
I don't get it
what are these *for* ?
Something like the Echo I understand the (limited) point of but I have no idea why I'd want these cameras in my home.
Does any Reg co-commentard actually have a use for them?
Nest has restated its position as the poster-child of the smart home with a new indoor camera, the NestCam IQ. This is the third camera Nest has put on the market since its purchase of Dropcam in 2014, but it is the first to move the design forward with significant improvements in both hardware and software. The new camera …
Even if you did have a use for it, why would you ever buy it from a company with their history?
I found the Netatmo camera discounted on Warehouse Deals (as I thought €200 new was a bit much). it does everything claimed for nest, but stores on local SD, unless your conditions are met, then it can upload an image/vid to Dropbox. you can securely watch vid/pic remotely via netatmo app. NO MONTHLY RENTAL! Yay.
end user is in charge, and not being charged
"The can be remotely configured to recognize Tit, Dick and Ass - which is then stored "in the cloud" for Bogdan & Co to pick up and splurge over the internet"
Thank goodness - the acute shortage was driving up the costs almost one hundred fold...
(checks math = 100 x 0 is still 0...)
Most criminals are stupid.
http://www.theblaze.com/news/2013/01/02/the-surveillance-camera-footage-of-burglars-breaking-and-entering-into-an-n-c-home-is-surprisingly-fascinating/
If you wanted to stop internet based cameras you could cut the BT line entering the house and the virgin cable. But if they knew there was cameras they probably wouldn't bother...
Plus hopefully it will upload as it records.
Yes, plenty. In my house, phone lines enter the premises at the roof line and my "router" is in a secure cabinet in the attic, then the WiFi is distributed throughout the house via ceiling mounted APs with overlapping coverage. The moment you realise there is a camera (and hopefully look up at it), your face is in the cloud storage.
Or you could keep your doors and windows locked. Almost all burglaries where I live (college town) are where the place wasn't locked. Few criminals are able to pick locks - at least not if you have decent ones - and fewer still are willing to break glass and tear through a screen, or kick down a door. If you live in places where that's a concern, then I guess you need bars on your windows and a barred gate over your front door to live in your own prison.
That's presumably not so much a "privacy" feature as an acknowledgment that there is much greater value in retaining photos which have been tagged with a name by some compliant fool who would be better advised to spend his money on proper locks and insurance.
Its just daft - those are the ones I'd *want* to keep.
Local face scanning and recognition - if I walk into my garage, or my wife does, then that's fine. If someone else arrives then notify me... It might be a friend that I've walked in with, or it might be a thieving scumbag - then I need those photos saved...
This is because the device has limited memory/storage to retain many images. So it has to save space.
This isn't that nefarious.
What I don't like or trust is that you have to send the data up to their cloud instead of keeping it local. They say Google doesn't have access to the data. Yeah right. And Google didn't war drive either.
And what's to say that they can't change their T&Cs that everyone clicks thru and doesn't read to allow Google access to those images and data?
"Cloudy again... why do companies keep thinking that adding cloud to something is a good idea?
Will this work if the servers go down or is it another paperweight?"
^This.
If an "internet of things" thing is not fully functional as just a "thing" thing if there's no internet connection and/or you don't want to pay a sub, then it is a useless thing and I don't want it.
Nice to read... But is this just transitional? Once we forget about it, will Google slurp Nest servers? Google said no to slurping 'Double-Click' profile-data, guess what?... Now they're slurping real-world credit card data too. Facebook also said no to slurping WhatsApp to get the deal done. Then 2 years later, after the plebs had forgotten, major slurp-time etc... Lying dogs!
==================================
....."We also quizzed Nest representatives about its data privacy rules and security features and were assured that the company will never sell or share your data without a customer's explicit permission. It also advises people using its facial recognition technology to inform anyone being tracked, and points to the automatic deletion of "unfamiliar" faces as evidence of its pro-privacy stance......
....."All the data is encrypted and is only stored on Nest servers within your account. Google doesn't get access despite owning the company. There was, of course, a security issue with Nest cams earlier this month, when it was revealed they can be wirelessly attacked via Bluetooth to crash and stop recording footage. The company has rolled out a fix and notes that no one has been able to hack into its camera's feed."....
Chuck Berry once said, in response to an critics complaint that they couldn't understand the lyrics in rock'n'roll songs:
Man, if you can't understand the words, you're not meant to understand the words
Bringing that up to date: If you can't see the point of the tech, then it's not aimed at you.
Mentioned this device to the good lady wife, and immediately she said: "Mum would like that",
Mum is starting to suffer dementia, and can't recognise faces reliably anymore. Which can be distressing when a nurse has to visit.
Knowing the camera can do it for her would be a selling point (and she has the money).
Pound to a penny that scenario is buried in this devices target market - not coffee-shop owning hipsters.
It is good to know that there is actually a viable market for this kind of product.
I am glad that it can help the elderly and, by extension, the more fragile part of the human population.
Now excuse me while I still value my personal privacy more and still do not consider the Cloud as a reliable, or safe part of my life.
