this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2026
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Have considered a plain old doorbel and a peep hole on the door?
Low tech, cheap, cheap to install, lasts a lifetime.
Heck, if safety is the concern, install a periscope. Yes, mirrora inside a tube, to get to see, from a distance, who is at the door.
You want footage? Photos?
Install a local camera. Like one of those that are setup by biologists to film animals in the wild. Triggered by motion sensing. Or talk with someone technically inclined and install a local system.
I've disconnected the doorbell at every place I've lived in the last 10 years. If I'm expecting you I'll be waiting and opening the door for you, everyone else can leave a message or find a different way to contact me
Absolutely this. Not many people understand this, especially not my gen (x) or older. Here they're all pavlov'ed to open the door when it rings or answer the phone. I never do that.
I don't answer the phone unless you are in my contacts list or I am specifically expecting a call.
If someone calls and doesn't leave a voicemail or text, then it isnt important.
Filters out the junk (and often outright scam) calls.
Exactly. The important people know how to reach me, all others simply aren't.
Fed ex and UPS with sign for packages.
These would generally fall under the "expected" category.
Yes, in the ~~three~~ ~~nine~~ fourteen hour window they might show up in.
I'm at work for most of that window. And when I miss it, they'll try again the next day at the same time...believe it or not, I'll be at work then too.
What’s fun is now UPS wants a second shipping fee to schedule a time or hold your package for you. You can no longer presign their little paper to leave the package. The only option is to pay, or they’ll return your package.
It’s extortion.
Worse, I was home both days and they never knocked or rang the bell. I let them return the package, on them, took my full refund, then reordered. We cycled through this game until someone rang the bell.
So nothing relevant to you at all, in these circumstances.
Not everything is about me. My comment was more tongue-in-cheek than anything.
More seriously, the tracking numbers usually narrow it down to an hour or 2 if you actually follow it. Given the once every few years that I have a package requiring a signature, I think I can handle it.
If it doesn't use a BNC connector I don't trust it
Or just use one of the hundreds of other brands that provide smart doorbells.
Honest question: what is the reason to have a doorbell of this kind?
Tells you when a package arrived and when the neighbor stole it off your porch. Tells you someone rang the bell when not home and lets you remotely yell ant the door to door sales people.
I mean they’re useful, but I sure wouldn’t ever trust one connected to any sort of cloud.
I do have a UniFi door cam that records to a local hard drive. I like it. Ties in with my other cameras to watch my vehicle in my driveway.
If you can see it’s a salesperson you can ignore them but answer if it’s the mailman/UPS. Get notified that a package was dropped off… or that shortly thereafter some rando walks up to said package.
Think of it as a door-peephole-at-range.
Many.
If you get deliveries and they're mishandled, you have a recording of it.
If someone comes to your door when you're not home, you can talk to them.
You can also set up local AI alerts (AI here is mostly used for facial recognition) e.g. to alert you if your MIL comes around uninvited, or if your kids sneak out at 2am, and so on.
Once you begin appreciating a home CCTV camera setup (fully local mind you), you'll see the benefit of having your doorbell video-ed up as well.
That sounds awful. I'd rather just not, and avoid that mindset altogether.
Avoid the mindset that your kid might sneak out, or an unwanted guest might have shown up?
Ignorance may be bliss, but it certainly doesn’t stop shenanigans from happening.
In the context of parenting there are certainly better things you can do to prevent "shennanigans" other than subjecting them to surveillance. Like you know... raising them?
Terrifying with a generation of peole grown up under total control and expected to be perfectly obedient. They will be shitty adults. But hey, at least they won't have memories of that time they snuck out at night to watch the stars.
Look, I’ve had a random person walk into my house uninvited before, and having a recording of it was useful. Just because you don’t like the idea of one of the examples given, doesn’t mean these devices have no use.
Do tell, which part of that sounds awful?
The idea of going back to a blind simple lock protecting my house, pets, and stuff is crazy to me - smart CCTV and an internet connected alarm system are so much better, plus there's no "monitoring" cost like some folks pay. $40 so you can call the cops for me? No.
