I'd say, yes. I've been able to watch that many people see the ring (they see the camera), and they back right off the porch. It's been awesome in this respect, people simply ring it less. As far as the cloud stuff; I'm willing to make that sacrifice so that it can call my phone and i can see/talk to the person at the door. For family I get to literally let them in, and for others I can pretend to be home but uninterested.

I see the benefit of off-site access but is the cloud a requirement for that? It seems we have conflated the idea of “network enabled” and “cloud based”.

From a technical stand point I agree. But the unit needs to open a connection to my phone, which is going to require reaching beyond my home network. It's hard to deliver a product to an end user this way, so in these cases the cloud means 'we manage the hard part for you'. So the cloud isn't a requirement, for well... us? But the average consumer, yes. I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here. I'd love a version of Ring where I could easily eliminate the middle man; but I recognize the value in what they've done. How we protect privacy sometimes seems to be an argument of confidence (Our own home network security VS a vendors), there are arguments to be made about centralizing some of it?

I do agree there is an argument to be made for partial centralization. Right now everything is centralized, even some things that I don't think need to be. From a purely technical perspective it seems to me that notification and configuration can be delegated to a third party but the actual video data can remain local.

Yes, because of NAT and needing to setup port forwarding, which most people won’t do.

As opposed to what? Setting up a local storage server? Only message board nerds are going to do that. I am 10000% more concerned about the privacy of my email than I am about footage of the outside of my house, which you yourself could obtain simply by driving to my block. And, like a majority of people on this privacy-conscious message board, I happily delegate my email to Google Mail.

I’m not attacking your decision to use a security camera and I understand the trade offs you made.

I’m simply asking if it would be possible to sell a product that has feature party with Ring but doesn’t use the cloud.

Before Ring setting up a home security system was also something only message board nerds would do. Why can’t the same be done for a local server?

I believe Microsoft actually marketed a home server back around the turn of the century. That didn’t go anywhere but they had a lot of ideas that were either ahead of their time or good but poorly executed. The original surface comes to mind. Or what weird kitchen computer that is basically an Echo with a screen.

Sure, you definitely could; you'd sell the same cameras Ring sells, and a local server appliance maybe the size of a wireless router that they'd link to, sort of like how you buy Hue bulbs and also a Hue router.

You'd likely lose the following features:

* Access to the camera from your phone

* The ability to talk to people near the camera

* The "people detection" image classification stuff

* The ability to highlight a range of video and get a shareable link for it

* Access to the camera from your phone

A sane-default DNS configuration could get around this automatically. The default can be some managed thing like your-preferred-name.cameraservice.com and if you're particularly adventurous could be camera.yourdomain.com. IPv6 would greatly simplify the NAT complications here. A device that can double as a firewall or talk to one to auto configure would go a long way.

* The ability to talk to people near the camera

I don't see how the cloud is necessary for this other than slightly simplifying notification. Can't the box at your house just shoot off a text message with a link? A centralized notification service could be used here that contains only a message along the lines of "there is activity at your camera" and the phone app can initiate the stream directly.

* The "people detection" image classification stuff

How hard is this really? Once the model/algorithm is in place the actual computation is easy right? Do they really have to run in the cloud?

* The ability to highlight a range of video and get a shareable link for it

This can be done with either a share-to-youtube link for videos you don't mind making public or simply direct links to your device for small audiences.

if your data is stored in Ukraine with open access to your password, wifi, email account for ring as well as IP address it really wouldn't be hard to hack into your gmail. Ring's employees have access to all of that.

I always create separate, single-use email accounts for these purposes. Other email services also allow you to create aliases.

There are quite a few videos on YouTube where the owner (I assume, via an alert that the motion sensor is triggered) starts speaking though the device remotely "put that down" or "get out of here" and the would-be thieves usually drop the package and hurry off.

EDIT: I should add that a video circulated recently in my neighborhood showing someone stealing the camera. So there's that risk. I'm sure the thieves will be disappointed when they find out about the monthly fee.

"Put that cookie down! Down!"

It's very common for would-be thieves to see the doorbell camera and leave. Cameras, by the nature of the fact that someone could be watching, are a natural deterrent.

Sure that makes total sense. But is there anything special about Ring or other cloud cameras in their ability to deter theft over any other camera?