Here’s a Doorbell Camera You Don’t Have to Feel Guilty About
No more spying for the police
If you’ve spent any time walking down a neighborhood sidewalk recently, you might have noticed an increasing number of doorbell cameras from companies like Amazon’s Ring. These cameras are observing you, yes, and they’re also uploading all of the footage they collect to a dizzying array of cloud servers.
I own one of those internet-connected doorbells, a Nest Hello from Google, and while I find it useful for seeing who’s at the door when I’m away, the thought that I’m slinging endless footage of innocent people into a cloud I don’t control bothers me. When it emerged that Ring has partnerships with hundreds of police forces, I started searching for an alternative I could host myself, without relying on a cloud owned by a company like Amazon.
Until recently, there weren’t really any options on the market, but when Ubiquiti’s new G4 Pro Doorbell camera was released late last year for $199, I finally decided to ditch the Nest Hello in favor of a more privacy-friendly approach.
UniFi’s G4 Doorbell is incredibly similar to the Nest Hello, sporting a camera, microphone, and speaker for talking to anyone that rings your doorbell, but it adds a little screen that allows you to set a message like “Welcome,” or set up an…
