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By Snake Doc · Posted
So size is the ONLY selling point????? People have been plugging in PC's to TV's in living rooms for 20+ years. I would take a bigger box for more peformance. Also lot and lots of SFF/Mini ITX build guides out there. -
By Snake Doc · Posted
My point is, if you buying this instead of a console for TV purposes, that you need to understand that you will not be able to play the most popular MP games with Steam OS. Now if you are not into those games, and into some of the perputual alpha/beta games on Steam then this is an option. I would argue a gaming PC would be the better route, more expensive but take the 1k -1.4k you are about to spend on this thing and build a better one. Because it is running Linux you can overide its 1080p settings. However The Verge complained about its 1080p cap and how you would have to get around it at the CLI, so someone buying this instead of a PS5 or Xbox might have a challege on their hands. -
By Fezmid · Posted
A review of Synology's BeeCamera software for the BeeStation Plus by Christopher White Synology is leaning into the BeeStation and the BeeStation Plus, and it's easy to understand why. While power users will want something more customizable, the BeeStation and its more powerful sibling, the BeeStation Plus, are great for those who want a device they can simply plug in, click a few buttons, and have it work as their own personal cloud. Until recently, the device was mostly used for the storage of files, photos, and videos, and with the Plus model, you could install and stream media through Plex. Synology recently released a new free application for the BeeStation Plus called BeeCamera, which is basically a stripped-down version of Surveillance Station. First, let's get the confusing naming out of the way. While you might initially think that BeeCamera is a physical device, perhaps a camera that Synology created specifically for the BeeStation Plus, that would be incorrect. BeeCamera is simply the name for the application that runs on the NAS and on your mobile device. I think the marketing team missed the mark here, but it does fit the other naming on the device, like BeePhotos and BeeFiles, I guess. Camera Support As of right now, only Synology-branded cameras are supported, which many will see as a callback to the drive locking the company implemented and then backtracked on. That said, while I 100% disagree on drive locking, I agree that camera locking for a device made to simply plug and play is the right decision. The whole point of the BeeStation line is simplicity. There are currently three camera model lines available, a wireless device for indoor use, and two PoE models for external use. CC400W (Wi-Fi): Plug it into power using the included power adapter, and connect it to your wireless network. This camera is rated only for indoor use and is the one I was provided to review the BeeCamera. $198.36, in line with the Unifi G6 Compact. BC510 (PoE): A bullet-style camera. Connect it to an Ethernet cable that is providing Power over Ethernet (PoE). This camera is rated for both indoor and outdoor use. $240. TC510 (PoE): A dome-style camera. Connect it to an Ethernet cable that is providing Power over Ethernet (PoE). This camera is rated for both indoor and outdoor use. $240. Although this isn't a review of the actual Synology camera, I did want to note that a positive for the Synology CC400W is that it uses a magnetic base. This means you can mount it on any magnetic surface, which is pretty handy. However, a downside to the camera is that it's powered by a built-in USB cable that's about six and a half feet (two meters) long. This means that the cable will probably be either too long or too short, but more importantly, if the cable is damaged at all, you'll likely need to buy an entirely new camera because there doesn't appear to be a way to replace it, unlike many competitors, like the Unifi G6 Instant. Hopefully, this is something Synology addresses in a future revision of the hardware. The BeeStation Plus supports up to four cameras. Setup The setup of BeeCamera is, like everything in the BeeStation family, very straightforward. Simply make sure you're on at least version 1.5 of the BeeStation OS, and BeeCamera is automatically installed on the device. BeeCamera Setup Screenshots Setting up the CC400W was just as easy. Plug it in, open up the BeeCamera app, and follow the on-screen steps to add the camera. During this process, you'll configure the camera name and how many days of retention you want to keep. The system will also automatically update the firmware for you. The whole thing took only a couple of minutes, excluding the time it took for the camera to update the firmware. Once the camera is connected to the BeeStation Plus, you can manage the various camera settings within the app, although there aren't many to choose from. You're able to configure whether the microphone will record audio (some privacy laws may preclude you from recording it), select what codec to use (H.264 or H.265), configure the color and exposure of the camera, and determine what data you want to overlay onto the video. Finally, you can set up AI detections so that BeeCamera will alert you if it sees certain things. These are all of the common detections you would expect in a camera system, such as people, pets, and vehicles. Under people and vehicles, you can also add extra monitoring for lingering and congestion detection, although pets are currently in "Lab" and therefore have no extra features yet. Recording in 4K using H.265 for 30 days will take roughly 300 GB of storage, which is very reasonable for most regular households, as the BeeStation Plus has 8TB of native storage. If you want to set up detection zones, you can. These are areas that BeeCamera will look at for the various detections, and are helpful if, for example, there's a tree in your frame and you don't want to be notified each time the