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Canary Now Charging for Previously Free Security Cam Features Due to 'Significant' Cloud Expenses
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Wow seriously..... ok I am done with Canary. This is absolutely ridiculous. I’ve been a user of their service since their kickstarter days and have slowly watched their service and quality degrade.
Their app consistently has less than 3 stars on the App Store and I subscribe to their outage email alerts. About once a week I get a message saying their service is having issues and they are investigating accordingly. They have missed the deadline by over a year for their newest camera upgrade
I am going to switch over to Nest. Better service, better quality. Goodbye Canary.
Their app consistently has less than 3 stars on the App Store and I subscribe to their outage email alerts. About once a week I get a message saying their service is having issues and they are investigating accordingly. They have missed the deadline by over a year for their newest camera upgrade
I am going to switch over to Nest. Better service, better quality. Goodbye Canary.
So glad I gave these guys a miss. I was close enough to buying 2 of these (had them in my Amazon basket) when I discovered they had started charging for the "two-way talk" feature that was advertised originally as being free.
Nest Aware might be more expensive but at least they don't pull this kind of shady stuff.
*waits for someone to point out that Nest do things like this as well*
Nest Aware might be more expensive but at least they don't pull this kind of shady stuff.
*waits for someone to point out that Nest do things like this as well*
I had been considering a Canary system for the home I purchased last month, but with no HomeKit support, and no real answers about whether it is even going to happen, I held off.
This latest development makes Canary seem less likely in my future.
On another note, I have been happy with the D-Link camera that does support HomeKit. It doesn’t have all the security features I would like, but it’s reliable and works great with HomeKit.
This latest development makes Canary seem less likely in my future.
On another note, I have been happy with the D-Link camera that does support HomeKit. It doesn’t have all the security features I would like, but it’s reliable and works great with HomeKit.
Seriously shady behaviour. It's kind of why I've ditched netatmo and moved to Evohome for my home heating control. These devices which rely on the providers cloud are crippled if the owning company goes bust or decide to change their business model...
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I understand that server costs are increasing for them, but how was this not something they had considered would happen before now. In any case, this is why only cameras that support local storage would be an option for me. I'm looking heavily at the Netatmo cameras because you can save the videos on your own local storage through FTP. Screw paying for videos to be stored in the cloud.
I suspect a class action suit within a couple of weeks
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Or how about they just change it so any video not watched within X days is deleted. With an option to download them if you wanna keep them for an extended time. Of you can pay them for extended storage
It seems like they were expecting to get bought, and since that hasn't happened yet, they are running out of cash. This may just be a way for them to buy time (reducing server costs, or collecting more money)until someone buys them. My 3 canary cameras are definitely going to burn a hole in my pocket now.
reminds of the backup provider (don't recall their name) that was offering unlimited backup and off course people took them on the offer and placed terabytes of torrents files until they were brought down - any backup cloud provider that claims 'free' or 'unlimited' of anything its not long for this world
You need cloud storage for cameras, what if someone steals your camera.
I was an original backer of their crowdfunding effort and even bought two more cameras for friends as gifts. Service has become worse as the time went on, features they said would be implemented years ago haven't been, and they continue to take away what they've offered. I REALLY hope this turns into a class action suit. No way for us to get our money back.
FWIW...when I was in the market for some iPhone-friendly cameras for my home I had some interest in the Dropcam products at the time, which most of these other cloud-based-storage cameras seem similar. I didn't like the cost or the fact that it was going to be transmitting large amounts of data upstream 24/7.
I ended up getting a D-Link DCS-942L (the newer 720p version of this model seems to be the DCS-2132L). These cameras have on-board microSD slots but are also compatible with a standalone DVR unit that D-Link sells. Some of the features needed to be set up via a pretty awful web-based UI and the iOS app wasn't great. But D-Link has made small and steady improvements over time to the iOS app, and now most of the important features can now be done via the app. I've found it to be pretty reliable. It can send me a notification when it detects movement, and movement will also trigger recording a clip of video to the microSD card. And then, from the iOS app, I can pull up the camera's microSD storage and view footage that has been recorded. It lacks a timeline feature, though, which would be nice to have. Anyway, that 720p D-Link camera can be had for about $75.
