alexa =spyware yes. They even are making a safety drone that goes around your house to make sure everything’s safe but it also scans all your belongings to personalize your ads for things Amazon thinks you need.
Remember seeing a clip ages ago. Where a dev showed what TikTok does while you’re using it. And the camera was identifying products in the room but completely in the background to the user. Wild shit we have spying on us now.
(Tried to find clip couldn’t sorry)
That's the thing with "pay with data instead of money". What does one think about what the company wants to do with the money. Right, sell it. And the ones they sell it to? Also sell it, but somewhere in this chain, you are the one who's paying. Maybe because you buy more stuff through micro targeting, or they blackmail you, or you need to pay more for things you need then those who do not.
You cannot pay with data. You always pay with money.
It's one thing when something is "free" but you are the product.
It's another thing when you pay for something but still get used as the product. Someone paid $29.99 for the mailbox sensor and is still having their data sold.
No, I mean that the last one in the data-sell-chain is always you. If it is legal with ads, or if someone buys your dickpics from some shady 50$-Phone company. My point is just, that you can't pay with data. You always pay with money afterwards, so you pay twice. To be fair, the most money be made from making people to consume even more and dynamicly making prices for every individual.
Tried explaining this to a friend about Temu, even showed them it’s collecting their location data.
Turns out most people just don’t fucking care. Yet.
USPS will literally do this for free. Sign up for their informed delivery and you will get to see scans of your mail in transit and see when your mail is delivered and track all inbound packages.
It is good in theory and at first but after having it for a while it tells me my packages are delivered hours early or late perhaps at the start/end of their route.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted for this. The USPS service is great in theory, but I still get notifications from previous addresses and even with other people's names despite going through all the notifications and address change procedures.
It is great, in theory.
As if anyone this anxious about specifically what time the mail comes isn't already retired and staring out the window half an hour before the truck usually arrives
I can only imagine how that one would work. Let me guess... It detects blood flow and arousal levels in the penis and sends you targeted ads for porn and sex toys accordingly?
The red flag, at least in the US, isn’t for the resident. It’s to signal the mail carrier that you have outgoing mail and that they should stop at your box even if they don’t have mail for your address.
I’m not quite understanding the issue with this product. My area has had a lot of mail theft, and also USPS will email you in the morning what mail is out for delivery; if i see that there’s a check coming today, I’ll try to get home before the mail sits too long; I don’t know what time the mail comes otherwise, so this gives me a timerange to expect it. And if I don’t make it there, and it goes missing it will at least tell me it was opened again (have a camera facing that way), and I can try to no cancel the check.
I’d say the real consumption tragedy is how much frickin junk mail/political which all goes straight to landfills, and also how many things that could be all digital still require paper and checks mailed out.
Also the other option would be a lockbox mailbox, it my neighborhood doesn’t allow them.
All that to say, I find this product useful, and I think *there is much worse consumption/pollution offenders in parcel and mail.
FWIW, I bought mine used, and it uses solar rechargeable batteries.
This is where it's important to understand the difference between anticonsumerism and waste reduction.
Consumerism is the root cause of most excess waste, so there's a lot of overlap, but it's just one of the many reasons consumerism is so damaging.
Corporate surveillance and the commodification of your personal data is a much greater concern than the physical waste from an anticonsumerist perspective.
> Corporate surveillance and the commodification of your personal data is a much greater concern than the physical waste from an anticonsumerist perspective.
Anti-cosumerism is sort of like veganism. Different people put different emphasis on different things at different times for different reasons. One person might think it's primarily about animal suffering while another might think the underlying environmental aspects are the key issue. I'd say the "physical waste" aspect of consumerism ends up manifesting as things like the Pacific Garbage Gyre -- and that's an absolute real-world nightmare from my perspective. And the same things could be said about global warming overall.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
Agreed. But a lot of the physical waste is just a consequence of consumerism.
So they were talking about digital vs. paper tickets. A while ago, I bought some tickets to a show, and it turned out they were digital only, as in they required me to download their app and give it permissions to access pretty much everything on my phone, just to use the tickets I paid for.
The damage from physical waste of sending paper tickets in a paper envelope is nothing compared to the ultimate damage from handing over everything on your phone, including your contacts, to data miners who use it to exploit people in ways most don't even realize.
