the lockers that don't have one and leave it after removing the package. I'm curious how "automation" can improve significantly on this system.
Yes, my old apartment building had these style lockers too. The downside of those (at least in my building) was that they were for use only by USPS. UPS/FedEx/etc still had to go through the regular package delivery process.
Automation improves it by allowing all carriers access to the box (no carrier key to use, it's all based on codes) and also generating one-time codes that can't be copied or otherwise readily stolen to access the packages.
I always thought that this was ripe for theft. I mean key is there... Instead of having a key, they could have mechanically programmable combination lock.. and leave the key on paper in the mailbox or email or SMS, w/e.
If I'm thinking of the same ones the parent comment was thinking of, then the key is only removable by the carrier. Of course, if you get a package, you can always copy the key while it's in your possession.
That said, no solution will ever be foolproof. If the attacker wants it bad enough and has physical access to the locker, they'll be able to get to your package. Whether it's copying the key, cracking the code, picking the lock, or just tearing it open. With enough determination, your stuff can get stolen. It just becomes a legal matter at that point.
yea a safe alone is not a secure method of store. It's just matter of time and safer methods only delay opening more. It's still a good tradeoff in my opinion between privacy and secure storage.
The vast majority of packages don't need extreme security.
Personally I don't care about security of my packages at all—they just sit outside my door for me. If one is lost/stolen, Amazon will happily replace it.
Anecdotally, I've had a phone delivered to me but my neighbour took it in fearing getting stolen and then later gave it to me after I've reported Amazon as not delivered by due date and carrier has confirmed having delivered by the door. This was in apartment setting so everyone was acting reasonably. Amazon ended up shipping me another phone and I ended up with two phones. I think I just prefer the idea of things getting delivered with determinism and security--just so that it saves everyone time and effort. I may be a bit paranoid about this.
I feel this would be more practical if houses in the future are designed so that there could be a separate entry into a special room of the house designed for service workers to drop off packages and groceries, without touching main living areas.
Houses of the past had this. Lots of old colonial homes have a small room with has doors to the outside and the inside that both lock.
Sometimes they're called "mud rooms" or "butler's pantries" or other things, depending on the age of the house, and the social status of the person it was built for.
That's why sometimes in old movies you'll hear the phrase "Tradesmen enter on the side."
Amazon also recently started in-home delivery [0]. It all adds up. They also have their drones, so in the near future they will completely dominate every aspcet of online shopping to delivery.
> It's not a stretch to have groceries delivered all the way to your fridge
I think I'm mostly kidding... soon you'll be able to have a housemates as a service. You pay random people to come to you home, open the fridge, and drink the delivered milk right out of the container.
The next logical step is to use everyone's home as an impromptu fulfillment center.
Let's say Amazon has a full list of every possession you own and the price you're willing to sell it for. Any time someone goes to buy a thing, they find a nearby place that has it for the cheapest price, including shipping.
If you happen to win that round, they sending a shipping person^H^H^H^H^H^Hdrone copter into your home to pick up the item and transfer it to the buyer. They automatically credit your account the appropriate amount.
If you own an electric car and are wondering WTF Amazon is doing getting into the car charging business, well, it isn’t this Blink: http://www.blinkcharging.com, it’s some video camera company.
I was thinking it was https://www.blinkfitness.com at first and assuming Amazon had gotten into the gym business for whatever reason because scale/logistics/something something. I was already imagining the breathless bloggery that were coming shortly.
So Amazon wants to monitor people in and around their own homes for some reason.
Before I read TFA, it was the only business reason that made sense to buy a car charger company. It wouldn’t be perfect information (maybe I took the motorcycle that day), but long term you’d get a pretty good idea of our comings and goings. When the car’s at the house, it’s usually plugged in, the charger knows it’s plugged in, and the charger has an internet connection (hell, the charger has a web server running). Unplugged: I’m leaving. Plugged in: I obvious just got home. I suppose that might have some utility for scheduling deliveries, dunno.
The reason for this tangent is the purchase is either to aid in delivery scheduling, of which I’m skeptical, or it’s just another piece of the puzzle to go along Alexa and the like. Now, I’ll agree that the puzzle might end up being super creepy, but it’ll be interesting to see what they up,doing with it.
Hard to attribute Ooma's choice to go with Butterfleye as solely due to price, I think a number of factors could have contributed to the decision to choose one over the other.
If Amazon started courting Blink first, they'd have added a provision to make it expensive for Blink to walk away if they get propositioned by another company. This is Amazon's tactic whenever they court smaller companies like when Diapers.com got a counteroffer from Walmart after Amazon started negotiations [0]. Diapers.com eventually sold to Amazon.
Then there's the aspect of product complexity -- Butterfleye offers a slightly more complex product (learning camera to reduce false alarms, higher quality recording, longer recording times even 24/7, encrypted uploads, on-device storage options, rechargeable batteries & wired power, complementary installation, SMB focus etc) than Blink which is why they are in different price segments ($199 vs $99 per camera unit).
I hadn't heard about that deal but that explains all the surveys recently about whether Ooma customers were interested in video as part of their security offering.
I've been using dlink wifi cams outdoor for about 5 years. Based on a few minutes info from their website, looks like blink has a great usability design. I'd put this on top of my list for my next security cam purchase. Amazon reviews are mostly favorable.
I've had a 5 camera system for the last few months. It works well and didn't need any wires ran. The app needs some improvement, but overall a pretty neat product.
Like I said they are neat tech for what you get. I've had mine for over 2 months now and some of them record 10-20 clips a day. When they are not recording they basically are using next to no power.
The clip duration and re trigger interval can be set to up to 60 seconds. You can also set the re trigger to be immediate effectively making it record constantly. These settings among others are configured per camera in the app.
It is a trade off. It isn't as nice as a wired system. My setup would have required multiple boxes and several extremely long difficult to get to runs.
I had 5 blink cameras setup and fully working in about an hour. So it was worth it to me. 24/7 recording would be better but this was reasonably priced and very easy to use.
Are there any better home security cameras that record short clips on motion detection that don't have a monthly cloud-storage fee? Or should I just stick with Blink?
Man, that site makes me really happy Snapchat resisted buyouts. Despite the rough patches it's been through (and still going through, I guess) it should be looked at as an example of how new companies can grow and compete without just selling off to a large conglomerate.
I don't see people saying many good things about Blink, why would they do that? However, Amazon is hiring like crazy for video and audio web people, so maybe a trick up their sleeve they have.
