Cell Phones as Business Lines, Camera Security Innovations, and the Dash Cam

What if your cell phone could double as your business line? What if cloud storage could be a game changer for your security cameras? These are just some of the tantalizing questions we tackle in our candid chat on cell phones and security cameras. We give you the lowdown on dual-line cell phones and compare cloud storage to local storage for security cameras. Weighing in with our own experiences, we discuss the Ubiquity Unify Flex Camera and Wise Camera, all the while asserting the significance of cloud storage for businesses.

Now, let's shift gears to other types of cameras. Ever wondered about the differences between security cameras and game cameras? Or why dash cameras are gaining popularity, especially in a world where distractions like cell phones are a constant while driving? We take a deep dive into these topics, discussing the rising prevalence of cameras in the UK and the benefits of stationary security cameras over voice over IP cameras. Brace yourself for an enlightening episode!

Transcript

Adam: 0:02

Did you know, most new cell phones have two lines on them.

Ronnie: 0:06

No.

Adam: 0:07

Yeah, they actually do. Mine has two lines.

Ronnie: 0:11

Basically.

Adam: 0:13

I'm sorry.

Ronnie: 0:13

No, nothing mine, let's start over.

Adam: 0:18

Take two, you're gonna keep going. No, let's start this one over. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Just keep going.

Ronnie: 0:26

Just keep going. They don't care. People don't care. Really they don't care Okay so basically two of the.

Adam: 0:35

My phone has two lines, and the reason for that is my business line. It's a number I've had for years and I wanted to eventually be able to make everything go to our automated system after hours and use my personal number for all my friends.

Ronnie: 0:56

So when you say it has two lines, did it come with two lines or are you saying it's able to have two lines?

Adam: 1:02

It is able to have two lines, and the reason why it has two SIM cards or two eSIMs actually two eSIMs, that's the iPhone 14. And so I activated one when I got to this phone and the previous phone had it also, but with the SIM card you could add to it and then I activated the eSIM for my new number.

Ronnie: 1:28

So it's not like it's forwarding, it's literally two lines.

Adam: 1:32

Literally two lines, and I could have used that. But there is some differences on how it operates, and this is the story. So I've got a friend and he One. Oh, well, a few, I think two now and one of my friends. Basically he moved away and, like lots of people do, we keep in touch. He's called me a couple of times and I've called him and it goes straight to voicemail every time and I'm like I hear his voicemail hang up.

Ronnie: 2:04

So it's been going on for a year and you thought he didn't like you.

Adam: 2:07

I really did. I thought maybe something happened. He's ghosting me, he's just you know put me in.

Adam: 2:14

Yeah, because maybe I didn't call. Well, I decided to listen to that voicemail again and I was going to leave a message this time and I said he said basically hey, this is someone's cell and you know, leave a voicemail. I can't get to the phone right now and if you're not in my contact list I probably won't call you back. And then I was like what in the world? Why would he do that? Why would he take people out of his contact list?

Ronnie: 2:46

Maybe for spam calls.

Adam: 2:48

Maybe. And then I realized I was calling from my new number on the iPhone. So you can choose on the iPhone which line you're calling from. So I went oh no, and so I called him from the other line and immediately he answered and had to tell him the funny story. So that's just one for the books. If you got two numbers, something goes wrong. Remember, you have two numbers and you can call from the right one until everybody updates. That's good to know.

Ronnie: 3:20

Yeah, because I haven't had a town number. I might want to get a local number for work.

Adam: 3:25

Yeah, you can Just have to see if your phone has that ability. There's also other things you can do, like two line apps. There's Grasshopper out there, team Mobile, I think, has that ability. There's lots of companies, so yeah, cool.

Ronnie: 3:43

You want to factuate for today?

Adam: 3:45

Yeah, let's do it.

Ronnie: 3:48

What year was the first security camera?

Adam: 4:01

I did not know. I did, I just made it up the only because of where you know the TV and everything has been. I just guessed literally. Are you serious?

Ronnie: 4:09

yeah, 1942 wow now extra points. Who, what country?