>Mum is starting to suffer dementia, and can't recognise faces reliably anymore. Which can be distressing when a nurse has to visit.
What is better suited in this case, a cutting edge tech that requires some degree of technical knowledge to operate/maintain or a small binder of printed pictures with names and brief description of the relevant persons?
Mum is starting to suffer dementia, and can't recognise faces reliably anymore. Which can be distressing when a nurse has to visit.
Yes, That would be a good use.
The problem is that Google or ('not-Google' to comply with the letter of the SLA) a a matter of course will sell their newly created database of "Mum's with dementia AND money" to PVC-windows replacement people, door-to-door salespeople, various pension and investment frauds, telemarketers, and of course all those "Microsoft Support People" in BumBay!
On balance Mum loses!
True, but since she has dementia she won't remember it
I know that you really mean "remember well enough to press charges" because they do remember having once had something and now it is gone. Sometimes they suddenly remember the whole thing in full detail like a flashback, so they repeatedly relive the point where they got ripped off by that "nice young person at the bank".
The people in that situation often suffer terribly, often blaming themselves for their loss and/or getting paranoid, very angry about everyone "... stealing from them, ... only waiting for them to die, ...and so on".
We would be be doing a lot more good by razing call centres and off-shore investment service centres to the ground than is currently achieved by murdering poor villagers in Somalia.
Quite correct. Which is the only question the sort of people who would run such a scheme would care about.
With the possible exception of being shot in the head and dumped in a ditch. An occupational hazard for such unpleasant people.
..putting an always-on panopticon spy device in your house?
Like many other posters on here; no, never.
Sell me a camera with the software and let me run my own server completely independent of the company and I might start thinking about possible uses but otherwise, I'm out!
Good at what, exactly? It's apparently an indoors camera, so completely useless for security. All it does it let you see what's in a single room in your house. Why would anyone need to do that? As always people can come up with vague niche uses for things involving medial conditions and the like, but that's clearly not what all this "smart" home crap is actually marketed for. At least things like security cameras, locks, thermostats, and so on, have obvious uses, even if IoT implementations are generally badly designed, insecure crap that end up significantly worse than existing solutions. But I'm utterly baffled what anyone thinks is the use case for a camera that can recognise faces in part of a single room in your house. For $300 plus a monthly subscription.
"Most usefully, the camera is able to pan and tilt, following someone around the room – something that is done through the software rather than moving the camera physically."
So it has optical zoom then.
"The HDR camera enables what the company is calling "supersight" with a 12x digital zoom that far surpasses anything else we've seen on the market (the current Nest cam does 8x)."
Could this read any more like an advertisement? Who cares about digital zoom?
"If you already have a Nest device set up in your house, the new camera won't require you to enter any login or Wi-Fi password details, but will grab the information through your existing account."
How exactly; they're broadcasting your local network credentials out of your house into the www? Why?
"Most usefully, the camera is able to pan and tilt, following someone around the room – something that is done through the software rather than moving the camera physically."
Hmm... Not really what I'd call panning/tilting, particularly given the limitations it places on where you can physically locate the cameras whilst still providing the fields of view required.
Once the IoT paradigm takes off, it will be the 'Blanc Pachyderm of the nanosecond award' as the torrent of Dross rolls out across the globe and each useless item is 'improved' and rolled out ad infinitum.
Why do people think that such contrived uses are going to be useful in the real world.
Why would I work hard at protecting my privacy only to install a mass of spying 'security holes' for anyone to take advantage of.
This and all the IoT ideas are predicated on the idea that a rolling Subscription for a mass of 'must have devices' is a quick and easy way to get rich for little effort.
All these devices just so happen to need a 'Cloud based' backend to operate that you will pay for ..... for ever !!!
If the masses fall for this 'garbage' they deserve all they get.
I suspect that this camera is targeted to people who feel reassured by brand name. Google, Apple, Toyota, Maytag, etc. The products aren't the best but people feel like they're a safe purchase with good support. To some degree, that's true. Playing with various white-label Hikvision cameras shows how deeply into hell things can go.
"Power cycle the camera when it crashes, you say? IT'S A REMOTE CAMERA. I WOULDN'T NEED THE CAMERA IF I WAS THERE."
the idea of a few smartish video systems keeping track of the outside of my house, from a suitable height, would be quite useful. Being as I live on canal, in Amsterdam with wide open public waterways being the new frontier for those with anti-social ideas about my property.
But a decentish synology, with a decentish outdoor camera or two gives me far more control of MY imagery; has much the same feature set and, if I take the time to configure it properly, as much image replication as the nest would have. True initial outlay is higher, but I can more with the kit I buy
that said, at least Nest is selling you a product, not capturing you as a product..
"the idea of a few smartish video systems keeping track of the outside of my house, from a suitable height, would be quite useful."
Quite possibly, which is why security cameras have existed for a while now. However, the problem there is in the very first line of the article - "a new indoor camera". This isn't an external security camera, it's a "smart home indoor camera". And while adverts articles like this one are happy to gush about how amazing it is technologically, no-one has yet been able to come with a single sensible reason anyone would want one.