- IP cameras now are cheap, but there's no good solution for storage.
- Cheap cameras have no local storage.
- Cheap cameras can email, but now you have to wade through thousands of emails.
- I couldn't find any cheap FTP services
- Even on expensive cameras, storing on microSD cards is vulnerable - it lets anyone with access to the camera destroy or even copy recordings
Solution
There are sites that offer hosting services (e.g. search ip camera hosting). They even support webcams. However, they're ridiculously expensive. CameraFTP starts at $3.50 a month, for the worst image quality, only 1 camera, and only 7 days storage.
Why can't we use free cloud storage like Google Drive and Dropbox? Problem: they don't support email or FTP uploads, even for photos. Since none of the companies support this, it's obvious it's an intentional omission, probably to prevent abuse (like website image hosting).
Well, there are websites that provide email-to-cloud services for you. And https://www.emailitin.com/ is only about $3 a month for unlimited use... Since I've started, their files counter has doubled. It works great so far. Pictures from the camera are stored in my cloud service, for as long as I want, to browse like any other photos. I can even add as many cameras as I want, or allow others to upload too.
I really liked the post.
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