I suppose the following question is quite hardware related, however, here I am! I'm considering purchasing an indoor motion detecting camera. Most, if not all of these cameras send information/video to the manufacturer's cloud server. Who really knows what else is being sent? They also accept SD cards, so video would be saved to one. Chances of a burglary where I live are very remote. Even if one occurred, I could immediately call the police and neighbors. Can I configure my router to allow notifications to my Android phone but block access to the cloud? I realize the burglar could remove the camera, the risk of stopping cloud storage! Thank you!
Well then, block that in the router I suspect that the data path is camera->server->phone. So if you block the server, nothing could get to the phone. And it might not even work at all with the server blocked. But anyway, if you have a camera that works with no third-party server connectivity, you need to run your own web server server, and have it reachable through the Internet, for your phone to connect to. But some ISPs don't let consumer accounts run servers, and may block stuff. Another option is running a Tor .onion web server, which should get through ISP blocks. Or you could run a VPN server, with a VPN client on the phone. Some routers have that as a built-in option.
I use BlueIris software configured to send events to my e-mail only, not the cloud. The software also allows the iOS and Android client apps to receive push notifications from your Blue Iris system. You may use this mechanism to replace SMS and Email alerts.
