Any decent doorbell cameras yet?

CCTVCam

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Everyone I've seen up to now has massively wide lens angles (great for an overview but terrible for identification), poor quality compared to leading CCTV cams and a lack of connectivity - very few seem to have both an app with wifi recording and a LAN connection. Personally, I'd take 110-120 degrees fov.

Also, maybe this is just me being naive here, but on the subject of designing doorbells / viewers, why doesn't someone simply take a Mobius Maxi with supercap, re-case it with the lens at 90 degrees to the dashcam position, add some phone / pc software to suit (I believe it's wifif now after their latest firmware update) and sell this as either a viewer or a doorbell with the addition of wireless bell push.

Last time I looked, the Maxi was 2.7K resolution, up there with the best daytime picture and not half bad at night.

Surely someone can adapt this without this snail pace of development in doorbells that invoilves re-inventing the wheel.
 

fenderman

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A good doorbell camera will have a wide view that is the point to see the entire surrounding area including your packages etc... A narrow lens doorbell would be foolish... Particularly since everyone has different mounting positions.... You will want a good front camera anyways.. if you believe it's so easy to develop go for it yourself... Axis has a good doorbell it's 800 bucks....
 

fenderman

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Unless the resolution is high enough to allow blowing up a still frame to get an ID grade image, I don't think a single camera doorbell solution will work very well. Twin, independently aimable cams with a narrower FOV in a single housing seems a better all-in-one solution to me. One cam for ID, and one for packages and/or an overview. And like fenderman said, it won't be cheap.
The doorbell camera is not designed to id from a distance... Even highly compressed wide angle video from doorbell cams like ring can identify someone who comes to the door and that's the entire point in purpose.
 

fenderman

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I understand that. My point was that using an ultrawide angle lens to view a person's face and packages on the ground compromises the image quality, sometimes to the point that a good face ID is difficult to obtain. Using two cameras would allow both to utilize a narrower POV to deliver better results at the door. I didn't mean that one of the cameras would be dedicated to ID at a distance.
Even the crappiest HD doorbells with high compression will id someone who is anywhere near the door.
 

CCTVCam

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A good doorbell camera will have a wide view that is the point to see the entire surrounding area including your packages etc... A narrow lens doorbell would be foolish... Particularly since everyone has different mounting positions.... You will want a good front camera anyways.. if you believe it's so easy to develop go for it yourself... Axis has a good doorbell it's 800 bucks....
I fully understand that for many people on here, doorbell cameras are 2nd cameras that only supplement CCTV. But, for others who don't have / can't afford CCTV, the doorbell camera might be the only the protection they can put in place. In the UK atm, the manufacturers are staring to push doorbell cameras with both Ring and from memory Nest pushing doorbell cams via TV adverts, and Nest pushing a small wifi camera for the house / garden. This year is the 1st time they've been TV advertised that I've seen. It seems logical that if these are going to be the only cameras for many, to have the best image quality.

As for developing my own, again I take your point. But how is a doorbell camera so far from a cam such as a Mobius (I choose that as an example I know is quite easy to play around with as the internals can all be bought separately as spares and it's more sport camera with dashcam ability that dedicated dashcam)? The Maxi for example has wifi connectivity, 2.7K resolution, a great lens choice (2 angles), recording to SD although no doubt with Wifi and a good signal it might be possible I would have though to stream and record to a device, and it costs around $80 retail + a few $ for a capacitor option. Surely given it's functions the only real difference between this and a doorbell camera is the waterproof casing and the software for 3rd party device recording. They both stream, the Maxi at a much higher bit rate because it deals with lots of movement, but that's nothing more than a firmware adjustment, they both can record continuously, neither has a battery and can be powered by hardwire (the Mobius when fitted with the supercap and currently via mini usb port although I'm sure a 2 wire bell connection is only a few bits of solder away), they both have mics, admittedly the Mobius doesn't have a speaker to allow you to talk back - a function of many door bell cameras. However, the latter feature apart, there's not really that much difference on the surface between a small multi-purpose action cameras and a doorbell camera. Of course, for a doorbell function, a wireless door push would also needed to be added and the end camera combination is not going to be as small as the latest Rings, but function vs form.


I've seen some really bad, fisheyed-to-the-max images from doorbell cams. Sure, they could be used for ID purposes, but the distortion created by the lens was significant, and it certainly didn't improve the odds of identifying the Bad Man.
That's exactly my point. When I switched over lenses on my Mobius, I noticed the narrower angle was significantly better for resolution yet still gave me more than enough fov in my car. The Mobius uses a high quality lens for both so distortion was never an issue, but simply having more pixel density really helped identification.

I agree with 2.7k you're never going to get distance recognition with a doorbell camera, but the whole point of them is protect you against someone who comes up to or comes up close to your door. When You look at some of the current crop of doorbell cams, the ID ability of them is really poor even where this is the case.
 