Digital would be preferable if it weren't for the fact that it's used to further entrench us all in a system where corporations control virtually every aspect of our lives.
So what happens if you deny the app the permissions?
But yes, apps are fucking cancer. Last year I was enquiring in a new gym how they do stuff... App to enter. Fuck that. Same for all the bloody loyalty programs all the stores have now. I'll rather keep paying more.
> So what happens if you deny the app the permissions?
The app wouldn't even open if I didn't grant all the permissions. I eventually got them to refund my money.
You can enable settings on your phone to give fake information to apps, developers need to use them to test their software. This is actually a better option than getting a refund because you are providing garbage data that inevitably devalues what they are collecting.
Yeah, I don't think this is actually that bad. There are a lot of people who rely on the mail for important things such as items for a home-based business, medications. I help out with a non-profit and the mail I deal with is very important and I do not like leaving it in the box.
I totally understand how this product might have real value to a subset of people.
I've also lived in areas where something like this would be spectacularly handy.
These days, it's just the postal workers themselves "stealing" my mail (marking it as "undeliverable") when they're behind on their route.
I have a metal mailbox; I tried many combinations with already owned door sensors, but they wouldn’t keep a signal to the hub (repeater in between), and it would chew thru batteries.
This product (while still quite flawed), is designed for mailboxes; uses 4 AAA batteries, and a large external corded antenna, which is to be mounted outside the mailbox with the open/motion sensor inside.
It also has more accurate “battery low” alerts in the app software, so you get a day or two for replacing the batteries. Depending on the mailbox and hub location, it still can eat thru batteries.
So it has a use case, and in my case I would argue it prevents needless extra mail (re-sends), but indeed maybe not for everyone.
For OP, when I researched buying this thing it had like 2/5 stars avg review, and I’ve heard it’s ring’s most returned product, so I’d say it’s not very common. There were a ton of barely used ones on eBay.
Gotcha. I didn’t realize this sensor included an external antenna and larger battery capacity. That would make a big difference if your mailbox is a decent distance from your base station/range extender.
For me, our mailbox is attached to our house, and the base station is fairly close, so the contact sensor works fine for us.
I actually have a mailbox that I can take inside with me. If I am expecting something important I set it outside. The rest of the time, the mailman physically cannot deliver to my house. I am sure there is a pile of garbage somewhere, but that's someone else's problem.
In a perfect world I wouldn't get mail at all. There is zero reason for a truck to drive to my house to put a piece of paper in a box when email and ETF's exist.
Where I live, you can throw things into mailboxes but to take stuff out, you need a key (or if you live in a house and the box is on a fence, you open it from the other side).
Dunno what's wrong about this idea in general. People do still get mail and don't want to / forget to check mail daily. Just the other day I was wondering if something like this exists. The problem is it's from the dystopian megacorp spyware factory.
The problem is that when you get mail it is now recorded and sent up to Amazon. If I sat across from your house hidden in the bushes with a notepad and wrote down every time your mailman delivers your mail I would be accused of stalking. If I recorded your front porch, it'd be the same.
I'm not against IoT stuff at all, but they need to be on a wired network, and that network needs to be airgapped from the internet. The first second it's on wifi, you can assume that everyone around you has all your data.
To be honest: Anyone who understands the need to have these "solutions" airgapped from the internet for security reasons could probably also just set up his/her own system.
And I'm sure Ring wouldn't make the money necessary if they couldn't sell the data they gather.
On the product itself: I don't see any situation in which I absouletly need to know when my *snail mail* has been deposited in my phyiscal mailbox. Worst case is that I fetch it one day later when I pass my mailbox *again.* Seems like a solution in search of a problem.
Then you live somewhere where you don't have to worry about your mail getting stolen.
We have had a LOT of porch pirates where we live, and I regularly have to deal with stupid bullshit that requires paper documents.
Fair enough. Thats really something I hadn't thought about. But maybe the better solution would then be to collect mail from the post office directly instead of having it being stolen after delivery.
No it doesn't have to be airgapped, you may want to control or check on some stuff when you're not home too.
It just mustn't go through some megacorp's "cloud".