Adam: 4:15

Thomas Edison? I don't know.

Ronnie: 4:19

I think he was gone by then probably, I think so he's the one that created the MP3 player, right yeah, no, it was Germany. And why? Why, to watch a rocket launch oh, that's cool so it wasn't until the 60s when security cameras started to be used more readily. So interesting, right, you think that's older technology, but yeah music about the cameras and TVs and all that stuff. They have not been around that long very cool.

Adam: 5:00

Well, since we did the factoid too soon, how about we do this real quick?

Ronnie: 5:23

I'm Adam Oghan and I'm Ronnie Tofty and this is five acre tech.

Adam: 5:29

So what do we have on the agenda today running?

Ronnie: 5:32

we're talking about security cameras hey, let's keep going with that yeah that would be good.

Adam: 5:39

That's always a really good thing to talk about.

Ronnie: 5:43

I think people are using security cameras a lot. I mean, these doorbell cameras have become a hot thing.

Adam: 5:52

They really have they. I have lots of different kinds here, just trying them out see which one's the best. A lot of my clients have systems that they've had put in by other companies and help a lot of friends and show them some stuff and shown you camera lately, yeah, when I'm probably most excited about, for the cost, is the wise camera around 25 to $29 and on up. It's a pretty incredible camera for an outdoor camera indoor, outdoor and, of course, this camera if you're watching YouTube video, this camera right up there if you can see it at the top. Basically, that particular camera is what I've talked about quite often from ubiquity. It's the Unify Flex camera about $79, 1080p, very good quality.

Ronnie: 6:59

So what are some of the features with cameras when it comes to? I mean, you just mentioned outdoor camera, so you have outdoor, indoor. What are some other things that we you might want to think about?

Adam: 7:12

Well, the thing like this particular camera up here wherever it is that particular camera up there is pretty much has no cloud recording at this time. That's kind of an important thing for some people. In the instance of a business, it would be to their advantage to have every second recorded throughout the day. Continuous recording, day and night just in case it some something misses. You know, gets missed.

Ronnie: 7:44

Can you think of some examples of why that would be important to be cloud storage versus local storage?

Adam: 7:50

The cloud storage will basically be anybody who has that. If somebody broke in, damaged equipment, a fire, lots of different things could happen. As a hurricane for example, you could lose all your equipment. So cloud storage would be very helpful to get that from wherever the cloud is, bring it back down and see what happened, use it for evidence. So, for example, I have. I think I started with some. I started with blink before Amazon bottom and they were inexpensive cameras, kind of inexpensive at the time. Battery operated motion only. They advertised the batteries could last up to a year and never got that to happen. Some of the cameras would. It just depends where they got placed.

Adam: 8:40

And they they're pretty good, and so basically you didn't get continuous recording but you got motion, but you didn't get every motion. You only got so many things of motion at a time, so if you had quite a few people walking by, it may miss one or two, and that one or two could be the one that stole something or did something. So what I basically did is got the ring camera next and of course that got acquired by Amazon also, which is absolutely fine. Seems to have made things a lot easier to manage and get the you know, get the equipment directly from Amazon. So it does the same thing. It's cloud recording. It does a little bit better job, quite a bit better battery life. Some are wired, some are battery operated, some are battery operated with solar.

Ronnie: 9:36

Yeah, so that's important thing that I was thinking about is when people go and if they're just novice and they're like, well, I want to get a camera from my house, whether it's a doorbell camera or just a security camera, they need to realize that there are different ways that it gets its power wireless and battery and so you do, you have power. Wherever you're going to mount this, do you have power there? So if someone's going to mount it out on the tree, they're going to need a wireless Wi-Fi connecting camera, correct?

