I feel out of touch with the area around the studio. There has been so much going on at the house, and it’s a far enough walk to the studio that I don’t get down there as often as I’d like. There’s still no bathroom or plumbing, though I’m finally taking steps to fix that (I had planned to have it finished last September). But for now, it’s hard to spend time there. Also, when we travel, I get a little anxious about the equipment that’s so far from my sight. I thought it might help to install a remote security camera, even though the camera by itself won’t do anything to protect the place. It’s really just to help me feel better.
It’s a departure from the consumer-grade WiFi cameras that I’ve used in the past. It’s hard-wired (WiFi can be easily jammed), and uses power-over-ethernet (PoE). Setup is a lot more complicated than when you “buy” an IoT camera from a commercial vendor that’s tied to their app and cloud services, but this way you actually own it. You won’t be pushed into subscriptions or changes to terms and conditions, and your privacy is protected.
Alas, when I tried to integrate my new camera with Home Assistant, my Home Assistant server crashed and will not reboot. So I’ve got a new troubleshooting task to add to my to-do list.
—2p