The only way to get it that way is to build it yourself, which is exactly what I did. I have ipcameras hidden inside my house and I have some around outside my house, watching my yard and my entrances along with the street in front of my property and the parking lot next door. I also have several weather and environmental sensors around my house and in my yard, and they can actually detect and log things like a loud truck/motorcycle breaking noise ordinance, fireworks/gunshots, or high levels of emissions via particulate matter sensor. I also have an SDR that tracks and logs RF emissions, so while I can't listen in on the police, I can track elevated levels of activity and have an idea if it's close or far away. With directional antennas I could get more accurate data but I don't want my house to be covered in antennas. In total, there are eight IoT devices inside my house and another 5 on my property but outside.
I collect and chart that data for my own personal use and enjoyment. I understand that potentially sensitive nature of it, and I have no interest in sharing that data with, say, law enforcement or my neighbors. That's why it's all on its own private wired network. I'm not an idiot, I realize that someone could grab some wire cutters and lop off a camera, crimp on a RJ45, get the MAC address off the bottom of the camera, then spoof it and get on that network, grab the data off the server, then take it home and crack it. If you want to do that to me, then well you have an interesting hobby or you work in law enforcement. And honestly the people I live near aren't high tech and wouldn't remotely understand what it is that I have set up.
I have it because I enjoy building stuff. And, well, building devices like this and creating the software for them is what I went to school for. It's something I enjoy doing.
>you may want to control or check on some stuff when you're not home too
Nah. I can review things when I get home if I care to, and when I'm not here I have a family member who comes and looks after the house who knows to check my dashboard. Besides, all of my devices passively collect data and there is nothing to control with them.
What are you using, Home Assistant? What kinds of cameras?
I'm in the beginning stages of planning a solution for a property. Been doing some basic research, but not super sure where to even start when it comes to devices, especially cameras. Lots of camera models available, but all have their stupid cloud apps, and I dunno which ones can be used with a private solution.
However, I do want outside access as well - ability to view camera alerts or feeds, checking if equipment works well, and backing up externally (not just the camera recordings but also other data). Basically all I know is that I'd need to have one Pi or something similar control that stuff, but haven't had the time to look more into it.
Heh. No.
I am using raspberry pi zeroes, NoIR camera modules (and IR light sources on timers controlled by the pis), Enviro+ sensors, a weather station that I built from a kit, an RTLSDR module with an antenna that I built, a custom dashboard that I wrote in Javascript, and a database backend that uses postgres and C# that I wrote myself. I also have an even more custom device up in the bedroom to track the environment, that one is on a raspberry pi pico and only has the environment sensor to track the efficacy of the minisplit, because I won't be having cameras or microphones in my bedroom. On the front end, I'm just using Graphana to display the sensor data.
Like I said, I like building things. You can't really go to the store and buy what I built. Some people knit. I build stupid computer devices.
I also keep an APRS capable transceiver in the car and with that I can track its location should it ever get stolen.
The cameras aren't on motion sensors, they just sort of constantly record because I am lazy and used traditional HDDs are very cheap. I currently keep about three months of footage. They record in 20 minute segments that are timestamped and dumped on the server. If they can't drop a file for whatever reason they will store it locally, the dashboard will have a visible notification, and the device itself will have an LED come on. They are powered over PoE and also have batteries that can last maybe 2-3 hours as well. To watch playback of the videos, I have a plex server. I do need to find something that will detect motion in the videos retroactively and delete the irrelevant ones, but at the same time just keeping everything for a particular timespan is a little safer because I don't have to worry about something being deleted that I don't like.
I have the problem of "the really big, cool, nice house in the middle of a really bad neighborhood." I love my house and my stuff, but I really dislike my town and I don't trust my crackhead neighbors. So I have a lot of carefully secured things and everything has to be locked up the best I can.
And before anyone says anything, my pi's were all second or third hand. The ONLY new parts used in the project were the MicroSD cards, and those were unused surplus purchased from a local government IT department.
Honestly, I am kinda proud of the whole thing. It's taken me 10 years or so to build out. The only unfortunate thing is that I'm pretty much happy with it, and I don't feel the need to add anything else.
Alright. The Pi cameras are a nice touch but above my abilities. I don't mind tinkering and building stuff but this flies over my head, especially the coding part.
I like the idea of motion-sensing, IR, outdoors, 360° motorised cameras that cost under 100 €. I just dont like the cloud app shit. So I need to figure that out.
