They have been selling NVR based camera systems for decades. It's clunky. It takes a network savvy person to open up their home network to allow remote access. It takes an even savvier person to not do that in a way that guarantees getting their network pwnd.

Having a cloud based solution from an ethical company would be the consumer friendly solution people are actually wanting. Lots of people are willing to spend money to make problems go away.

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noduerme 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I know businesses that have these setups and outside tech support to maintain them. I've also seen them have all kinds of issues when routers are replaced or they change ISPs. That's why I was saying a company could sell a box preloaded with Tailscale and a custom installer that walks a non-technical person through it. The default setup for a tailnet is pretty safe. Yeah you could have your own signaling servers or whatever, but TS usually manages to punch right through most NAT issues. They don't need a reverse proxy to login to their private webserver, although I guess you could provide that as an add-on service. They just need TS on their phone.

[edit] To my mind, the biggest hurdle wouldn't be networking to allow this box to host its own app that was accessible to the user from elsewhere. The hurdles would be things like lack of "smart" reporting / facial recognition, backup power, backup connectivity, etc..But in theory, a repurposed smartphone as the platform could solve the backup power and connection issues.

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crote 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This isn't an inherently unsolvable problem. Peer-to-peer file sharing and video calls have been able to work around it for ages.

The same approach could be used for cameras - see for example Home Assistant's remote access. Sure, you'd still need a cloud-based STUN-like discovery service, but a small one-time fee should easily cover operating it.

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noduerme 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Right..Or instead of STUN/TURN just use Tailscale for now. I think the reason no one's packaged this into a slick Ring-like plug-and-play probably comes down to corporate greed and how hard it is to raise money if your intention is to start a business that doesn't have ever-expanding verticals. Like, this is a set of solved problems. They just need to be smoothed and packed for the user.

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dylan604 4 hours ago | parent [-]

You seem pretty sure of yourself. So when will you be releasing this product that you claim is such low hanging fruit? Right, now you know why this product doesn't exist.

	▲	fc417fc802 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		He just explained why. Because packaging, QA, setting up a storefront, customer service, the sum total requires significant up front investment to get off the ground. Good luck raising money when your pitch is "we won't be greedy and do the things that could make even more money". Or was your intent merely to taunt him for failing to be independently wealthy?