I realise this is not up everyone’s avenue, but I’ve recently been playing around with ONVIF cameras for other reasons. I’ve learnt a lot about networking and the Surveillance Station software on my NAS.
The major drawback with Ring is that you are reliant on their cloud, and we all know you get outages and other problems on that which make the national press because the devices (the entire service) are simply offline until the problems are fixed. Even when all systems are normal, local WiFi might not be.
I’ve looked around, and ONVIF doorbell cameras are quite sparse right now, though they are coming. You can get them, but they are very basic just now. If someone came up with an ONVIF device that offered zone alarms and remote chimes out of the box, they’d corner the market instantly.
What I need is (in no particular order) a) instant live view, b) doorbell ring, c) proximity alert, d) remote chimes. On top of that, what I want is direct access to my data stream.
Discontinuing the app takes away even the partial direct access I have to my data. And given that Ring is flaky on the other things anyway as its mood takes it (you get an alert, and going to ‘live view’ gives a black screen or a ‘connecting’ hourglass) this is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
If I have an ONVIF device, I have absolute control over my data.
Even if they backtrack on this, we now know where we stand (remember how ‘live view’ was cut from minutes to seconds without advance warning?)
I’ve just ordered some parts, and based on people building HD motion-sensitive wildlife cameras, I’m going to build a Raspberry Pi video doorbell of my own that I can control through my home network.
Jeez, the Ring works (more or less), but taking away the app means it works a lot less than more or less for most of us.