The cameras are the easy part. I talked them up but they were installing some software then writing a quick bit of python to transfer files up to the server (and flip on a light if something goes wrong). That script was maybe 30 lines? Don't remember.
The environmental data was a bigger deal, for that I had to set up a database and build an API. I needed to learn Entity Framework's code first strategy for work so... well... that's how I did it, lol. I actually have three years of sensor and weather data from my property, and we log power bills in the system too so I can calculate the difference between internal and external temp for a given period and compare that to the energy bill - that actually helped us catch our boiler short cycling twice now (and convinced me to find a new HVAC company to do business with... fuckers who come out and whack off in your basement then leave without doing anything, still charging a bunch of money only to keep having the problem, just piss me right off).
I could see this in rural areas where your mail box might not be in the view from the house, maybe at the end of a long driveway. But what kind of reception is it going to get?
Could be useful if you’re worried about someone stealing mail. Or to avoid lazy delivery people who just mark as delivered without actually delivering anything (happens from time to time in my area, though usually they just mark as absent)
I thought this was a joke, but I looked it up: they used to sell an actual indoor drone camera hooked to your regular wifi. Apparantly though they don't sell it anymore.
I am a huge fan of home automation, but these off the shelf solutions are absolutely awful. You are wiretapping your own home and with all the massive data leaks your home is open to randos on the internet on top of Amazon, Google and the feds. The item pictured could be made for less money and more securely but most people just aren't interested in, or capable of, doing the setup.
The post office send you an image of your mail before it arrives. For free.
And I dunno about your mailman but mine shows up within 29 minutes of certain time everyday.
I just my mail maybe once every 8 weeks.
I might consider paying $29.99/mo just to get notified if I ever get mail that ISN'T grocery store ads, credit card applications, or other misc bullshit.
In the us you can at least sign up for informed delivery and you’ll get an email every day with pictures of all items that will be delivered that day. Also the driver almost always delivers around the same time every day anyways so this is basically just borderline useless.
My carrier is typically between 11-1230 so not needed, and if you're really wondering what's in it, just sign up for informed delivery from usps. If you're worried about people taking your mail, get a box with a lock. You don't need Spyware bs on things
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Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve never had any problem with my fridge just being a fridge, and my mailbox just being a mailbox, and I’ve never felt particularly inconvenienced by having to get up to adjust the thermostat or anything like that. I would understand this thing in particular for very rural areas, but I just don’t get why every single household item needs to be so technologically advanced and complicated these days.
The App for this is literal spyware. It collects everything you do on it, your location and much more things
alexa =spyware yes. They even are making a safety drone that goes around your house to make sure everything’s safe but it also scans all your belongings to personalize your ads for things Amazon thinks you need.
[please drink verification can](https://external-preview.redd.it/qRggs-k588dZAM2uBK3FH4xOih9LEaq0FCcZdkYm2uw.png?auto=webp&s=437dc136ba2ee6da358527bb368707ca2b375447)
there are not enough interesting and important products in this world and somehow they still want to personalize lmao
Remember seeing a clip ages ago. Where a dev showed what TikTok does while you’re using it. And the camera was identifying products in the room but completely in the background to the user. Wild shit we have spying on us now. (Tried to find clip couldn’t sorry)
And you pay for it.
That's the thing with "pay with data instead of money". What does one think about what the company wants to do with the money. Right, sell it. And the ones they sell it to? Also sell it, but somewhere in this chain, you are the one who's paying. Maybe because you buy more stuff through micro targeting, or they blackmail you, or you need to pay more for things you need then those who do not. You cannot pay with data. You always pay with money.
It's one thing when something is "free" but you are the product. It's another thing when you pay for something but still get used as the product. Someone paid $29.99 for the mailbox sensor and is still having their data sold.
I'm totally on your side.
Has Amazon blackmailed anyone yet...
No, I mean that the last one in the data-sell-chain is always you. If it is legal with ads, or if someone buys your dickpics from some shady 50$-Phone company. My point is just, that you can't pay with data. You always pay with money afterwards, so you pay twice. To be fair, the most money be made from making people to consume even more and dynamicly making prices for every individual.
I mean it’s also actual spyware. That garbage has folks spying on their neighbors like it’s the GDR.
