Ring is partnering with Flock so I’m in the process of replacing my Ring cameras.
Here’s the legwork I did, feel free to add to this:
Blink is out because they’re also Amazon and if Ring is partnering with Flock, it’s only a matter of time.
TP Link Tapo - Four 4K cameras w/ local network storage. $629.95. “5BLACKFRIDAY” code drops it to under $600.
Eufy - Four 3K cameras w/ Network storage. $749.95. They have a more advanced camera that has a fixed 4K but only a 2K pan/tilt and that setup with local network storage is over $1,000.
Arlo - $18/mo. subscription. No thank you.
Wyze - No network storage, SD cards only.
Aosu is notably cheaper ($429.99 for 4 cameras + network storage), but is only a 2K camera, and in a security situation, I can’t imagine that being a good idea. 😟 The price is GREAT though, so I guess if all your footage is close up, it would work well. If you need to read a license plate at distance? Er, em…
I’m really happy with Reolink Trackmix cams.
That’s pretty slick too! Only drawback I see there is that the home hub is SD card based and maxxes out at 1 TB and other systems have 2.5" drive bays or NVME slots.
But hey, anything is better than Flock adjacent! 😉
Disable them by removing them yourself.
I wonder if a laser of some sort could mess up the camera sensors
Lasers are absolutely capable of this. A 1-watt laser could probably do it and, last time I checked, you can order 44-watt lasers online.
A 1w laser will permanently blind you instantly. You can buy/build them very cheaply and easily, but a class 4 laser isn’t a toy.
For perspective, the regular red laser pointers from your local store are like 5mW at most.
A 44w laser is probably an IR fiber laser used for tattoo removal or some industrial application. You can get them cheap, but they are not handheld. Also lasers that powerful tend to be pulsed.
Nichia makes 5w+ 445nm diodes that are small enough to fit in a flashlight
I’m familiar. The 44W lasers I mentioned are blue diode lasers from consumer-grade laser cutters/engravers. They actually consist of multiple diodes with some optics that combine all the beams into a pretty small kerf. Last time I checked I was only able to find IR diode lasers up to 2W. I’m hoping to get my hands on an IR diode laser some day that I can stick on my CNC mill and make it a laser cutter as well but realistically those will have to be 2 separate devices. An IR diode laser would be a lot more stealthy for taking out Flock cameras…
Somewhere I have a 1W blue handheld laser that I bought in college and used to light blunts with. Wearing laser shades, of course.
At a place I worked at for a little while they had 16kW fiber lasers that could cut through steel like butter. It was magical.
May I introduce you to Styropyro
So you’re saying my 5W laser could work? On it.
Wondering if something like this would be enough?
Doubt it, <5mW is a laser pointer and I don’t think is powerful enough to damage an eye.
Looked into that, and I wonder if the damage is significant or just a couple of dead pixels
Maybe something like a small battery powered laser engraver could zigzag across the lens and eventually damage the sensor.
However, to get that power from a distance would be large and prohibitively expensive for most people.
Good thinking though… a damaged sensor might be difficult to diagnose at first, leading to a longer replacement period.
See the problem there is that it doesn’t scale. You can only take down so many cameras.
Now if you convince the local scrappers that the things are full of copper…
“Genious Gray Hat creates open-source software to repurpose second-hand flock cameras for personal use; Flock cameras start flooding Craigslist and eBay”
Well, don’t sell yourself short—one camera per person destroys them all. It’s gotta start somewhere.
I’m sure those cameras would probably resell somewhere. Sell them back to flock 🙃
Sure. If all you can do is steal one camera, then steal one camera.
But…
Steal one camera, stop surveillance for a day. But teach a cracky to steal cameras for cash, stop surveillance for a generation.
Haha cracky 😂
Made me lol, too!
Problem is that many are clustered and in high-traffic areas. There’s a triplet of them in one area near my neighborhood, covering entrance and exit of said area, so it’s impossible to avoid detection.
i suspect some of them are the newly installed speed cameras in low-traffic areas. yea its rather suspicious to have one where there is almost no pedestrians or rarley any traffic to justify have a speed limit camera.
