from Hacker News

What to do with all of these Amazon Cloud Cams?

by fletchowns on 7/6/22, 10:39 PM with 9 comments

Amazon is shutting down their Cloud Cam service on December 2, 2022. I have 10 of these devices that I had already been phasing out with a different solution. I was planning on selling my Cloud Cams but now I can't do that in good faith, given that they will be useless in less than 6 months.

It's such a shame though. There must be millions of these perfectly good cameras that will soon become e-waste. Is there anything useful that can be done with them? Is there any hope that somebody might release a hacked firmware some day to make them useful again?

  • by jeroenhd on 7/6/22, 11:43 PM

    Ending support for hardware made exclusively for an online platform with no offline or local network support is infuriating.

    I think it depends on what every other customer does now. If everyone floods the second hand market with second hand, soft-bricked cameras because Amazon hates the planet for some reason, people might buy them and hack them.

    I don't expect anyone interested in running their own firmware will be buying spyware from Amazon, though, so existing support is pretty much non-existent. It's only a matter of time before someone will take this opportunity to find security flaws in the software, which will no longer be patched, and hopefully you'll be able to use your camera again.

    If you have the space, stuff it into your attic and wait, or get hacking yourself if you have the time. Otherwise, at least take it to a recycler to lessen the environmental impact of this crap just a tiny bit.

  • by gumby on 7/7/22, 12:23 AM

    You can sell them in good faith, as long as you explain that the back end service will end in December. Then someone who doesn't know that will not get ripped off, but someone who wants a cam to hack could be happy to get them.

    My gf sold a broken dishwasher this week; her ad was pretty explicit as to its condition (multiple problems) but someone came by and happily bought it. He turned out to be an appliance tech and said he knew exactly how to fix it and then could resell it.

  • by voakbasda on 7/7/22, 3:04 AM

    I wonder whether Amazon could be convinced to free the specs required to hack these devices. That would spare them from the eWaste bin. Perhaps craft an open letter and get other owners to sign it? I’m sure HN would help spread the word….

    The real lesson here is never to buy cloud enabled hardware. The vendor will always pull the plug eventually.

  • by Pakdef on 7/6/22, 11:11 PM

    > On the bright side, Amazon will send a complementary Blink Mini (plus a year of Blink Subscription Plus) to all affected customers. The Blink Mini is nearly identical to the old Cloud Cam, though of course, its a bit more modern and offers better integration with Alexa devices.

  • by dekhn on 7/6/22, 11:01 PM

    I'm going to send mine to ewaste.