Home Automation

I’m all about cameras external, and hey maybe internal facing doors is good added security. The rest? Nah inside your home needs some privacy.

I guess some people like watching indoor pets but even kids need some privacy and boundaries.

lol wtf is wrong with you. maybe try to talk to your goddamn husband before asking stranger on the internet why he is doing something?

Why are you asking the internet why he wants it instead of asking him?

We have one and I appreciate being able to go back and grab clips of funny things our pets do (like bringing a live squirrel into the house when we weren’t looking). I’ve also got them setup for some automations regarding motion, presence detection, and a few other things. There are a lot of precautions that can be taken to prevent them from filming when and what you don’t want them to if you’re worried about it.

None of that really matters though; you need to actually have a conversation with the person you’re married to, not strangers on the internet.

I've had indoor cameras for years mainly to keep an eye on pets, they are completely powered off when anyone is home.

Is it for child's safety? If your child is like a baby then i guess it is fine. Turn it on and turn it off only when needed. But if it's not his case, and just worried of intruders, why not put a camera outside the house. That way, you're gonna be alerted faster. Because inside is quite different, they can hack you and easily see what you guys are doing inside the house.

I'm also considering doing that, it's mainly because I bought a cool camera

Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s

I have cameras too indoor pointing to living space, entrance and stairs. Other places are privacy bound.

“What do you have to hide?” should be canceled out by “What are you trying to see?”

As a potential compromise, would you consider a camera which could be rotated to face the wall when you are home? We have a camera in our bedroom but it faces the wall when we are home and doesn't record when we are home. When we leave the house I have it set up to rotate around and start recording.

I have a camera in my basement that faces the backdoor in the basement. The idea there is if anyone breaks in that door- we would see them. There is also one outside that door as well (loads of them now).

I also have a few in the attic. Thought we had a mouse issue- turns out it was a bat. Allowed me to call the right guy.

I guess I would want to know where the recordings are. I use Blue Iris and my network is pretty well locked down. I don't record to the cloud or anything.

I do have an outdoor shower near that basement camera. I am the only one that uses it. Honestly, the video quality of most of these cameras is good but not the great. Even if I was naked and I was paparazzi material, the video would be worthless.

It is probably less of a risk than the video alexas, googles, and zoom machines we have around the house.

I got indoor cameras because I had a dog misbehaving while I was gone and I wanted to see what he was doing. Then I got used to being able to check in on the house and the dogs and now I like it. I don't feel self conscious about it like I'm being recorded. I forget the cameras are there. Sometimes I'll check the recording to find out where I put something, or what time I did something. Now I'm not sure why people care that they are being recorded.

My wife puts up with my HA habit, but even I knew that cameras were something to approach delicately. What we sort of fell on - and she is ok with - the following:

Outdoor cameras (doorbells and such) - fine. Adds to security.

Garage camera to check to see if we accidentally left the garage door open while we are away, she was ok with that.

Interior cameras in spaces that generally are not occupied (we have a 5BR house) were ok.

That got us through for a while. But then life circumstances changed and it evolved into us being away a couple weeks at a time on a regular basis. After a couple circumstances where she was worried maybe our house was getting broken into, we agreed to an interior camera in a main living space - but it had to be something that could be visibly seen as to whether it is on or off, and set to automatically go into “off” when either of us are home. We picked a camera from EZViz for that. When you switch on privacy mode the camera lens rotates back into its own body and it’s obvious from just looking at it. HomeAssistant controls automatically putting it to and out of privacy mode.

This made me think — is it maybe a security thing he is going after? Like a cheap, makeshift alarm? If so, just steer the conversation into a security panel instead.

I have a security system and had one prior to my boyfriend moving in. I think it kind of threw him for a loop, but now we don’t even notice or care I get it, though privacy is privacy, I just mainly use it for seeing if he’s awake yet as I’m coming home from the gym in the morning lol 😂

I balanced my desires for privacy and security by adding power controls to smart cameras.

When I’m home and awake, the cameras get deprived of electricity.

When I’m asleep upstairs or out of the house, power is restored for extra protection.

If you have to ask us….

We have one but it's hooked up to an automatic switch we can both turn on/off with our phones when we're not home.

I have indoor cameras but they're strictly pointing to entrances, one on each door. It actually did catch a theft but from someone we knew (multi-thousand dollar item stolen by the girlfriend of a friend).

