From the listing:
Answer your door from anywhere in the world with this remote viewing Video Doorbell.
So I assume you’re not expected to self-host this. Which means they have to run and maintain servers. And $16/person ain’t covering the cost of this device + servers indefinitely.
It’s a rebranded Tuya doorbell. So there aren’t any subscriptions, though you will be giving them all your data.
Which means they have to run and maintain servers.
I’d bet money that it works just like similar devices from Reolink. Local recording to SD Card or NVR. If you want cloud recording then you’re paying a monthly subscription.
This device from Aldi is at a very low pricepoint but it’s specs are garbage. 480p recording? In 2025? C’mon…
Then you wouldn’t be able to “answer your door from anywhere”…
You would if you pay the subscription.
Right, but not if you didn’t. Which would be false advertising.
answer your door from anywhere*
*Monthly subscription required
Look at the listing. There is no such caveat.
any chance this can be done through your router/modem, where your phone app connects to external ip of router and is the “server end point” for your doorbell?
I mean it’s certainly possible, it’s just a matter of whether the doorbell firmware/software will support it. And the answer is almost always no.
DDNS/P2P with local storage?
Any time someone says an ultra cheap monitoring device is subscription free I just picture an odd man running a curio shop telling me his wares don’t cost money
The actual hardware cost of these devices is actually minimal. Basically any wifi capable microcontroller, a camera and depending on implementation some storage (or a micro sd-card holder). So that price is only cheap in comparison to existing products.
For reference, said microcontroller with basic camera can be had for like 3$ or something.
…and do they sell data, including video, to law enforcement and insurance?
Sincerely, A person who recently was in a fender bender and was not surprised at all when Progressive shared “incident footage” from a Ring camera across the street at a location completely unrelated to the fender bender
(They ARE selling your data, folks. NEVER trust big tech to act in your best interest)
It’s a rebranded Tuya device, and they don’t sell your data to any law enforcement or insurance.
They do however comply with Chinese laws and all your data is readily available for the Chinese government.
I stopped my Ring subscription but kept the doorbell camera.
It wasn’t until a year later when I was moving and the house was almost completely empty (still had internet/wifi setup) and I looked at the wifi app and saw that the ring doorbell still had significant data usage.
They were clearly still capturing my doorbell video.
Umm… that could have just been the other driver asking the person for their footage from the camera they saw.
Not everything is a conspiracy dude, that’s commonly done after any incident lmfao.
I have cameras and plenty of people have asked me for random footage for thefts and collisions, none being a company or insurance, always the person affected…
Edit, sorry I guess once the police did, but still there’s nothing odd or weird about what happened to you.
Except it literally is a conspiracy (An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.) and actually happening. Debatably it’s legal, rightful, and not subversive. I think most people would disagree though. It’s not like people are just guessing this is happening. We know the data is being sold, to the police/government, and presumably also to other companies.
In this case, it might not involve the surveillance company selling or sharing anything. All an insurance adjuster has to do is knock on doors in the area and ask the home owners if they are willing to share any video footage they have.
And yes, people do this all the time. I work in this industry.
I really hate to stand on the side of the data hoarding conglomerates, but there’s a significant chance they were not involved in the release of that video.
Just to be clear in most places it’s not legal to have a video camera pointed at the street (or your neighbors’ houses). Not that this has been enforced at all. But if somebody wanted to pursue you legally for that they could.
What places?
Usually it’s a misinterpretation of the law, they are not meant to interfere with security and law enforcement. There’s always exceptions, usually it’s how they trigger or store the data. If it’s automatically wiped, usually no laws have been broken for example.
Don’t know about most places but regarding Germany, OP is correct. It’s verboten to film property of neighbours, public places or places shared with neighbours with your statically installed surveillance camera. You have to get consent of filming neighbours and you have to put up signs informing persons like delivery drivers that they’re getting filmed. That’s what my short search resulted in.
Where I live for instance. Like I said it isn’t enforced.
What country? I’m sure there’s exceptions that you don’t know about, the laws normally don’t disallow their use, it’s in how the data is stored.
A security system that doesn’t record, but is watched by someone would be legal anywhere for example. Just the fact that there’s one, means sweet fuck all.
Sure, but people STILL knock on the doors. They likely didn’t participate in a conspiracy to get it, sorry.
And the companies are funded by the CIA and other feds.
It’s on purpose because if the government did it outright people would get made… So instead they are killing all trust in American government by hiding behind other companies.
The same thing the government is doing with crypto and other surveillance and ai…
Listen to some Whitney webb on YouTube she’s all about talking about that stuff…
Pretty sure it’s basically project 2025… America is funding these Epstein crime family types to basically build a new world lifestyle of most aspects of life being tracked more than they already are.
It may not require a subscription fee, but that’s really only a minor concern.
Having my video surveillance be uploaded to a cloud service and having to use some proprietary app to use my device is the real problems.
If you want security cameras, look for boring Power over Ethernet cameras that have an RTSP output. They connect to your network and provide a video stream out a specific port. Then you can plug that into whatever FOSS network video recording system you’re using (Zone Minder or Frigate) and then you can access it like you access any other thing on your local network.
Never goes to a cloud, never leaves your house.
If it has local storage then it doesn’t get uploaded anywhere.
It also has BT so the offline mode could be simply “record to SD card and view videos using some app via Bluetooth”.
Online mode with notifications and two-way talking has to require internet access so I definitely wouldn’t trust it, with or without subscription.
It’s a rebranded Tuya device, which can actually be used in a local only mode.
I wouldn’t trust connecting it to the Tuya online services though that is for certain.
