It's highly unlikely your dashcam is going to get destroyed before you have time to get home. This isn't Independence Day! (the film).
If the prep breaks in, you receive notification and then you upload to the cloud before the perp destroys all evidence - including your cam. You've got the perp on video, hopefully a description (unless they were wearing a mask - certainly possible) and you now have law enforcement at least something to go on. In the world of law enforcement, they often go after the lowest hanging fruit because its quite frankly easier to resolve. The more you give them the easier it gets for them to solve the case.
But, beyond any of that - I could merely be browsing my Cloud Cam one day to find someone engaging in Grand Theft of my vehicle and/or Vandalism. I can also make a Citizens Arrest and I can do so at gun point if necessary until the Police arrive and the perp is remanded. Out where I live, grand theft instantly qualifies for citizens arrest and vandalism qualifies if the damages are estimated to be in excess of $2,500 (at last check). Any violent criminal act instantly qualifies as well.
Which is why any decently configured router / pc doesn't respond to pings and why most home routers also block sniffing attempts. They might not be industrial strength, but they don't need to be.
Depends entirely on what you are doing with the box - ping response might be entirely necessary and sniffing is only one way to detect port vulnerabilities. My post was not to be a comprehensive treatise on network security and access control. I used to work in the DC of the largest RDBMS developer at its world wide headquarters many moons ago doing a number of things over the years while I was there, including running the Ops Center which used to sit below the main floor before they shipped everything out to the suburbs. I only mention it because I have some background in it.
Very few home PC's out of billions out there ever get hacked.
My box sees attempted intruder activity every single day of the week. A lot coming from
Korea lately - what's up with that, I will never know. Hmmmmm. Blackvue is in Korea. Mere coincidence? I don't know.
Those that do, are usually the victims of trojans with that being ISE (Idiot User Error) for downloading a dodgy file from a dodgy website. There's probably more chance of you winning the lottery jackpot than getting hacked as a home user without downloading a Trojan 1st. Then, if you are a lottery winner, are they really going to steal you incar videos? Far more likely they'll steal Card details, Passwords and important docs, not incar driving clips.
Again, this depends entirely on what you are running on your box and what it is susceptible to once your firewall has been penetrated - again, not a massively difficult thing to do if you know how to toss exploits around. I grew up (literally) working in a corporate DC. Before I learned anything about relational databases, 3-dimensional cubes, data analytics, data integration, data mining, ETL, data storage and the applications that used all that, I was schooled in corporate on real-world network engineering, first.
This was long before I learned OOP and before Linux was being used ubiquitously with acceptance in most corporate environments and when the big three (3) Unix flavors were still dominant in many corporate DCs (HP-UX, IBM-AIX and Sun Solaris). I could 'grep' out of 'etc/hosts' before I could 'dim a variable', which I think is the way that most younger people should get involved in computer tech these days. I think beginning with the Network itself (the backbone of all computing world wide), should be the basis of all Computer Science education.
As for a video server, why do you need a video server?
For some of the reasons I outline above and for some that I did not. Primarily and as a strict matter of systems design protocol (emphasis on the word: Protocol) it would be a simple matter of dissimilar and
dislocated storage redundancy should there happen to be a failure in the primary storage unit or the primary capture unit. I'm more comfortable flying multiple engines as opposed to just one. More to manage, maintain, repair and expense? Sure. That's the nature of redundancy, unfortunately. But, I think the benefits outweigh the headaches in most cases.
You're making this far too complicated.
That's what systems engineers do - they make things more complicate to those who want things more easy. Easy buttons only exist at the surface. Underneath is often times a bit more complexity than what might seem necessary at first glance. Being a engineering architect, I know this to be true most of the time. The easier you want it, the more "push button automated" you desire it, the more it will take some engineering to push the limits of his/her creativity to solve underlying problems that the surface will not show.
I simply have a pc with a folder labelled "InCarVideo" and any video I want, is simply cut and pasted into it. Quite simply, no servers involved.
Seems practical on the surface. I don't have a problem with that approach. However, right now, I might want to know precisely where my vehicle is located and who might be standing around it. Cut and paste won't show me that in real-time. That solution requires implementing some tech that works.
I am not going to attempt to redirect my Blackvue video to my own personal Cloud server. I promise. I just want Blackvue to make that work more consistently and clean up the video quality so that it is more representative of the real Sony EXMOR-R family if image processors. That's all I'm asking for. I paid the money for that - I should not now have to go out and re-build (re-engineer) what Blackvue created. However, I will support Tinkware or Apple, if they decide to do it right.
I agree with your calls to make dashcams better, but adding Cloud communication is just an un-needed feature that will cost an arm and a leg to implement automatically, and therefore actually detract in the quality of the final camera as money spent on implementing cloud features is money that could be spent elsewhere. If you just propose having a separate cloud, then really no advantage over putting the file on your pc and uploading to the cloud compared to Youtube.
For me, I got into this thing because the Cloud was being promoted as ready for prime time. I've got other 'items' that I'd like to cover with remote video surveillance as well, not just my vehicles. I had other plans for this camera concept that go beyond automobiles. There are other good and necessary applications for this kind of tech that would by necessity need Cloud functionality.
So, for me - this was something of a POC purchase and attempt to establish that it works to a level and degree that is acceptable. Right now, at least Blackvue is failing at proving that to me. Having said that, Blackvue (right now) is the only Retail/Consumer game in town for Cloud functional cams which don't take much time to install. However, there are other direct applications that I had in mind as well.
There is nothing new about Cloud Cams. They've been around for a while now in a fixed/attached installation running through a bulky DVR. Plenty of those around. But, the mobile nature of this is what intrigues me and causes me to think about doing other things with it. For that, the Cloud is not only desirable but integral.