So first he said he wants to install and it's only "beacuse". Later it turns out he also said "to see his son".

Those are two very different reasons. Why wasn't the bigger reason brought up right away?

You consider it stalking and definitely leaning to the answers agreeing with you. I have not noticed you being worried about cyber crime on anyone else spying on you, only your husband.

Just from reading into this for 5 minutes you're leaving me with untrusty vibes. Cameras are always a tricky subject with cons and pros, it's understandable.

Trustworthy people don't have a problem being checked on.

If there was nothing to worry about a camera wouldn't be a problem.

You shouldn't be offended, you should question your actions.

And yes, if he really wanted to spy on you, he already did.

We have camera's in our home. They're only pointed places where you need to pass by to get inside the home, but specifically not at places where we actually live. They also don't record audio.

And none of the cameras are connected via a public cloud.

Why?

Most cameras with their standard settings are simply too easy to hack, and we want whatever private things we choose to do in our own house to stay private. And even if it's secure, I don't want to be showing off my home automation app to one of my nerd friends and accidentally show them something I shouldn't have, hence the specific placement.

The first reason I would ever want a camera in my living area would be if I lived with someone who might potentially raise legal issues for me that I want to record to protect myself.

A secondary reason would be because it's easier to monitor the interior with a single camera than multiple cameras around the exterior.

Especially if I'm renting I would want to be able to monitor any contractors or maintenance people the landlord my grant entry to on short or no notice.

I have 9 cameras installed around my home - with none of them pointed anywhere inside (except my garage). I simply cannot come up with good reason to have one inside except to monitor a pet. Nothing gets in or out without video. That's enough.

In my opinion, people who live there should be able to preserve their own privacy in that space.

A romantic partner demanding to install a nanny cam to watch me would be an immediate dealbreaker, I couldn’t care less what his reasons are. Even the ask screams abusive control. They’d lose whatever trust I had in them both for the absurd question and their reaction to my resounding hell no.

Imagine a life where you have to comb your own home for hidden cameras daily as though you’re staying in a shoddy Airbnb because that’s the life you’ll have with this person. Imagine what happens to those images when you’ve finally had enough of this type of treatment. Are you sure he hasn’t secretly installed one already? I’d nope out of that relationship at the speed of light.

I have exterior and interior cameras… however we have a nanny that watch our children and we like to be able to look in and see what is going on from time to time. Nanny’s are aware of the cameras and they are in public places of our house. If you don’t have in home sitters he could be suspicious about something or does he have controlling behaviors and wants to know what your doing when he’s away?

The only I would trust is the eve HomeKit hksv camera and set it to off when anyone is home. Video data is encrypted on device before it sent to the internet and can only be accessed via your devices.

Without providing a compelling reason this would be highly suspect to me.

We had a camera in our home for a while because we got a puppy. It was our way to keep an eye on him early on when we first started leaving him home alone.

We talked about it first, both agreed to do it after I explained why I wanted to and it was local only, no video or audio sent out of the house.

Once the dog got older I took it down and repurposed, now it’s the inside of the garage camera.

I would set them up to cover ingress/egress points, so doors and windows, which will catch a good image of any intruder coming or going. You should be able to adjust most cameras so that they only cover the doorway, or windows, and not your living space.

Me and my fiance ended up getting cameras, and she was intially uncomfortable with them, so we agreed that as long as they were only covering ingress/egrees she was fine with it. Eventually, we ended up getting Cats and have changed our cameras so they cover most of our main living areas. We do not, and will not put cameras in bedrooms/bathrooms.

Also if you do come to an agreement with him regarding cameras, make sure he shares access with you, and has them set up through a VPN...if he is not familiar with networking/network secruity, go through a professional installer that can set up the network secruity for the cameras properly, and it will be ok.

Honestly, this sounds more like a r/relationship_advice post than r/homeautomation.

When we installed our cameras (some internal, most external) my wife and I talked about camera placement and what the cameras were monitoring and what we wanted to monitor. We established that bedrooms and bathrooms were no-camera zones and that we wanted to monitor primarily doors and windows. Finally, I made sure that my wife has access to the NVR so she can review the cameras as well (equal access == equal trust). The important bit is communication and information are key for something like this.

Our primary non-security use for the cameras is checking in on the house when we travel or when I want to see if the trash can needs to be pulled from the street. Do you use at-home babysitting? Perhaps that's why he wants an interior camera?

