I was responsible for administrating an ADT security system for a Los Angeles-based startup (too many hats). Dealing with ADT was an absolute nightmare. Their support agents knew nothing about our configuration. ADT support technicians could take days to respond to a faulty sensor, which meant our operations folks would have to wake up at all hours of the night and check for false positives or disable the whole system. The experience led me to believe that office security systems are ripe for additional competition.
At least over here in the UK, ADT seemed to have an acquisition-based near monopoly in home alarm systems and acted every bit like you'd expect, and I wouldn't be surprised if commercial alarm systems were as bad.
Reminds me of dealing with Terminex dispatching exterminators to spray for insects in the arctic in the middle of winter when it was -20 deg F. There are lots of these service companies that are fall somewhere between inept and crooked.
Google has an existing partnership with ADT for monitoring their Nest Secure product so I'm not even sure it's all about the install base. There's a lot of mutual benefits to that partnership, ADT has the existing network of people-oriented call centers and installation crew without great hardware & tech, whereas Google's tech is much better but without any of this timely & expensive infrastructure built out.
Google's products are also expensive. The Nest smoke detectors are priced to only be viable for a studio apartment. Beyond that, you're way better off going with a traditional alarm/fire system.
Requirements are 1 in each bedroom and 1 in the hallway outside each bedroom. That adds up quickly.
The alarm.com smoke detectors are $50 and also last 10 years. You're paying a lot for a Google badge that doesn't even contact the fire department with the base setup.
When a smoke detector goes off, I've got my system set to:
1) Turn off HVAC/heat
2) Unlock exterior doors
3) Turn on lights
4) Flush syncs of any local data to remote sources
What's the google price tag for again? Initially it was worthwhile for the panicky waving motion to cancel alarms. But then they removed that.
Beyond the privacy concerns I wouldn't want my front door to disable itself because my Google Account was suspended because YouTube's content-identification algorithm picked up a snippet of a song in the background of a video upload. Only to find due to automated support computer-says-no the only way to get it re-enabled was to hope my complaint about it goes viral on Twitter or makes the front page of HN.
Amazon did the same thing in Germany. A customer misused their return policy and got locked out of their Amazon account. Amazon refused to let the customer access their bought videos. Although a court ruled that illegal, I now only do one thing with each account.
It's Google, so they'll probably force you to create a YouTube account to watch videos recorded by your security system, put adverts for private security services over the top, share what time you're usually out of the house with third parties, and then shut down the service after a couple of years.
We've heard reports of google shutting off account access with no recourse because a person made the wrong youtube comments. Imagine if you got locked out of your house because an automated system misinterpreted a comment you made on a Taylor Swift video.
If I had to describe google in one word it would be - creepy.
Google has never made a product that did not collect data in a unique manner from its other products. Between that, the dark patterns, and this recent experience, google the company and the people that work there just give me the creeps.
From previous comment:
"I uploaded a picture to google maps as part of a review. About a month later I get an actual notification on my phone - hey do you want to share this picture you took in City Park last weekend? It creeped me out beyond belief. Google had been rifling through my personal pictures in the background while I was going about my life. It was an enormous breach of my personal space and it is just one example of many related to google."
Additionally, I very much want an internet connected smoke alarm. But I would want something from a trustworthy company. And currently google does not fit that profile.
I get not wanting your data used for advertising and NSA.
But I don't understand why people intentionally give their photos to a system for processing, apparently happily let it be used for advertising and government surveillance, but then get upset when it's used for features. You're rely happier with everyone spying on you and pretending they aren't?
I uploaded one photo to Google Maps. It looked through all of my photos then decided a different photo was was a good candidate for "sharing".
It was a surprise for me since I forgot I left access to my photos on. iOS 14 resolves this by letting you choose which photos you allow an application to have access to. This cannot come any sooner because that was disturbing.
edit: I shared the original photo because I believe in helping other people.
To be clear here. I didn't give _all of my photos_ to Google. It was presented to me as a user that I was uploading a single photo.
Google then took liberties with that permission to an extreme. And it was personally revolting to me. I cannot overstate my absolute disgust with what happened there.
Wow. Good point about customer service. I forgot about that.
I can't think of a faster or more effective way for Google to destroy the public's trust in it than to inflict its customer service practices on the masses.
Google's customer service is pretty good on the hardware they sell. I've owned a Nexus 7 and various Nexus and Pixel phones and when you call them they are generally helpful.
You are being pedantic and a know-it-all. You know very well what was meant by that. Just consider the comment to apply to all the the monopolistic cartel technology world dominating corporate companies. They are all part of the same world dominating corporation system that colludes in Davos and through the various other secret groups, as much as they even collude in public to conspire against us all, regardless of whether one thinks one is in their good graces by doing their will.
My apologies if I came across as pedantic or a know-it-all. I was thinking that, of all of the big companies that could be buying a stake in ADT, this is actually one of the more competent ones, which is a good thing. Also, plenty of other big companies with even more of a record of bad behavior. So, it was intended as a face-value statement.