The upside is some are installed illegally and have no legal recourse just littering their shit on public land.
Remove the devices. Like, go up to it and destroy it.
Obviously, wear a mask and common clothing
I bet they’d search for cell location records, in order to find who damaged the cameras. I hear that even turning your phone off won’t help. Surely they’ll be caught unless someone also leaves their phone at home.
Well, don’t commit crimes with person items on your body of any kind.
You should always leave your phone at home for that kind of thing. The same goes for protests.
- leave your phone at home
- instead of destroying it, wrap it in duct tape or something like that, because afaik obstructing a camera owned by a private company which happens to be placed on public property is not illegal
A paintball gun is a good option
Or just come up to it outside of it’s FOV and wrap that fucker up
I addressed that already - there are three of them within 100ft of each other, and two of them are on the same post.
Here’s a pic:
That doesn’t help when there are more than one.
I figure sniping them from a long distance would be a good tactic. Of course, I neither own a rifle nor have any sort of marksmanship training so I could be wrong.
Well, be careful… You would not want to miss and have that bullet hit someone.
But it does start an interesting conversation: what are some ways, that don’t involve guns, that could take one out from a relative distance or… If they had to get close, take it out quickly?
Unfortunately, blowing something up is always a good idea until you lose a hand.
Having never flown a drone - a drone?
A drone would work, but you would have to stomach the fact that it would be a one-way trip for each unit, otherwise it would be easily tracked.
Easily tracked how, given that the point of the flight would be to destroy the tracking devices?
I definitely think there could be a situation where a drone could have some kind of spray paint device connected to it and the drone could be used to access difficult locations, like over freeways, something high up, or even just for some anonymity. Blocking the view of the camera I think is the number one goal. Obviously creating policies that prevent these cameras from existing would be best, but I just don’t see any of that happening in the United States at least for the next few decades.
I used a bregen clone (it’s a big R/C helicopter, sometimes used for aerial photography/film) to deal with a box elder infestation that was causing problems.
Soapy water, inside a sprayer that may or may not have been based on ww2 era flamethrowers. (The water tank was charged from a pressurized air tank.)
A paintball marker is just as effective.
Does a paintball marker destroy the device permanently?
Problem is that you are on camera, not really problem, just be careful
I heard Flock and other traffic cameras have had issues lately with people using paintball guns on them. Something about how easy it is to buy those and they can be quietly used. Real shame these punk kids keep vandalizing these corporations products, it must be terribly expensive.
Baseball bat
Real shame these punk kids keep vandalizing these corporations products, it must be terribly expensive.
Yes, expensive for you and the other taxpayers who pay for them.
I can only speak for me, but I’m happy to keep making the state replace expensive cameras. More time focused replacing them means less new ones, and less uptime.
We can’t choose what they spend the money on, but we can collectively let them know when they fuck up.
Fuck Flock!
They are software based and either have bluetooth or wifi. Can’t some wise person hack them and/or brick them?
The result would be more of your tax dollars going to Flock, for repairs or replacements.
The correct solution would be to ban them.
Don’t underestimate the tactic of making it untenable by increasing the expense.
Gotta convince maga to tariff surveillance cameras
I wish that was still as valid, but sheesh, these days operating for years on a massive loss with zero profits and empty promises is a Silicon Valley standard.
You’d have to convince enough investors that it was just a big cash black hole that was going nowhere.
It will be easier to ban them if they are shown to be ineffective because of constant vandalism. There’s much less incentive to keep them and it becomes an easy win for politicians.
Yup. “We don’t have the funds to replace them this year.” Next year, “We’re not going to buy new ones because they’ll just get destroyed and we’ll have to replace them again.”
Is there precedent on record for that scenario playing out as you describe, or is it just wishful thinking?
I don’t have any firsthand experience with the cameras, but I knew a guy that lived in a trailer park where they put in these particularly obnoxious speed bumps. They were always all vandalized in under a week, after which they would be replaced after increasingly long periods until they eventually stopped.
Companies and governments have budgets that can get overrun and force their decisions regardless of their desires.