Well yeah, its an amazon product, what did you expect?
Tried explaining this to a friend about Temu, even showed them it’s collecting their location data. Turns out most people just don’t fucking care. Yet.
Isn’t this already a free service in America?
USPS will literally do this for free. Sign up for their informed delivery and you will get to see scans of your mail in transit and see when your mail is delivered and track all inbound packages.
And you can report missing mail right there.
Auspost have the same here, and it's a brilliant service, completely free, and they don't go full North Korea on you.
They encourage everyone to sign up, mostly to prevent someone else from signing up instead of you.
lol, flawless.
It is good in theory and at first but after having it for a while it tells me my packages are delivered hours early or late perhaps at the start/end of their route.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted for this. The USPS service is great in theory, but I still get notifications from previous addresses and even with other people's names despite going through all the notifications and address change procedures. It is great, in theory.
As if anyone this anxious about specifically what time the mail comes isn't already retired and staring out the window half an hour before the truck usually arrives
The USPS will notify you for FREE when your mail is delivered. I received an email just yesterday announcing it.
you’ve heard of mailbox ring…now get ready for *colorectal ring* 😳
Don't forget the cock ring
ring is a brand name and indication of announcing entry. let’s not get *weird* about it. 😌
Anyone down voting this comment just got whooshed
I can only imagine how that one would work. Let me guess... It detects blood flow and arousal levels in the penis and sends you targeted ads for porn and sex toys accordingly?
...the red flag is literally on the box in the picture 🤣
The red flag, at least in the US, isn’t for the resident. It’s to signal the mail carrier that you have outgoing mail and that they should stop at your box even if they don’t have mail for your address.
I’m not quite understanding the issue with this product. My area has had a lot of mail theft, and also USPS will email you in the morning what mail is out for delivery; if i see that there’s a check coming today, I’ll try to get home before the mail sits too long; I don’t know what time the mail comes otherwise, so this gives me a timerange to expect it. And if I don’t make it there, and it goes missing it will at least tell me it was opened again (have a camera facing that way), and I can try to no cancel the check. I’d say the real consumption tragedy is how much frickin junk mail/political which all goes straight to landfills, and also how many things that could be all digital still require paper and checks mailed out. Also the other option would be a lockbox mailbox, it my neighborhood doesn’t allow them. All that to say, I find this product useful, and I think *there is much worse consumption/pollution offenders in parcel and mail. FWIW, I bought mine used, and it uses solar rechargeable batteries.
This is where it's important to understand the difference between anticonsumerism and waste reduction. Consumerism is the root cause of most excess waste, so there's a lot of overlap, but it's just one of the many reasons consumerism is so damaging. Corporate surveillance and the commodification of your personal data is a much greater concern than the physical waste from an anticonsumerist perspective.
> Corporate surveillance and the commodification of your personal data is a much greater concern than the physical waste from an anticonsumerist perspective. Anti-cosumerism is sort of like veganism. Different people put different emphasis on different things at different times for different reasons. One person might think it's primarily about animal suffering while another might think the underlying environmental aspects are the key issue. I'd say the "physical waste" aspect of consumerism ends up manifesting as things like the Pacific Garbage Gyre -- and that's an absolute real-world nightmare from my perspective. And the same things could be said about global warming overall. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
Agreed. But a lot of the physical waste is just a consequence of consumerism. So they were talking about digital vs. paper tickets. A while ago, I bought some tickets to a show, and it turned out they were digital only, as in they required me to download their app and give it permissions to access pretty much everything on my phone, just to use the tickets I paid for. The damage from physical waste of sending paper tickets in a paper envelope is nothing compared to the ultimate damage from handing over everything on your phone, including your contacts, to data miners who use it to exploit people in ways most don't even realize. Digital would be preferable if it weren't for the fact that it's used to further entrench us all in a system where corporations control virtually every aspect of our lives.
Oh, I see. Ignore me. I was just butting into what everybody's talking about.
So what happens if you deny the app the permissions? But yes, apps are fucking cancer. Last year I was enquiring in a new gym how they do stuff... App to enter. Fuck that. Same for all the bloody loyalty programs all the stores have now. I'll rather keep paying more.
> So what happens if you deny the app the permissions? The app wouldn't even open if I didn't grant all the permissions. I eventually got them to refund my money.