In addition to "normal" uses, my kids got into the habit of leaving me messages on the camera when I'm in the office and they are leaving for school. I grew to love these messages.
Using Eufy with local storage. Don't know whether anything gets stored to the cloud, but I guess data still passes through Eufy servers when I view the videos.
How else can you have the pleasure of telling Jehovah’s Witnesses to go away when you’re not at home?
I was waiting for this reply!
I love those guys! Trolling them always makes my day. Asking if they are willing to help clean the house never fails to get them off my door.
What if they agree to clean if you just listen to them?
Never happened and I seriously doubt it ever will. But! I have a couple of maid outfits laying around if it ever does. I'll listen if they comply with my request.
Make sure to put a cover on the peephole. There is some sort of lens or something that can allow someone outside to see through it.
I like to know when a package arrives, and when someone has stolen it.
Doorbell cams are just too convenient. You already have power there. There's footage and audio.
Of course, I'm technically inclined...
I'm more concerned about safety on my property than privacy. I use Wyze Cams. I'm fine with it.
You can have both. I have a 360 camera set up around my house that records to a local dvr. I can remote into it when I’m not home and I’m not supporting ghoulish companies like google or Amazon.
Which camera and software? I self-host some stuff, but there is a "too complex" point I sometimes reach.
The cameras I inherited from the previous owner. They’re fairly low quality analog cameras but they get the job done. They had a Night Owl Brand system but I replaced it with a reolink dvr I have on a vlan so it’s separate from the rest of my network. When I have more time I’ll probably switch over to frigate though. That’ll likely come with me buying some higher quality cameras that are digital.
Thanks, I'll look into those. I have a Wyze system without cloud features, but I'm sure privacy isn't perfect.
You can have both if you have the know how and time to do so. I'd rather just pay $60 a year and under $100 for the cameras. How does Wyze support Google and Amazon? I'm genuinely asking.
My bad, I mixed up wyze with nest, which google owns. Amazon owns blink and ring. I do know wyze was founded by former Amazon employees, which is definitely not the same as their being controlled or supported by Amazon. That said, you may want to read up on some of their security breaches, which have happened multiple times.
I'm aware. I just don't care that some random person could see my driveway momentarily. If it kept happening, I would cancel.
It’s not just a random person, you’re opening yourself up to the government subpoenaing wyze and collecting information about you without your knowledge or consent. In a normal world with a responsible government that wouldn’t be a huge deal provided you’re not doing anything seriously wrong, but that ship has sailed as of late. Don’t let them incriminate you with a fishing expedition for convenience
oh wow that's crazy. Why would they do that though? What does a fishing expedition mean?
Fishing expedition an expression for cases where a police officer or agency goes after someone, generally someone they don’t like, usually for personal or political reasons, by searching for crimes the person has committed in absence of any actual suspicion of a crime being committed. Basically digging up dirt on someone as retaliation for whatever they don’t like a person for.
The current DOJ is doing a lot of it. They make up bogus justifications for what are clearly illegal search and seizures so they can make their political enemies’ lives more difficult. None of the charges will stick, but they’ll still ransack your house, confiscate your computers, shit like that. I don’t want to make their lives easier in the event they want to dig up dirt on me; at least they’ll need a search warrant to come in and steal my DVR drive out of my home rather than hitting up a tech company that doesn’t care about me beyond my being a revenue stream to get my data.
You might want to consider a different brand:
“So violated”: Wyze cameras leak footage to strangers for 2nd time in 5 months
I saw that when it happened. I'm not really bothered by the fact that a random person somewhere may have seen my driveway. If it kept happening, sure. I don't have the wherewithal and time to set up a camera on a server, and in this day and age I feel like some sort of security camera is necessary. There's a serious case for privacy, but not all of us have the capability or concern that the echo-chamber on Lemmy does about immaculate privacy.
You'll get downvoted for having this opinion here but it's a real take. Everyone has their own level of privacy they're okay with and yours is a bit lower than the average user here.
If you're okay with the potential risk, then that is your own choice, no one is forcing you.
Thank you for understanding that. This platform assumes the whole world functions as they do and has no understanding for people who either just don't care or lack ability.