Taking advantage of eufy's misfortune
What we have above is the view from my recently acquired eufy 2k wired doorbell.
That hissing sound you can hear is every reader who follows the tech media saying “hold the phone there, David, haven’t you read about recent events?”
Well, yes, I have, but here’s the thing: for some strange reason, eufy were selling the doorbell off at half the normal retail price. For sure, nobody capable of using camelcamelcamel and a bit of patience ought to be paying full retail for this kind of electronics, but at under £100 it did seem like a bit of a steal. And, if a restaurant has just been awarded one star out of five by the council health inspector, surely a couple of weeks later ought to be one of the safest times to stop by for dinner?
Anyway, my old wireless doorbell had packed up and needed replacing, so I’ve taken a gamble on it.
Installation was pretty straightforward; one of the advantages of having a wooden front door in a wooden frame is that if you have a long enough drill bit, you can boof a hole through it and run a permanent feed to something like this. I think trying to run anything with a wifi connection off batteries is a mug’s game; my view is go hard-wired or go home with things like this.
Personally I just wrapped the wire strands round the terminal screws rather than adding a joint to the DC cable to re-attach the spade connectors; it’s all low voltage and works just fine. The instructions did warn me not to mount it too close to a wall, because you get the washing-out effect seen above with the IR light which does the night vision. More to the point, if you mount it hard in the corner, it won’t clip on to the base, even if you’re using the angled wedge.
I didn’t have much choice but to still be “in the corner” though - I was keen to show as much of my own driveway as possible whilst not pointing it directly at my neighbour opposite. Filming somebody else’s comings and goings doesn’t seem neighbourly, whatever GDPR has to say about domestic CCTV.
End result? The internal chime works well without being over-loud, and responds instantly. The time taken for it to “ring” one’s mobile phone is a bit longer than I’d like, but not off the charts. Two way audio works and the video quality is fine. Motion detection is OK and the option to have the LED ring around the bell push permanently lit at night is sensible so people can see what to press.
If there are any more news articles, though … first reader to bid me £100 can have it.