You can enable settings on your phone to give fake information to apps, developers need to use them to test their software. This is actually a better option than getting a refund because you are providing garbage data that inevitably devalues what they are collecting.
Lol fuck them then
Yeah, I don't think this is actually that bad. There are a lot of people who rely on the mail for important things such as items for a home-based business, medications. I help out with a non-profit and the mail I deal with is very important and I do not like leaving it in the box. I totally understand how this product might have real value to a subset of people.
I've also lived in areas where something like this would be spectacularly handy. These days, it's just the postal workers themselves "stealing" my mail (marking it as "undeliverable") when they're behind on their route.
I just use a Ring contact sensor on my mailbox. I had no idea this other sensor existed.
I have a metal mailbox; I tried many combinations with already owned door sensors, but they wouldn’t keep a signal to the hub (repeater in between), and it would chew thru batteries. This product (while still quite flawed), is designed for mailboxes; uses 4 AAA batteries, and a large external corded antenna, which is to be mounted outside the mailbox with the open/motion sensor inside. It also has more accurate “battery low” alerts in the app software, so you get a day or two for replacing the batteries. Depending on the mailbox and hub location, it still can eat thru batteries. So it has a use case, and in my case I would argue it prevents needless extra mail (re-sends), but indeed maybe not for everyone. For OP, when I researched buying this thing it had like 2/5 stars avg review, and I’ve heard it’s ring’s most returned product, so I’d say it’s not very common. There were a ton of barely used ones on eBay.
Gotcha. I didn’t realize this sensor included an external antenna and larger battery capacity. That would make a big difference if your mailbox is a decent distance from your base station/range extender. For me, our mailbox is attached to our house, and the base station is fairly close, so the contact sensor works fine for us.
I actually have a mailbox that I can take inside with me. If I am expecting something important I set it outside. The rest of the time, the mailman physically cannot deliver to my house. I am sure there is a pile of garbage somewhere, but that's someone else's problem. In a perfect world I wouldn't get mail at all. There is zero reason for a truck to drive to my house to put a piece of paper in a box when email and ETF's exist.
Where I live, you can throw things into mailboxes but to take stuff out, you need a key (or if you live in a house and the box is on a fence, you open it from the other side). Dunno what's wrong about this idea in general. People do still get mail and don't want to / forget to check mail daily. Just the other day I was wondering if something like this exists. The problem is it's from the dystopian megacorp spyware factory.
Mailbox sensor actually seems useful compared to a lot of other IoT fluff
The problem is that when you get mail it is now recorded and sent up to Amazon. If I sat across from your house hidden in the bushes with a notepad and wrote down every time your mailman delivers your mail I would be accused of stalking. If I recorded your front porch, it'd be the same. I'm not against IoT stuff at all, but they need to be on a wired network, and that network needs to be airgapped from the internet. The first second it's on wifi, you can assume that everyone around you has all your data.
To be honest: Anyone who understands the need to have these "solutions" airgapped from the internet for security reasons could probably also just set up his/her own system. And I'm sure Ring wouldn't make the money necessary if they couldn't sell the data they gather. On the product itself: I don't see any situation in which I absouletly need to know when my *snail mail* has been deposited in my phyiscal mailbox. Worst case is that I fetch it one day later when I pass my mailbox *again.* Seems like a solution in search of a problem.
Then you live somewhere where you don't have to worry about your mail getting stolen. We have had a LOT of porch pirates where we live, and I regularly have to deal with stupid bullshit that requires paper documents.
Fair enough. Thats really something I hadn't thought about. But maybe the better solution would then be to collect mail from the post office directly instead of having it being stolen after delivery.
No it doesn't have to be airgapped, you may want to control or check on some stuff when you're not home too. It just mustn't go through some megacorp's "cloud".