wind makes the branches move around in the frame. Finally, you can also schedule when the camera should and should not be recording, which is a very useful feature. For example, you may want to record only at night when you're sleeping, but not during the day when you're up and about the house, so you can easily shut the camera off between 8 am and 10 pm. Each hour of each day can be configured to record continuously, only upon a detection event, or disabled completely. You can't fine-tune to record at a specific time, though, only hourly blocks on the hour. Daily Use The best part of BeeCamera is that it's easy and just works. If you only care about being notified when things happen, the mobile app sends those notifications and lets you click the button to bring up the video and see what's going on. For example, when I went out of town and had the camera pointed at the cat tower in our hallway, it was nice to be able to drop in and check that my furry friends were doing okay without me. Initiating the remote connection to the BeeStation Plus through the app is very responsive, but this will heavily depend on your ISP. In my case, using Xfinity, I'm able to go from starting the app to seeing live video in roughly three seconds, which is about the same amount of time it takes to connect to my Unifi UNVR system that costs much more. If you want to see footage from a specific day and time, you can do so using the calendar icon. You can also scroll through the timeline, looking for detections that are labeled in blue (vs. the normal gray when there's nothing of interest). There are buttons that let you go to the last/next detection on the timeline, which is helpful if you missed the notification on your mobile device. That's where the ease of use stops, though. While you can download clips that are flagged by detection, there's apparently no way to select generic time frames you're interested in, and the only place to download is to your phone. In addition, sharing a video shares the actual video, not just a link back to your BeeStation Plus. While that's good from a security and privacy perspective, it's a little awkward for sharing large videos. Limitations While the ease of implementation is great, there are some things that are lacking from BeeCamera. The most obvious is that there is no way to view the footage on the desktop. You can log in to the BeeStation Plus to see how much storage BeeCamera is using, but unlike BeePhotos and BeeFiles, there is no BeeCamera on the web console to manage or view footage. This means you'll be viewing all of your security footage on your mobile device, which is pretty limiting. In addition, there's no way to download the video to your PC without first using your phone as the intermediary. The one exception to this is that you can use BeeFiles to see the raw MP4 files. They're saved in 5-minute increments, and it's just raw data with no detection information or any other way to identify what any of them are. The lack of a way to interact with BeeCamera on the desktop also makes configuration of the cameras more difficult. For example, trying to set up detection zones using a tiny screen and your finger to draw boxes is more cumbersome than it needs to be. This reinforces the idea that BeeCamera is not made for power users. It's also missing some of the more advanced functionality of Surveillance Station. For example, I couldn't find a way to say, "Alert me if the thing in this zone is no longer there." Another major deficiency with BeeCamera, and a feature I suspect may come out in the future, is that while it can detect generic people, there is no specific facial recognition yet. This is an interesting omission, given the fact that other Synology tools can detect specific individuals, and competitors such as Unifi Protect also do it. This is probably a software limitation, so we will have to wait and see if this feature is added in the future. Conclusion If you need a security guard to monitor surveillance cameras to make sure your property is secure, then BeeCamera is not the solution for you. That said, you probably wouldn't be using a BeeStation Plus as the brains behind the system either. BeeCamera (and BeeStation in general) is clearly aimed at households that want to avoid sending personal data to Google and Amazon, and now want to add some cameras to keep an eye on their home and their pets while they're away. BeeCamera excels at doing this. The target market isn't interested in creating cases, tying multiple views together in a single pane of glass, or the like, and for the intended use case, the system works great. Where it starts to fall apart a bit is with more advanced features. Not being able to use a desktop app is a major compromise in my opinion, and having to do all of the configuration on a mobile device is annoying, but not impossible. If you don't want to have a full-fledged NAS device in your home, but still want control over your data (or maybe want an easy way to backup your data for World Backup Day), and want to add a couple of cameras to keep an eye on your house and your pets, this is a great, cheap, and easy way to go, and I suspect more functionality will come over time. If Synology releases a desktop app or at least a way to configure cameras and view footage on a desktop browser, this would be a near-perfect solution for a general home user. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. -
By macoman · Posted
I forgot to add on my comment that when robots will take physical jobs, it's when they become more cheaper to manufacture and sell. That will be the starting point of the end to lanscaping, trash pickup, factory jobs, etc. -
By Snake Doc · Posted
How many people can actually use a 2.5gig ethernet port? Most people do not have more than a 1gig internet connection, heck most have less than that. Most people at home do not have a switch that has multiple 2.5gig ports either.
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