You seem to be knowledgeable. What camera can I use to plug in into a light bulb socket and have it use powerline communication? Wi-Fi is fine too, but would prefer PLC.
e: Oh, sorry I misread your question. I haven’t seen a lightbulb socket powerline adapter. There’s no reason why they can’t exist though afaik. e2: Lighbulb socket -> power plug adapter -> insert the rest here
You’d use a few things in a chain. Socket -> Ethernet over Power connection -> Cat6 cable -> Power over Ethernet injector -> Cat6 -> PoE Camera
If you want to hook up multiple cameras to one power plug, go Socket -> Ethernet over Power -> Switch -> PoE power injector on each of your camera lines -> etc
You can also buy switches that do the PoE injection for you so you don’t need multiple injectors. You’d have to compare the prices, but the PoE switch is likely cheaper than a regular switch + multiple PoE injectors.
you can use a light socket to plug adapter and plug it in like normal
No subscription fee yet. Enshittification hits everything eventually.
It uses an SD card for data. But why read an article.
I believe this is only for the European market though. Aldi has stores in the United States, but I don’t believe it’s available here.
Looked at my Florida Aldi, no luck.
Are these even legal in Europe (the part that is not the UK…)?
I’m no expert, but I believe this is down to the individual member states.
In my country (the NL) it is technically not allowed to film the public street with an automated camera, which effectively makes Ring and equivalents illegal to install in most places
Practically this is not really enforced though, so you see them everywhere anyway.
It’s indeed not enforced here, but on top of that the police would really like to know that you have cameras filming public space.
Not so they can do something about it, but so they know they can come to you to ask for footage if something happens.
Turn off the motion sensor and only use the push activation, that wouldn’t break the “auto” recording portion. There’s always exemptions, security and law professionals wouldn’t be left without a way to assist themselves.
I think yes, as long as it only sees within your private property.
Front yards don’t have the expectation of privacy… that applies to backyards doesn’t it?
If your front yard is public property, you can’t constantly record it, simple.
Front yards aren’t…
And you can’t record a public street for security? Even if it’s deleted? That makes absolutely no sense, how would you ever catch a crime?
Individuals can apply for registration of a fixed camera which must be approved by the privacy agency of the state. If it is approved, you can film into public space, but normally this comes with rules like the anonymization of visible faces and car plates when you are a normal citizen.
Without doing this you are allowed to place a camera for constant monitoring at a fixed place if it films your private property only.
For normal businesses the same rules apply, although you might get a camera approved which watches the area around your entry/exit easier.
Those rules made dashcams illegal in most of the EU, but legislation has caught up in those cases in a few countries - but not all yet.
How do we catch a crime without cameras recording everything all the time? That is your question?
No, I’m asking you. Because you seem to be applying the law to stuff it doesn’t apply to, so I’m trying to figure out your knowledge on it, so we can figure out where you went wrong.
And who said ALL the time, security cameras use motion, or a host of other tech to not record all the time and NOT store it. So which law do you think is being broken?
You are asininely saying that if I took a picture of someone throwing something on my house, that would be inadmissible because the street was in it…? Is that what you think the law is doing here…?
Why wouldn’t they be? Is it illegal to record people without their permission in the EU or something? Clueless American here.
Yes, with fix mounted cameras. You can walk around and record with your phone etc though.
You cannot permanently record public places and you may not publish recordings of people (as in them being the main content in the video) without their consent. A temporary recording or live stream should be pretty much a non-issue, especially if you don’t do anything with it other than watching it.
By “permanently record” you mean “keep the footage forever”? Security camera systems usually record on a loop, I doubt this one will be any different. They don’t want to manage all that storage anyway.
Permanent as in “not just for a few seconds when someone rings the bell”.
Security researcher here. I’m assuming this to be some low cost chinese easily hacked thing.
Yup, it’s a rebranded Tuya device.
The product page says it offers cloud storage. Though you maybe can use it offline by recording to an SD card.
So it may not require a subscription, but it still requires an online service… which kind of misses the point that people make about these things being privacy nightmares.
It wasn’t the fee that people were worried about, it was the network video camera uploading to a cloud service which can be accessed by the secret police.
So exactly the same, but a lot cheaper?
Can’t say anything about Ring unfortunately, haven’t analyzed them myself :/
Do you have a recommendation for consumer-priced outdoor cameras/doorbells? Seems like a minefield.
Reolink for the cameras and deny them internet access. You can tell them to record to internal SD Card and / or setup an NVR like Frigate. If you don’t want “roll your own” headaches and have the money for it then use gear from Ubiquiti and UniFi Protect.
Only cameras I recommend are not consumer priced :/ Axis. You do get full access, can run your own code and offline etc.
I don’t have input on cameras specifically, but I have gone pretty deep into trying to understand how to maximise security and interoperability in smart home stuff, through open source control.
A starting point for the you-in-control app to use for smart devices is Home assistant. I was surprised by how easy it was to set up self hosted smart home stuff, largely because there’s loads of guides that build around home assistant. So whether a particular camera works with home assistant is a good starting search filter
Nah, they make them in the stockroom out of leftover shipping boxes and old VCRs.
It says subscription-free, writes to AN SD card, and implies no cloud storage. It could very well be þat it requires no internet connection, in which case þe only limiter to using it in þe US would be power. Eiþer it’s battery powered, or doorbell line powered (like many smart doorbell devices in þe US). Doorbell lines in þe US are 12V (or 24V - I don’t remember which exactly), but if it’s battery powered I can’t see why you couldn’t use it in þe US - batteries are þe one truly universal international standard.
It’s probably too much to hope for zwave or someþing, but even if its WiFi, it looks as if þey’re positioning it to be cloud-service-free. Looks interesting.
It’s not cloud free and requires online activation with the Tuya app. (I assume based on other Tuya WiFi devices)
Well, þat sucks.
I mean being able to “answer from anywhere” definitely implies WiFi. Whether that is required for baseline operation, I dunno.