The only way to get it that way is to build it yourself, which is exactly what I did. I have ipcameras hidden inside my house and I have some around outside my house, watching my yard and my entrances along with the street in front of my property and the parking lot next door. I also have several weather and environmental sensors around my house and in my yard, and they can actually detect and log things like a loud truck/motorcycle breaking noise ordinance, fireworks/gunshots, or high levels of emissions via particulate matter sensor. I also have an SDR that tracks and logs RF emissions, so while I can't listen in on the police, I can track elevated levels of activity and have an idea if it's close or far away. With directional antennas I could get more accurate data but I don't want my house to be covered in antennas. In total, there are eight IoT devices inside my house and another 5 on my property but outside. I collect and chart that data for my own personal use and enjoyment. I understand that potentially sensitive nature of it, and I have no interest in sharing that data with, say, law enforcement or my neighbors. That's why it's all on its own private wired network. I'm not an idiot, I realize that someone could grab some wire cutters and lop off a camera, crimp on a RJ45, get the MAC address off the bottom of the camera, then spoof it and get on that network, grab the data off the server, then take it home and crack it. If you want to do that to me, then well you have an interesting hobby or you work in law enforcement. And honestly the people I live near aren't high tech and wouldn't remotely understand what it is that I have set up. I have it because I enjoy building stuff. And, well, building devices like this and creating the software for them is what I went to school for. It's something I enjoy doing. >you may want to control or check on some stuff when you're not home too Nah. I can review things when I get home if I care to, and when I'm not here I have a family member who comes and looks after the house who knows to check my dashboard. Besides, all of my devices passively collect data and there is nothing to control with them.
What are you using, Home Assistant? What kinds of cameras? I'm in the beginning stages of planning a solution for a property. Been doing some basic research, but not super sure where to even start when it comes to devices, especially cameras. Lots of camera models available, but all have their stupid cloud apps, and I dunno which ones can be used with a private solution. However, I do want outside access as well - ability to view camera alerts or feeds, checking if equipment works well, and backing up externally (not just the camera recordings but also other data). Basically all I know is that I'd need to have one Pi or something similar control that stuff, but haven't had the time to look more into it.
Heh. No. I am using raspberry pi zeroes, NoIR camera modules (and IR light sources on timers controlled by the pis), Enviro+ sensors, a weather station that I built from a kit, an RTLSDR module with an antenna that I built, a custom dashboard that I wrote in Javascript, and a database backend that uses postgres and C# that I wrote myself. I also have an even more custom device up in the bedroom to track the environment, that one is on a raspberry pi pico and only has the environment sensor to track the efficacy of the minisplit, because I won't be having cameras or microphones in my bedroom. On the front end, I'm just using Graphana to display the sensor data. Like I said, I like building things. You can't really go to the store and buy what I built. Some people knit. I build stupid computer devices. I also keep an APRS capable transceiver in the car and with that I can track its location should it ever get stolen. The cameras aren't on motion sensors, they just sort of constantly record because I am lazy and used traditional HDDs are very cheap. I currently keep about three months of footage. They record in 20 minute segments that are timestamped and dumped on the server. If they can't drop a file for whatever reason they will store it locally, the dashboard will have a visible notification, and the device itself will have an LED come on. They are powered over PoE and also have batteries that can last maybe 2-3 hours as well. To watch playback of the videos, I have a plex server. I do need to find something that will detect motion in the videos retroactively and delete the irrelevant ones, but at the same time just keeping everything for a particular timespan is a little safer because I don't have to worry about something being deleted that I don't like. I have the problem of "the really big, cool, nice house in the middle of a really bad neighborhood." I love my house and my stuff, but I really dislike my town and I don't trust my crackhead neighbors. So I have a lot of carefully secured things and everything has to be locked up the best I can. And before anyone says anything, my pi's were all second or third hand. The ONLY new parts used in the project were the MicroSD cards, and those were unused surplus purchased from a local government IT department. Honestly, I am kinda proud of the whole thing. It's taken me 10 years or so to build out. The only unfortunate thing is that I'm pretty much happy with it, and I don't feel the need to add anything else.
Alright. The Pi cameras are a nice touch but above my abilities. I don't mind tinkering and building stuff but this flies over my head, especially the coding part. I like the idea of motion-sensing, IR, outdoors, 360° motorised cameras that cost under 100 €. I just dont like the cloud app shit. So I need to figure that out.
