While that is indeed a good idea (and precisely what I’m doing as well), a lot of these devices straight up hard-code their own DNS server - you won’t be able to change it. Now you might be thinking “Hm, that’s not a big deal! I have a PiHole and just filter DNS requests that are fishy!”. While that is undoubtedly convenient, it also requires a lot of trust in a (most likely) unknown camera brand to not only store your data, but also essentially giving them access to your home network (you installed a physical device on your own WiFi, remember?). See, the way these companies manage to provide you outside access to an inside asset is usually by virtue of talking to a server, somewhere in the world, that simply stores your pictures and videos and sometimes provide ffmpeg-type streams over the network. While for the non tech-savvy crowd this would seem like a great deal, for other people that just screams “security nightmare” (please scream along).

Now, naturally, this is a problem that has been solved time and time again, usually by way of cheap IoT cameras (you can find them on Amazon for $30-$40) that somehow, magically, allow you to see what’s going on via an app.

We were planning to take a short vacation, and while not at home, there are still things that would be nice to observe from afar, namely our two guinea pigs, Porkchop and Hamhock. I am not known to always spend my time super-wisely sometimes, I get these odd obsessions with problems that aren’t really problems.

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