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TonyR

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Not a big fan of cloud, P2P, offshore servers, etc. Even if one doesn't care you've got to have a pretty good upload speed (no less than 4.0 Mbps ) to successfully view cloud-based video solutions.

Out here in the boonies our ADSL is more like 1.5M to 3.0M down and .5M to 1.0M up....dismal by today's scale. :(
 

CCTVCam

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I'd like to point out I didn't post this to be controversial, rather just debate why we're not seeing a quality and reliable doorbell camera at a fair price, especially as that would be a viable starter alternative for me at the moment to a full CCTV system that's beyond my budget.

I do agree Fender, you can identify people from some doorbell cameras, but it's a push at 720P (excuse the doorbell pun), especially in sunlight when you tend to see a lot of dome reflection from those cheap looking very fish eye style polycarbonate domes. It's very difficult to see why when manufacturers can produce 2mp CCTV cameras that produce very good results, they can't produce a doorbell camera that's both reliable and of similarly high quality and similarly when some action camera manufacturers can produce small form factor action cams such as Mobius and Runcam with arguably better quality than the current doorbell selection, why doorbell manufacturers can't match the quality for a very similar price. Surely a camera is a camera with a few added firmware / software features to suit each application. We're not seeking DSLR's or Hollywood video production here. Just a cheap reliable doorbell with a video quality not dissimilar to regular digital CCTV. Surely not too much to ask of Dahua et al.
 

fenderman

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I'd like to point out I didn't post this to be controversial, rather just debate why we're not seeing a quality and reliable doorbell camera at a fair price, especially as that would be a viable starter alternative for me at the moment to a full CCTV system that's beyond my budget.

I do agree Fender, you can identify people from some doorbell cameras, but it's a push at 720P (excuse the doorbell pun), especially in sunlight when you tend to see a lot of dome reflection from those cheap looking very fish eye style polycarbonate domes. It's very difficult to see why when manufacturers can produce 2mp CCTV cameras that produce very good results, they can't produce a doorbell camera that's both reliable and of similarly high quality and similarly when some action camera manufacturers can produce small form factor action cams such as Mobius and Runcam with arguably better quality than the current doorbell selection, why doorbell manufacturers can't match the quality for a very similar price. Surely a camera is a camera with a few added firmware / software features to suit each application. We're not seeking DSLR's or Hollywood video production here. Just a cheap reliable doorbell with a video quality not dissimilar to regular digital CCTV. Surely not too much to ask of Dahua et al.
It will never be the same price because there are many more parts and development considerations for a doorbell camera. There are plenty of 1080p doorbell cameras and they produce good images. They could do it. Maybe they are working on a starlight doorbell, who knows. The point is, the doorbell camera has one purpose, to see who is at the door and communicate with them. The poor reliability comes from poor wifi implementation and/or poor firmware backend app programming. Most are overpriced right now. 400 for a doorbird 720p camera? insane. The primary barrier to market entry is price. You wont sell lots of cameras at 400 bux unless you are a big player and have a channel to sell it. A 150 dollar doorbell with the features you want is just not going to happen.
 

IAmATeaf

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Isn’t one issue that if they did up the captured resolution then as most doorbells connect via WiFi a/b you’d have a problem in pushing the footage as you’d start to overload your internal WiFi? Not an expert but connections for me using a/b have always been slow unless you are surfing the net.
 

looney2ns

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Isn’t one issue that if they did up the captured resolution then as most doorbells connect via WiFi a/b you’d have a problem in pushing the footage as you’d start to overload your internal WiFi? Not an expert but connections for me using a/b have always been slow unless you are surfing the net.
Depending on your wifi setup, absolutely it will.
 

truglo

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A year later and still nothing stands out? Seems a pro-level doorbell cam would be within reach by now, but maybe it's more rocket science than we think. Faced with the choice between an $800 axis doorbell cam, and hanging a $100 starlight mini ir dome above the doorway... I'm sticking with my starlight thanks. I've got some neighbors though that would love to say they spent $800 on a doorbell cam, and so maybe they really need it, LOL!

Kevin
 

Alan Carter

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FYI - for those following:

If you are going to wire up your front door area - when pulling a cable, plan to drop 2-3 cat5e/6 cables to the front door area.

remember to check out the cliff notes if you are new to this topic.
Mat why 2-3 cables for the front door area?
 

mat200

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Mat why 2-3 cables for the front door area?
HI Alan,

Because it is a pita to run cables there and you may want to add more devices to the front door like a video doorbell, or other IoT device...

Remember the N+1+ cable pull rule ( iirc it should be covered in the Cliff Notes )
 

Alan Carter

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Got it - thanks. @mat200 do you prefer a junction box or wall mount for soffit? (since you're here) :)
 

mat200

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Got it - thanks. @mat200 do you prefer a junction box or wall mount for soffit? (since you're here) :)
Hi Alan

I like junction boxes - however by the front door I want to lower the profile - so I try to stuff the connections back into the wall.
 
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