These Smart Doorbells and Cameras Are About to Start Recording 24/7 --[Reported by Umva mag]

As video doorbells and smart cameras have proliferated on the consumer market over the last 15 years, most have reported activity they pick up via motion detection through clips—short video recordings of fifteen seconds to a minute long. You receive a notification on your phone, tap it, and are delivered that short clip to review.

While that process can present a few issues—sometimes activity can happen outside the time limit for clips—it has mostly worked by balancing what consumers want to see without draining the camera's battery too quickly. However, in the last month, a number of security brands have announced what they’re calling “continuous recording,” or the ability for these devices to record 24/7. Here's what that might look like.

Continuous monitoring is new to the consumer market, but not for businesses

Reolink first announced that their Altas PT Ultra would offer continuous monitoring back in September 2024. Later, on October 2, Ring announced that a variety of their devices would also begin to offer the same. Continuous monitoring is hardly new, and a number of devices have previously offered it, including the E330 eufyCam 24/7 security camera and the Arlo Pro 4, as do all Unifi cameras. But most of these cameras are considered to be for “professional use"—that is, for businesses. The introduction of this feature for Ring and Reolink on models specifically for consumers reveals a shift in what people are looking for from their security monitoring devices. 

I asked Ring if this change was prompted by customers. Eric Kuhn, Ring’s general manager of subscriptions and services confirmed, “This has been one of our most requested features and provides customers added peace of mind," adding “24/7 Recording can help with notification fatigue: When you enable 24/7 Recording, you can reduce your motion detection sensitivity while maintaining the confidence that you’ll never miss a moment.” 

As a Ring user myself, and someone who has tested a ton of security cameras, this rings true: I have occasionally been slow to recharge my doorbell batteries, and I'm happy for a break from getting so many notifications to sift through. 

How notifications will work with continuous monitoring

In Ring’s case, you won’t be losing out on notifications altogether: You’ll still receive video preview alerts, so you can see what triggered the camera’s detection. You will then receive a short clip. The difference is that now you’ll be able to see what happened before and after that clip, to get more context. These features fall under new subscriptions as well: Ring Protect is now “Ring Home,” with three service tiers, but the prices haven’t changed: Home Basic ($4.99/month), Home Standard ($9.99/month), and Home Premium ($19.99/month).

To make finding events in your newly voluminous video library easier, Ring is introducing an AI-based smart video search that will be available starting November 11, 2024. This will allow customers to search via text strings like “blue balloon” instead of only being able to surf through event clips. Search will recognize a variety of parameters, like animals, locations, packages, people, time, vehicles, and weather.

Wifi and power needs will be greater

It seems clear that 24/7 monitoring will eventually become a standard in consumer cameras and doorbells, which raises some new questions. One of the aspects not mentioned in any press release touting continuous monitoring cameras is how the shift will affect wifi or battery load. In professional settings, cameras are almost always installed with continuous power, either directly wired or connected via PoE (power over ethernet), whereas many consumers rely on battery power.

Ring's press release states that continuous monitoring will only be available on "eligible wired cameras," indicating that if you want to take advantage, you'll likely have to do a bit more upfront installation work. Unfortunately, my own Ring cameras aren't wired nor connected to PoE, so I'm likely out of luck.

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