As far as acting silly or whatnot, I don't even really think about the cameras anymore. My wife and I both have walked through the living room in our underwear or less to get something out of the kitchen.

I would highly encourage the two of you to talk through the trust issue that has been found here. Something's not right and if the camera is installed anyways, it could backfire spectacularly and sow discontent between the two of you.

My guess? He likes to wait. Seriously, he probably just wants to see you undress.

I have a camera in my house and everyone knows it. It records 24/7 and saves several months back. I almost never check the recordings unless I’m trying to figure out which cat is knocking the lamp over. It’s too complicated to pull up footage for just casual viewing. I like being able to check on my home when I’m gone. Plus due to my professional experiences, it’s great evidence when someone breaks into your home. You think your outside cameras are enough to convict? Lmao nope! “Just because they broke in doesn’t mean my client stolen anything from the property”. It’s also great to check when a kid breaks their nose when you were only gone long enough to pee. Like how the f*ck did you break your nose in less than 1 min of me being gone?

Also check state laws. In my state it’s perfectly legal to have a camera in a public space in the house without consent to others. It’s illegal in private areas without consent

Btw you should post this to r/privacy

I have two cameras in my living space. One is in my utility room/mud room that covers by back door/dog door. The other is in my living room. It covers my front door and sliding glass door. If someone takes the time to hack my very secure setup, then they are going to be very bored with what they see. When we are not home, I use the living room one to help keep an eye on my dogs, they tend to get into mischief when we are gone.

Personally, I/we have cameras throughout the common areas of me and my S.O.’s home. We have people come take care of our dogs here and there, people drop off and kindly steal packages, and we are also in an “improving” neighborhood where we get to hear the occasional “firework” (gunshot). But I live in the US and “celebratory fireworks” are sadly very normal in some areas.

If he’s not sharing access to those cameras with you equally (I.e. Ring shared access), that’s very questionable. On the other end, if he’s sharing access with you and you’re questioning it (it doesn’t sound like this is the case), then that’s also questionable. So, get access if you don’t have it already. If he balks at that idea, I’d get very curious. And throw a handful of red flags into the air.

We have cameras covering the driveway, front yard, backyard, garage, family room downstairs and living room upstairs. The two inside cameras are angled to capture as much of the upper and lower living spaces as possible.

• driveway so we can see people coming and going such as food or friends… if we had any.
• front yard to cover anyone that may park in front of our house instead of driveway otherwise we wouldn’t know about them
• backyard to keep an eye on the kid playing and knowing when the neighbor kids jump the fence to grab their balls
• garage so my wife can yell at me when I’m doing something unsafe or a visual confirmation we closed the garage door (got an app for that but physically seeing it is more reassuring)
• living room/family room to keep tabs on the kid when we are elsewhere in the house as well as to get a quick glance when we aren’t home and get worst-case scenario thoughts in our head

Basically, I’d only question his motives if he wants to install a camera in the bedroom or bathroom.

I'm going to flip the question a little... what are you afraid of? If it is the common area of the house, will you be naked in that area? Anyway, as long as there are no cameras in the bedrooms and bathrooms, everything is fine.

This post isn’t really in context for this group. Maybe refer to r/homesecurity or r/relationships

I used to be the one to stick up a camera in every corner of indoor space. Then I realized, I don’t have a single blind spot outside of the house. If someone is going to break in, i have several cameras outside that will record what I need. For indoor security I have door, motion, and glass break sensors.

If we really need we have an Alexa show that has a camera, but it makes it very apparent when you’re watching and has a mechanical privacy cover.

My dad became obsessed with having cameras in every corner of the interior. Which made my mom very uncomfortable to which he would then use stuff he saw her doing or saying on camera against her later.

However, shared space decisions should be codecisions.

Indoor cameras are real weird. I have one but only set it up (take it out of a drawer and plug it in) when we are going on vacation- and it's set to monitor the cats food.

Aside from minor use cases like that, always on cameras... no. They are constantly advertised but I like everyone to have privacy!

Have you talked with your husband? Do you know why he wants a camera? Ask the man you are in a relationship with before asking Reddit strangers. I’m not sure why you would be offended -

She's hiding something

Outdoor only. Fake indoor cameras for burglar deterrence would be a compromise, as long as you can tell the difference. Camera footage gets leaked all the time, by emotionally broken people, authorities, etc.