[HH] the missing security camera revolution

[Drew Van Zandt]

I have several Android phones I use as IP cameras, there's an app for that.
 (Several, actually.)

The trouble is, the phones occasionally hang or the app stops responding.
 Then you have to go manually reset them - you can't even just pull power,
unless you removed the batteries.



*Drew Van Zandt Cam # US2010035593 (M:Agapito Acosta) *


On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 9:07 PM, David Kramer <david at thekramers.net> wrote:

> On 04/14/2014 07:02 PM, Tom Metro wrote:
> > I receive ads from 123securityproducts.com. They seem to be typical of
> > sites selling security cameras, although I only rarely look at the other
> > sites, as I haven't been actively shopping for equipment in this space
> > for a few years.
> >
> > The vast majority of the products they advertise are still analog
> > cameras, usually sold in multi-camera bundles, with a central DVR
> > (running some buggy Linux firmware, often with no source code provided).
> >
> > The ad I received today was one of the rare few promoting an actual IP
> > camera. It has better resolution than you typically see. Instead of
> > merely VGA or QVGA, its a 2.43 MP sensor, with a fixed lens. (A 2000 x
> > 1241 pixel sensor, outputting 1920 x 1080 using H.264 at 30 FPS.) It
> > also supports Power-over-Ethernet, which is good, but they want over
> > $300 for this:
> >
> > https://www.123securityproducts.com/knc-hdi47b37.html
> >
> > I get that pro-grade hardware carries a premium, but the capabilities of
> > this camera are likely blown away by a sub-$50 Android smartphone, which
> > likely comes with a 3 MP camera, plus has WiFi and GSM radios.
>
> Not so minor nit: Show me a sub $50 Android smartphone.  And by that I
> mean you buy the phone for sub-$50 and that's that.  No contract or
> commitments.
> Or are you talking used?  Even there I think $50 might be a stretch.
> Maybe a tablet from China.  That would still have wifi.
>
> > It seems easy to imagine how one could take a low-end smartphone SoC,
> > combined with a high volume 5 MP camera module made for phones, and add
> > a wired Ethernet port with PoE and some IR LEDS for night illumination,
> > with production costs under $100, and a retail price of around $100.
> > Replace Android with a very minimalist Linux or other open source RTOS
> > optimized for reliability, and you'd have a great camera platform.
>
> I don't know why you would go through all that work. Couldn't you write
> an Android app that sent the camera to a stream over wifi without
> hacking anything?
>
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