Adam: 10:01

That's correct. So they're either going to have to have wireless or cellular inside the camera. Several of them have that, as I have on our property that we're building out, which is going very slow at this time. So it's really important to decide which one you want and think through it. Just buying a camera, putting it up, may not be the right thing for you, but it may be the right thing for your next door neighbor. It's just one of those things. The ring is really good because it works along with Amazon, amazon Echo product. For example. I have one out at the porch where people walk up towards the front door. I have a ring camera there. I also have a ubiquity camera around that same location. I also have a ring video doorbell at my door so I have lots of lights on outside. There's other cameras all over the yard and the backyard and another ring video doorbell in the very backyard just to catch things if somebody was to come by there at the back door.

Ronnie: 11:12

It's interesting that what I was reading about that part of it, that part of having a camera, is that, while it's not always, it can be a very useful tool by the police if they have the time to follow up with the camera that you, the video that you've given them. But more than that, what they're saying on the internet is it's a massive deterrent. Yes, more than is for catching things is the deterrence.

Adam: 11:42

It was my thought for a long time we should hide these cameras, make it where people can't see them and in some cases you want to do that. There is reasons for hiding the cameras, but at your home business store, wherever you want those cameras pretty visible.

Ronnie: 12:04

Maybe even a sign.

Adam: 12:06

Definitely a sign says recording in progress, or whatever you're, you know smile, you're on camera.

Ronnie: 12:12

I see those a lot.

Adam: 12:13

Yeah, you see that, you know you and you need to decide does your state allow you to record? Does your state allow you to record audio video? Basically, each state is different and you need to probably put that out there so the people can see that that. Hey, there is, you know, cameras recording here. It is super important. It is a huge deterrent. It's like having a dog around. You know, have an offense around your yard and a dog in it, a lot less likely that people are going to break into your house. And cameras are the same way.

Adam: 12:46

The other cool thing is to save a little money when you buy the ring camera and it all connects into the Amazon Alexa or excuse me, I said the A word the Amazon Echo environment. If somebody walks by one of those cameras, it can turn on all your outside lights. It can give you a notification of on your phone, it can give you a notification of whatever you wanted to say coming out your Amazon Echo. Somebody has just walked by camera one or camera two and at that point, like I have, basically somebody walks by after midnight because all the lights go out, to save money, and then all of a sudden the lights come on. So you know that's kind of a deterrent there. It's nice. If you come home late, you pull up the camera, sees your vehicle turns on all the lights and go inside, the lights go off. So, being a house of home automation products, I have a lot of that that happens, so cool.

Ronnie: 13:54

It's very helpful for people Very very, very helpful.

Adam: 13:59

So yeah, that's, that's one type of camera.

Ronnie: 14:03

What about? What do you know much about game cameras?

Adam: 14:08

A little. I've put out several of them on a few hunting leases and for people that just needed it because they were pretty much breaking in the property or something was happening on the property that seemed like they shouldn't be doing that. I'll give you a couple couple examples of the last one. I remember A friend of a friend wanted a camera and so he decided on. After our conversation he decided on a game camera and put a few out there on his property.

Adam: 14:43

Somebody was coming onto the property, cutting the fence, walking all the way to the end of the property, which the end of the property went right to the water. They saw where people were pulling up in a boat on that property and lots of people walking around, and then they would basically walk back and would end same thing over and over and over again. It's like what in the world is going on and I'm not sure exactly what happened. I never heard back on that, but it almost seemed like something was happening illegal where they were driving up on a boat, and this is out in the middle of nowhere.

Adam: 15:21

They can get to this property easy. And why didn't they pull up? Less than a mile away is a couple boat ramps. Why would they pull up there?

Ronnie: 15:32

Sounds suspicious, but what's the difference between a security camera and a game camera?

Adam: 15:38

Well, game camera can be used as a security camera but it is tailored mostly to people who want the ability to look for game mainly. But a lot of game camera companies make it where you can use it for whatever you want. They make cellular versions also.

Ronnie: 16:00

And are they more going to catch just motion, whereas a security camera on your house many times is just constantly running, or is that? Do I have that wrong?

Adam: 16:08

It's motion only. It's really motion only. There's probably a few out there. I'm not aware of that, could possibly be continuous, but it's typically motion Like. For example, the wise camera is continually recording and send you the motion links or the motion videos. So after about three days it will run through and start recording over what it had, or some cases a little longer on the newer ones. But yeah, it's just mainly for game. It's got a lot more infrared lights. You can hook up solar panels to them. They're camouflaged.

