Independent · Open data · Sources on everything
Look, no cloud.
Does it work without phoning home? And if not, can it be made to? Smart home devices, checked one by one, sources included.
Amcrest AD410
Does it work without phoning home?
Mostly. The Amcrest AD410 does its job on your network and survives an outage, but it still phones home to Amcrest for something along the way.
- Brand
- Amcrest
- Flashable
- Not known
- Home Assistant
- amcrest
Five verdicts, from nothing phones home to stuck with the vendor.
Seven yes-or-no questions about the device as it comes out of the box. A published table turns them into one of these five. And when the answer is “it phones home”, there’s a second one: can it be made to stop?
Nothing phones home. No account, no server, nobody who can switch it off.
Does its job on your network, but still phones home for something. Usually an account.
Phones home as sold. New firmware stops that, warranty not included.
Phones home for everything. When the servers go, so does the device.
Not checked enough to say yet. What is known is shown, with sources.
Pick what you’re about to buy.
Two categories to start: the ones where a dead server hurts most, and where the answers are hardest to find. More once these are solid.
Security cameras
Cameras that record to your own storage and don’t send a single frame to anyone’s server. Or can be made not to.
Which security cameras work without phoning home?→ 4 assessed · 0 in the pipelineVideo doorbells
Doorbells with no subscription and no server watching your front door.
Which video doorbells work without phoning home?→ 11 assessed · 42 in the pipelineRobot vacuums
Robots that clean, map and schedule without sending your floor plan anywhere. Or can be made not to.
Which robot vacuums work without phoning home?→Why this exists
Two questions. Does it phone home? And can it stop?
Your camera’s footage. Your robot’s map of your flat. Your front door, and who knocks on it. A device that phones home sends all of that to a server you don’t own, and only works for as long as someone keeps that server running.
So every device here gets asked, as sold: does it phone home? And if it does: can it be made to stop?
Does it need an account? Does it keep going with the internet cut? Can it be firewalled off for good? Can it be updated by hand? And if it still phones home after all that: is there firmware that doesn’t?
Made for anyone who owns hardware that phones home and wants it to stop, and for anyone who’d rather never buy any.
Seven questions about the box.
One about the company.
Each one gets a yes, a no, or a “not checked”. Every yes or no comes with a link, a date and how sure it is. “Not checked” is an honest answer, and it shows.
- 01Works with the internet cutDoes the main function survive with the WAN cable pulled?
- 02No vendor account neededCan it be set up without creating an account with the manufacturer?
- 03Documented local APIIs there a publicly documented local protocol: HTTP, MQTT, ONVIF, RTSP, Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter, Modbus?
- 04Can be firewalled off for goodCan it be cut off from the internet permanently without anything breaking?
- 05Firmware updates without the cloudCan it be updated by hand, with no forced auto-update?
- 06Runs alternative firmwareCan it run ESPHome, Tasmota, OpenBeken, Valetudo or OpenIPC?
- 07Home Assistant talks to it locallyIs the Home Assistant integration local_push or local_polling?
- 08Has the vendor ever pulled local control?About the company, not the box. Shown as a warning next to the verdict; it never changes it.
All of it is open data.
The catalogue is young and small on purpose. Every entry is checked by hand before it gets a verdict, so it grows slowly, and the gaps stay visible.
Fork it, cite it, fix it.
The whole dataset is public under the Open Database Licence. Every claim on this site traces back to a file, a source and a date. If something’s wrong, change it.