This is an evolving list of products/services I recomend.

These will not be the most convenient options. I urge you to at least pause and ask yourself if the convenience of an alternative is worth it to you. It might be.

But there’s a reason. I’m choosing Control over Convenience. Protocols over Ecosystems. Ownership over Lock-in.

Please email any thoughts, opinions or alternatives to recommendations[at]shady[dot]icu

Security cameras

I would start at this list:

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/reolink/#tested-models

Basically I’d go for a Reolink that supports RTSP.

What that means is you can have your cake and eat it too. You get the convenience of the Reolink ecosystem, with the benifit of also supporting a protocol (RSVP), so you can build your own security system and not be locked into anything. (If interested in 100% ownership, see Frigate (or my Frigate setup)

Operating systems

computers

Linux. They are all the same, just pick a popular one.

phones

Grapheneos.

If you don’t care about control, privacy or being able to do what you want with a device, just get an iPhone.