slo’s THURSDAY 8/29 poll - Doorbell Camera

[Babs Johnson]

Yes, we have a doorbell camera. Never caught any criminal activity, but there have been more than a handful of oddball characters walking by. I live in a city neighborhood in a kind of funky trendy area.

 

[LoveDaisy]

We do not have a camera doorbell. A few months ago someone hit the telephone pole across the street and snapped it in half then drove off. The police were disappointed we didn’t have one.

 

[CynBeth]

We have a camera but not as part of the doorbell.

 

[Kooks and Bay Bay]

I don't have one.
I should probably get one though because I hate answering the door.
What I hate is that I am concerned it may be something important like a neighbor needs help or something and then when I do answer it and look a mess because I'm still in my pajamas just to find out its someone trying to convince me to switch religions.

 

[SarahM1987]

We have a doorbell camera and other exterior cameras around our house and garage, the only thing that comes to mind is when Amazon backed into our mailbox and left. The driver knew he knocked it over, but it clearly wasn't important enough for him to leave a note or try to make any kind of contact with us.

 

[AppleDumpling]

Don’t have one; don’t feel a need for it.

 

[BlueStarryHat]

We have ring cameras on the front and back doors, plus cameras that look over the street in front of our house and we have one that looks over our driveway and backyard. I don't know why all the security because my neighborhood is extremely safe and absolutely nothing ever happens there. But whatever. We've never caught a crime-my aunt mostly uses it to talk to the people who knock on our door trying to sell us something.

 

[disneychrista]

I briefly thought about getting one last year when I had my house rewired and had electricians at my house. But instead just replaced my regular doorbell with a new working one. My doorbell hadn't worked since we moved in 15 years ago.

 

[tvguy]

No, we do not have a door bell camera. We have considered cameras, our alarm company offers a 4 camera system for a $150 installation fee if you sign up for 3 years monitoring. Our daughter had a 4 camera system on the house she just sold, She monitored all the cats walking through her yard, knew when the trash was picked up and mail delivered, but never caught any crime in five years. She did have an awkward situation where one neighbor suspected another neighbor had backed into their car on the street and they asked her to check her cameras. She did, and fortunately it was out of range of her cameras as she did not want to be in the middle of a dispute between neighbors.
I guess it would be nice to see, but from a crime perspective, all I can say is our Neighborhood Watch Facebook page and Next Door are full of videos of crimes being committed and they never seem to deter the crime or lead to an arrest. Porch pirates just don't care if they are recorded because they know in California, if the item stolen is worth less than $950 they won't be arrested or prosecuted.
Actually, the big thing right now on both websites is illegal dumping. One business is always posting videos of stuff being dumped behind their building, but it never stops it, and never results in an arrest. And there is one person who is a chronic illegal dumper across our community, his truck has been clearly recorded many times over the last year, someone staked out the location and recorded him with their cell phone. Got his face full screen, guy doesn't care, nobody has been able to identify him, and he just keeps doing it.

 

[bluezy]

We don't have a doorbell camera but we do have security cameras at each door and all around the house. They are constantly recording to a dedicated hard drive and we can access the live cameras and recordings from our phones or computers. We can get notifications when there is any movement in the camera view, but we turned that feature off because we were constantly getting notifications triggered by deer, foxes, cats, rabbits, birds, blowing leaves, bugs on the camera, the list goes on and on. We've never captured any crimes -- we're on a 4 acre lot and over 100 yards off the road. We did capture a few Amazon delivery drivers who threw our packages either on the sidewalk, driveway, or front porch over the years. Fortunately there was never any damage, but I still sent Amazon the videos just to let them know.

 

[wallawallakids]

I have a doorbell camera but it doesn’t work. I figure it doesn’t hurt that people think we have one, so we left it.

 

[thanxfornoticin]

We do have one, but have never had an issue or concern about a crime. Gives us a chance to see when a delivery is made when we're away, serves as a doorbell and let's be see who is there before (or if) I answer the door, and to a lesser degree let's me peak in when away to see what the weather's doing!

 

[PollyannaMom]

I’ve got some interesting wildlife on mine too currently I have a huge lizard living by my camera

We need pictures and we must name him.

 

[E&Cmom]

We have one. We once saw someone looking through our mailbox in the middle of the night. There was nothing in it. We reported it but don’t think anything came of it.

 

[WDWEPCOT]

We need pictures and we must name him.

Sorry but he may be gone - I spread hot sauce everywhere it looked like a blood bath to encourage him to move on - which I believe he did to my garage so that got a nice healthy dose of Pine-Sol Full strength - I’m trying to send him onto Greener pastures my house not being it mainly because he poops like the size of a small dog on my front door step ( and in garage ) and I’m so done with it !! don’t wanna kill him I just want him to move on!! Then I can just deal with the super huge frogs l do mean HUGE!!

 

[kimmar067]

....we live in NJ and, yes, we have one on our investment property at The Villages in Florida, for obvious reasons.

 

[DisneyHardin]

We have one. We have an Arlo camera system with a camera on our backyard, one on the garage, one at the end of the driveway and the doorbell camera. We had the cameras, but not the doorbell yet when I answered the door one day to a guy selling solar panels that totally gave me the creeps - after that, I insisted we add the Arlo doorbell camera too.

 

[SC Minnie]

We have one. When our neighbors across the street were murdered the sheriffs dept came to our door at 12:30am wanting footage from our camera.

 

[kimmar067]

....our previous system didn't work quite as well:

....the string kept breaking when we opened and closed the door.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

We don't have a doorbell camera, per se. We do have security cameras on our house, including one showing the walkway up to the door, and one showing the door.

The only crime we've caught was a drunk driver hitting our vehicle parked in front of our house at 3:00 am one night.