this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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From the listing:
So I assume you're not expected to self-host this. Which means they have to run and maintain servers. And $16/person ain't covering the cost of this device + servers indefinitely.
It's a rebranded Tuya doorbell. So there aren't any subscriptions, though you will be giving them all your data.
you can make very cheap to maintain peer to peer solutions
you can use a STUN server to discover your public IP and use a method called UDP hole punching to open a port others can connect to. STUN servers are very cheap to run: they don’t actually handle the data; just provide a kind of handshake service in the middle for coordinating
this is often used for peer to peer video chat etc
I'm sure you can. Do you think that's what they expect their users to do? Or that it's something they're going to facilitate?
there are public STUN servers: just like DNS, STUN is a fairly critical part of modern infrastructure
peer to peer real time video is a fairly solved problem. the fact that we have google/amazon/zoom/etc in the middle isn’t because it’s necessary
that having been said, STUN servers are also incredibly cheap to run… i wouldn’t consider it exactly off the cards for a company that’s selling products to support a public STUN server indefinitely… it’s not quite as simple as them having to pay tens of thousands /mo in infrastructure costs to keep the lights on: it’s more like $100/mo, which at numbers that small you’d make back in just interest on the sales you made… but i reckon it could go something like “support for 10 years” and then they release an update that lets you set your own STUN server; perhaps defaulting to a public, free one
I'd bet money that it works just like similar devices from Reolink. Local recording to SD Card or NVR. If you want cloud recording then you're paying a monthly subscription.
This device from Aldi is at a very low pricepoint but it's specs are garbage. 480p recording? In 2025? C'mon...
Then you wouldn't be able to "answer your door from anywhere"...
You would if you pay the subscription.
Right, but not if you didn't. Which would be false advertising.
answer your door from anywhere*
*Monthly subscription required
Look at the listing. There is no such caveat.
The article never makes the claim that you can access it from anywhere in the world. Literally nowhere in the entire article does it ever make a comment even remotely suggesting that that's a possibility.
I said the listing, not the article.
any chance this can be done through your router/modem, where your phone app connects to external ip of router and is the "server end point" for your doorbell?
In general yes, but that's also how you easily end up on sites like insecam and shodan.
I mean it's certainly possible, it's just a matter of whether the doorbell firmware/software will support it. And the answer is almost always no.
Where does it say that
"From the listing"
DDNS/P2P with local storage?