I also have another model from D-Link (the DCS-5029L) which can be remotely rotated around, which can be useful if you want to set up a single camera to cover a large area. But it's more expensive and significantly larger and I don't think it can be configured to do automatic sweeps of an area (and if it could, I'm sure it wouldn't be smart enough to detect movement since the entire frame would be in movement).
I ended up getting a D-Link DCS-942L (the newer 720p version of this model seems to be the DCS-2132L). These cameras have on-board microSD slots but are also compatible with a standalone DVR unit that D-Link sells. Some of the features needed to be set up via a pretty awful web-based UI and the iOS app wasn't great. But D-Link has made small and steady improvements over time to the iOS app, and now most of the important features can now be done via the app. I've found it to be pretty reliable. It can send me a notification when it detects movement, and movement will also trigger recording a clip of video to the microSD card. And then, from the iOS app, I can pull up the camera's microSD storage and view footage that has been recorded. It lacks a timeline feature, though, which would be nice to have. Anyway, that 720p D-Link camera can be had for about $75.
I also have another model from D-Link (the DCS-5029L) which can be remotely rotated around, which can be useful if you want to set up a single camera to cover a large area. But it's more expensive and significantly larger and I don't think it can be configured to do automatic sweeps of an area (and if it could, I'm sure it wouldn't be smart enough to detect movement since the entire frame would be in movement).
Doesn't matter if someone steals the camera if you've got FTP enabled. As long as you hide your local storage that the camera transfers the data to, you'll still have the videos. Also, one of the Netatmo cameras is an outdoor camera/floodlight and I doubt any thiefs notice it's a camera. So even if they somehow find your local storage, you'll still have the SD card in the outdoor camera for video. I don't have a camera, but if I did, they'd have to set up a ladder on my front porch to get to the junction box where my porch light is at. Obviously no system is fool proof, but there are several redundancies with a setup like this and it doesn't require a monthly service fee for a cloud subscription.
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Contacting my credit card company. Full refund please. False advertising.
It's not bait and switch because it is a "product update" 
The article is not repetitive by including the quote and then requoting it as they almost always do, because actual journalism is hard.
The article is not repetitive by including the quote and then requoting it as they almost always do, because actual journalism is hard.
CrashPlan. They recently announced they're ending their consumer side of the business and doing enterprise only, with a higher price.
Friend works for them and confirmed it's because a small percentage of users who decide they just have to backup 4TB of porn and pirated TV shows. Sadly, a small percentage of excessive users can ruin it for everyone and they did.
There is a difference. Ending a existing subscription service is a viable business decision. The customers were informed of the decision and their payment endet when the service was shut down. Basically everyone got what he payed for till the last day.
In the case of Canary customers bought a device with a promised and fixed feature set under the assumption that this feature set will not change. It is in fact part of the contract between Canary and the customer that you pay this and get that. Canary can not unilateral decide to change the promised feature set to the detriment of the customer.
Maybe they should have thought about that before putting that promise on the box? People paid for what was promised when they bought it. Canary can't just turn around and say "never mind!" and take away what was paid for. Either deliver the service to those grandfathered in or buy back the cameras and give everybody a refund.
I have been looking at D-Link because it seems to have generally good reviews, while the Logi Circle 2 seems to have bad reviews and no alerts without paying. Are you able to enable/disable alerting based on geolocation or by a home kit scene? I would get annoyed still getting alerted when I am home and I would like it to disable in certain rooms when I am home. That is my only reservation and I'd rather not purchase and try it out only to return it with dissatisfaction. Any advice? I'm trying to figure out if I should stick with my Canaries or drop them. Even with the limited ten second previews, they do the same (really more because they do a snapshot and they do geolocation) as D-Link, but can't store any video or work with HomeKit.
So does it do anything without a paid subscription? Mine seems to be essentially bricked. What a farce, a $199 brick. I'll be watching for a class action suit, although they tend to be of limited value imo.
I wonder if there is any way to hack the camera to access the hardware directly. It's a nice camera. Canary, it's software and services, seems to be the weak link.
I wonder if there is any way to hack the camera to access the hardware directly. It's a nice camera. Canary, it's software and services, seems to be the weak link.