Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Dropcam: Another fire-and-forget camera system (crunchgear.com)
6 points by gduffy on Oct 20, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 8 comments



Hey guys, in order to make this post more hacker-ish, I'm going to answer any technical questions I can here. I used to be the Principal Engineer at Xobni, so while I'm not a YC alum I've been around these parts for a little while :)


What kind of video encoding software is on the device? Is it open source like ffmpeg (sans GPL components)?


No, it's not open source. We use a custom H.264 encoder.


I take it that you don't ship to the rest of the world?


Right now, no, but it's in the works. We want to make sure that quality of service is just as good for non-U.S. customers before we ship anything internationally.


okay. I'll keep my money.


Scary that it's a subscription-based service. I was expecting a stand-alone IP webcam, like those from Axis. This seems to be something else.


We take data privacy very seriously. The online service component is the key to customer adoption of network cameras, because it is the only way for a non-technical user to have a camera up and running in less than 30 seconds.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: