On 02/08/18 04:59, Tim wrote:
Allegedly, on or about 7 February 2018, Ed Greshko sent:
> I guess I'm not clear on how things are supposed to work. It sounded
> to me as if the camera was uploading videos into their cloud and if
> someone wanted to view it they would access the cloud and not the
> camera directly.
Some cameras merely use a central server as a way of finding your
camera by a name (ala dynamic DNS, mine initially lets you find it by
serial number, if I recall correctly) and for traversing NAT.
Sure. But have a look at
https://amcrest.com/cloud. And then check out the pricing
and descriptions.
It seems to me you can have your camera streaming to their cloud and recording as
well as playing back live. Also, seems you can set triggers to record on motion
only. Or, schedule when the recording happens. With more than one camera this seems
to provide a central place to view all cameras as opposed to connecting to a camera
individually.
And, of course, it isn't free.
One option to using these kind of cameras more safely, might be if your
router has a demilitarised zone (DMZ). The router will forward
specific traffic to it, and not allow it (your camera) to interact with
your LAN. This does require that your cameras are connected directly
to the router, not sharing a switch with your LAN.
I don't think this is the type of method employed in the "cloud" scenario.
The other option is to buy their recorder that allows you to record content locally
and allow access to that device through your FW in a DMZ.
I think it is important to understand what the products and services of the company
and may even the model camera Bob as bought.
--
A motto of mine is: When in doubt, try it out