Adam: 16:49

There's a lot of reasons that people use that particular camera. They're easy to install. They got places where you can just wrap a rope around a tree mounting brackets. They're good for what they are. If you're looking for an animal, for example, that may be a wild animal that may be doing something, or a property, start feeding the deer on your property, put that camera at that same spot, put the food at the same spot and most likely that a wild animal is going to come by because it's going to smell all the other animals. Then you're going to find out what's there for real.

Ronnie: 17:30

Cool. What about dash cameras?

Adam: 17:34

Very good. I don't know why I don't have one Again. Had one a while back, I don't know what happened to it. I moved from one car to another, just never put one back. I think they're extremely important. With the way people drive nowadays, I feel like a long time ago people were just you know, every once in a while you see a drunk driver and you'd be aware of them and that was it. You know, once or twice a year, something crazy like that. Now we're looking at people every day and they're not drunk, but they're operating their telephones, their mobile phones, their smartphones and lots of people texting. It's extremely important because the amount of people paying attention is a lot less. They're constantly on their phones while they're driving.

Adam: 18:25

So it's not, it's not everybody, but it's a lot more than it used to be when you had somebody who was driving drunk, Are they? So it's important.

Ronnie: 18:35

Are they fairly affordable? Are they expensive cameras or?

Adam: 18:39

I think you can get them as low as $59 and up to 300, maybe more. It just depends how many cameras you want a front facing camera, back facing camera. You know, crash, crash record. Basically it picks up motion that you've hit something or somebody's hit you and it saves the recording.

Ronnie: 19:02

It saves like the last 30 seconds or last minute or something, yeah it will it will.

Adam: 19:05

Since they're continuous record recordings, it will save probably a minute prior and record for quite a while afterwards. You know, gotcha, until it thinks it needs to keep that and it'll keep. Then it will save that one and record over whatever is happening next. So that's kind of important. Also, there are a lot of them have Wi-Fi ability so you can, or Bluetooth, so you can download it right from your phone without having to take it off. There's, there's a lot of stuff.

Ronnie: 19:33

A lot of a lot of drivers get them.

Adam: 19:40

Yes.

Ronnie: 19:40

Like Uber and even even semi truck drivers. These all seems to be a valuable tool for them.

Adam: 19:49

It really is. And it becomes interesting because you can go to YouTube and every once in a while find a video where somebody's done something really dumb or or just angry at a truck driver for some reason, and you know, try to break, check them and it's. It's some funny stuff, A lot of.

Ronnie: 20:10

It does provide for some levity, for sure, yeah.

Adam: 20:14

Makes you wonder why people do what they do.

Ronnie: 20:17

Yeah, it's crazy.

Adam: 20:18

Yeah Cool.

Ronnie: 20:19

It's funny how that, when I was looking at some of this information on on cameras, it said you would think that there's there's so popular right now and I thought everybody's got a camera, but it said only 9% of consumers have cameras. Wow, and that's shocking. I mean, obviously that's not counting your phone, but you know stationary security cameras and yet and that's even taking into consideration all of the cameras in the UK, which is like four million cameras in the UK, because you know they have them everywhere, right, they're the most camera heavy nation in the world by far. So this is interesting information.

Adam: 21:09

Yeah, and cameras like the stationary cameras. They've been some of the first ones out there that just stationary. They record, record to record to a recorder. They connect through coax. So now everything has changed with a voice over IP, poe, which is power over ethernet, where a device, a phone or a camera, such as that one up there, could be powered from POE. Now the switch can can power it all. You can run everything to an internal hard drive. Doesn't need much recording software. You have the ability to have an inexpensive and robust system.

Adam: 21:55

But a lot of cameras, such as systems out there in the past put in coax and now we got to pull out all the coax. You know the people that want these cameras and they got to pull out the coax. Sometimes we'll run them for the pull the coax and run the wires for the clients who want. You know these cameras and they can put them in. And where we live you have to have a license for it. My company does not have it so we don't put in camera systems and for you know, paid help our friends, but that's interesting that you have to have a license.