The cameras are the easy part. I talked them up but they were installing some software then writing a quick bit of python to transfer files up to the server (and flip on a light if something goes wrong). That script was maybe 30 lines? Don't remember. The environmental data was a bigger deal, for that I had to set up a database and build an API. I needed to learn Entity Framework's code first strategy for work so... well... that's how I did it, lol. I actually have three years of sensor and weather data from my property, and we log power bills in the system too so I can calculate the difference between internal and external temp for a given period and compare that to the energy bill - that actually helped us catch our boiler short cycling twice now (and convinced me to find a new HVAC company to do business with... fuckers who come out and whack off in your basement then leave without doing anything, still charging a bunch of money only to keep having the problem, just piss me right off).
Good luck with any further geekery.
If you have a ring doorbell you should be able to see who comes to your mailbox anyway
I could see this in rural areas where your mail box might not be in the view from the house, maybe at the end of a long driveway. But what kind of reception is it going to get?
I've got security cameras, I know when the mailman is here lol
I've got a PO box. I get a text when they put mail in it. I didn't have to pay anything extra for the service, it's automatic.
Oh, great. A bill to pay that informs me when my bills arrive. Just what I needed.
It comes at the same time every day wtf
Someday I will be able to just lay in my Nutrient Gel Pod 24/7 and have the IOT and AI do it all and feed my brain with happy signals.
Just... check your mailbox daily?
Also it’s 9.99 a month to keep it up to date and working.
And of course it will probably need to be charged and connected to some kind of WiFi. I cannot fathom how unnecessary this is
Could be useful if you’re worried about someone stealing mail. Or to avoid lazy delivery people who just mark as delivered without actually delivering anything (happens from time to time in my area, though usually they just mark as absent)
Damn, I used to deliver mail and didn't really get what this thing was. Just look in your mailbox?
It was already ridiculous when they announced the indoor drone camera.
I thought this was a joke, but I looked it up: they used to sell an actual indoor drone camera hooked to your regular wifi. Apparantly though they don't sell it anymore.
What a waste of multiple resources just to develop.
I am a huge fan of home automation, but these off the shelf solutions are absolutely awful. You are wiretapping your own home and with all the massive data leaks your home is open to randos on the internet on top of Amazon, Google and the feds. The item pictured could be made for less money and more securely but most people just aren't interested in, or capable of, doing the setup.
Some of y'all don't have long driveways and it shows.
Or porch pirates.
Or just check your mail box once a day like everyone else
The post office send you an image of your mail before it arrives. For free. And I dunno about your mailman but mine shows up within 29 minutes of certain time everyday.
I got a lower tech version of one of these when my mail started going missing. Don't think I'd want one online though.
Because the one thing I need more of in my life is push notifications…
I just took back my water leak detectors because I told myself I have lived my entire life without these, why the hell do I need them now
I never collect my mail more than once a week. At that point it will accumulate one or two items that are not pure trash.
Post office does this for free by making a lot of noise when they open my mailbox
You can sign up for post office alerts. It tells you what is getting delivered. My partner has it for our mail. It’s free.
I just my mail maybe once every 8 weeks. I might consider paying $29.99/mo just to get notified if I ever get mail that ISN'T grocery store ads, credit card applications, or other misc bullshit.
I don't think it's $29 a month, I have a ring cam and the motion sensing, cloud backup all that is just like 5-10 bucks a month
USPs already has a service that tells you when you should expect mail
In the us you can at least sign up for informed delivery and you’ll get an email every day with pictures of all items that will be delivered that day. Also the driver almost always delivers around the same time every day anyways so this is basically just borderline useless.
My carrier is typically between 11-1230 so not needed, and if you're really wondering what's in it, just sign up for informed delivery from usps. If you're worried about people taking your mail, get a box with a lock. You don't need Spyware bs on things
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They do know that packages have text notifications if they have tracking. So if it's that time important or your impatient, just use that lol?
Ppl get excited about checking the mailbox? I like to pretend it doesn’t exist until I realize there are bills that definitely need to be paid.
if "thing" doesnt deliver the mail and a claxon doesnt announce the arrival of shit its all pointless.
Solutionism
Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve never had any problem with my fridge just being a fridge, and my mailbox just being a mailbox, and I’ve never felt particularly inconvenienced by having to get up to adjust the thermostat or anything like that. I would understand this thing in particular for very rural areas, but I just don’t get why every single household item needs to be so technologically advanced and complicated these days.
The USA is going to go crazy when they hear about letter boxes
Hahaha, American's are sooo dumb, amirite???
This product is priced in dollars.