Because of their success these companies also get the most scrutiny (see house investigation/hearings last week). One foul step and its a PR disaster, impending regulations, boycotts, etc. Are you sure you'd prefer your convenience to come from smaller companies that garner less attention?
I focused on ADT's network of technicians rather than their install base. I guess the two are correlated but it seems that Nest thermostats and smoke detectors have always tried to straddle the line between DIY self-install and professional installers.
Also, ADT which has fairly scummy sales tactics and isn't very technologically advanced compared to other competitors and is very old school. Hard to imagine two companies farther apart.
I'm trying to think of any company I would trust for a camera in my house and am drawing a blank. Google is pure evil for sure, but which company is better?
It it even possible to roll your own LAN solution any more? The tech giants have become so hostile to anyone who dares to try to control their own data that I never even hear it discussed any more.
You can build your own LAN system. You just need to plug a camera with a wide lens into a Pi, optionally with a PIR motion sensor. Possibly with some IR illumination for night vision.Have some code which motion triggers the camera (either in software or IR triggered) and upload the data to your own storage. That could be local on a NAS or cloud (a bucket you own).
I suggest this over an IP camera as you might as well be paranoid about those too. If you need live streaming that can be done with open source software fairly easily.
You would have to spend some time working on hardware, and it'd probably cost more, but technically it's just tedious rather than difficult. There are some projects to do this with the Pi camera already. You could even add object detection with ML quite easily, which is something you pay a lot for with other platforms.
What you miss out on is the level of embedded and mechanical integration that the commercial stuff has. Blink has a two year battery life (replaceable), the housings are IP rated etc.
Wyze is the only company I trust currently. You dont have to use their app you can save it all to an SD card and there are github repos for custom firmware. I currently just use their software.
Most IP cameras support standard methods of accessing their video feeds. A program like iSpy will work fine, you just want to also have a firewall that will block your cameras' attempts to call home and not set up any cloud access.
Is that still true? I wanted to buy an IP camera to monitor our puppy's crate a few months back and I was shocked to find that pretty much all the cheapish IP cameras that used to support this a few years back have all moved to a cloud-only offering where you have to access your video via their app which streams your video to their cloud service (hard no).
I was amazed that not a single product in the sub $100 range on Amazon seemed to support direct LAN access. I ended up going with the Wyze cam, which still has that issue, but I'd trust a bit more over the no-name Chinese brands still running 10 year old Linux kernels on their cameras.
I referred to iSpy both because it's a great free/open product, but it also has an excellent camera database with all of the video feed URLs for different model cameras. Check it out: https://www.ispyconnect.com/sources.aspx
From my experience, many cameras won't publicize/document this information, but it's still available/possible for almost every one.
Ah I see. Thanks for replying. It unfortunately looks like iSpy doesn't have a mobile client? Many years ago I used to use Robert Chou's "IP Cam Viewer" which was a no-nonsense app to connect to different IP cameras, but unfortunately that doesn't work with a lot of the changes that camera makers have made on their end to prevent direct IP connections.
In my case, I'd strongly want to avoid direct IP connections to my cameras from a smartphone. That'd suggest very easy outside access to devices that have questionable security.
It's very possible. Another alternative is to go with Apple HomeKit Secure Video products, which do send your data to the cloud, but in encrypted form which is only accessible to you.
Interestingly, I have 3 Nest thermostats (3rd gen), one of which had its WiFi chip go bad this weekend. A quick live chat session with zero wait time, and they’re shipping me a replacement and a prepaid label to return the faulty device. It was even out of warranty by a few months; I was impressed, took less than 30 minutes from start to finish & zero time spent “waiting for an agent”.
As far as I am aware google has already tried with the home security and they have been caught forgetting to tell customers that their device has a microphone integrated.
For home security you need to have customer trust to succeed. Google? No way. Facebook? Yeah right.
Many years ago a colleague of mine at the time got stuck in a nuclear power station for a few hours because he tailgated someone into the plant but the systems wouldn't let him out as he appeared never to have entered.
Apparently this was surprisingly difficult to remedy.
Imagine if your house won't let you in because it doesn't think you have gone out!
> Many years ago a colleague of mine at the time got stuck in a nuclear power station for a few hours because he tailgated someone into the plant but the systems wouldn't let him out as he appeared never to have entered.
how does that work? can't he tailgate someone on the way out? or get the guy at the security desk to let him through? was he the last one out of the plant or something?
Something like this has happened to me in a parking garage.
The garage had a gate that would usually require a card, but if you worked a late shift, then you might get off work just after a concert or other event let out and the gate was left up for everyone to leave. Which meant the next day, it would still think you were in the garage and not want to let you in.
Ironically, the dynamic has shifted; we've all voluntarily installed microphones all throughout our houses and carry around tracking devices. They have no reason for you to leave and would prefer you stay at home where they can monitor you for any wrongthink you may verbalize. Best part, those people who refuse to bug and track themselves become interesting to additional scrutiny … because they clearly must be up to something.
At the same time, I would have a hard time naming a company that I’d trust less to integrate into my home security than Google.
Privacy, (lack of) customer service, service continuity...I know these aren’t issues that would worry most consumers but they would all be on my mind.