Ronnie: 22:35

Yeah, it's on camera.

Adam: 22:36

Some, some companies do, Some states states. Thank you, Ronnie. Some states require the company to have a license just to protect, you know, the people. So, somebody's not doing something wrong.

Ronnie: 22:54

What are those little spy cameras? What do you know about those? People are constantly putting little videos up about their Airbnb being found in them. It's like horrible weirdos.

Adam: 23:03

I, yeah, that really is concerning. I don't don't really care for them. I've bought a few in the past for certain reasons and they make all sorts of them and they're typically all junk. They don't last very long. They're very, very horrible quality. I had one that was built into a, a cigarette lighter, so, like a cigarette lighter, you would like a cigarette with or light a fire with or whatever you wanted to use it.

Adam: 23:36

You just lay down somewhere and record you're coming out the end of it. Where you would, the fire would come out. So and had USB at the bottom to charge it.

Ronnie: 23:48

It was really weird, was it pretty pretty low quality? Very bad, yeah, very bad.

Adam: 23:54

Being a tech junkie. You know, you, you, you dabble with all these little things and it's just sometimes not worth it.

Ronnie: 24:04

Interesting. Well, I guess that's some. If you've ever found a spy camera in your Airbnb, at least you know that maybe probably wasn't very good quality, let's hope.

Adam: 24:16

Yeah, they're probably better quality. They don't sell as many of them now that I can tell, but they're still out there, just beware. Yeah, maybe that's something we need to do. The next. Next time is how can we detect cameras in an Airbnb?

Ronnie: 24:34

Yeah, we can talk about that next time, yeah.

Adam: 24:36

That was something we'll have to prepare for.

Ronnie: 24:38

on that, yeah, for sure Do some research.

Adam: 24:41

That would be extremely good yeah.

Ronnie: 24:44

I would like, I would like to know that what a what a person can do, yeah.

Adam: 24:53

The one. There's another company out there that called Axis and they make security cameras Probably the better of the companies that are out there. I've used that particular brand before in some volunteer work where we installed that and of course my my premises is the ubiquity cameras and I think I would stick with the ubiquity cameras over the Axis Easier to manage, easier to install, even though they were both voice of PoE, not voice of RIP, that's a phone, they're a PoE, so they were ubiquities, just so much easier to install, it's just, it's got, it's a great environment. But the Axis are very tough cameras. They have cameras that are blast resistant so they can survive a blast. I used to work for a company that built offshore oil rigs and the different companies would come and install those particular cameras aboard the oil rigs so we got to tour them every once in a while. I was just in the the IT side of the company that built it, so rarely went up there, but that's what they would use. So very good quality camera. Now saying they're bad at all.

Ronnie: 26:22

Cool, was that it.

Adam: 26:27

I think so. I think that's all we got for today.

Ronnie: 26:29

That's all I've got to say about that.

Adam: 26:36

The we should do a random tech joke.

Ronnie: 26:38

A random tech joke. Random tech joke From who? From the Echo.

Adam: 26:42

From the Echo. Okay, do it All right. First I got to remember what we named. It Starts with a Z. Thank you, I didn't want to say the A word. Ziggy, tell us a tech joke.

Ronnie: 27:00

I can't tell you a joke about Python if there's no pun indented.

Adam: 27:05

Okay, that that we really need. Yeah, we really need AI on that, because we need to tell it next time. Tell it a integrating, an integrated tech joke, not a programming tech joke. Let's do, let's do one more. Okay, Ziggy, tell a tech joke.

Ronnie: 27:25

What do you call Jedi who use agile methodology? Rebel scrum?

Adam: 27:31

Male, we got programming jokes, I guess.

Ronnie: 27:35

I didn't understand it. I have no idea, not a programmer.

Adam: 27:38

Okay, anyways, on that note, I think we'll end the show and we'll see you next week. This was five acre tech, bye.