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I am all for local however my biggest issues with video doorbells tends to be the field of view, image quality and operating temperature ranges.
I live in a climate where +30C and -20C will happen at least for a few days a year and quite often I have seen doorbells just go offline below when it gets cold outside or physically degrade in the heat.
I want a highly durable device. These ESPCam devices kinda have crap optics, I want to clearly identify people in the dark.
TBH the only way I’ve found around this is a full CCTV solution monitoring my perimeter, the doorbell can just identifies those who come really close and push the button.
A doorbell camera should be viewed as for convenience on the door. If you want adequate security you really need to get a dedicated security focused solution.
Sounds like a much more complicated problem… maybe resistive heater would be enough? I’m assuming there isn’t any problem with the cold other than the whole thing icing over.
Better optics/camera is probably where it all falls apart… you’re not getting it out of a pre-made $8 dev board any time soon.
It’s the battery. A lot of doorbell cameras have an internal battery to keep the camera powered when the chime is rung. A few of my friends have to replace their unifi doorbell cameras once a year after winter
Wow that’s wasteful, I’d expect a bit more from ubiquiti kit
You’d think that’d be a perfect job for a supercap.
A camera platform small enough to fit a standard door frame isn’t going to be able to hold serious optics. The sensor sizes are going to be too small for good night vision, if nothing else.
The temperature issue is probably an issue of economics. Most people don’t need such a wide range, so off the shelf products don’t support the application, as it would incur additional cost.
Both of these are solvable issues however if you’re willing to use a standard security camera mounted over the door instead. There are many cameras that you could pick with large sensors, heating elements, and more.
A camera platform small enough to fit a standard door frame isn’t going to be able to hold serious optics.
We clearly have even smaller optics in smart phones, the limiting factor on doorbells seems to be using depending on cheap optics, pro FOV lenses and then cutting the bit rate by only supporting 2.4Ghz vs offering 5Ghz or POE support. There are a number of cameras with good optics or secondary package cameras now to cover the FOV issue. There are even cameras that meet all the clarity requirements I have but are cloud only or are knowing to not work in cold weather at all.
The MAIN job of a doorbell camera should be for the security roll of identification. As it will point directly at the face of someone the cheap ones do a bad job of this.
There are some videos showing just how WIDE the quality range is, but sadly very few tick all the boxes.
I think a mobile phone camera is vastly superior to these, although might not be great at night vision for the reasons you said, but is it entirely crazy to not just use a spare phone? It has built in backup power, can store videos locally if there is an internet outage, and can use its own data connection if wifi is not available.
