The other day I attempted to use the peephole on my front door. The hole itself is surrounded by a not so small steel box, which also contains the doorbell mechanism. I find it disproportionately large for its purpose. It is ten inches tall, five inches wide, and approximately four inches deep. I can’t imagine that the doorbell is that complicated.
I have to manually raise a small metal gate, look past the doorbell mechanism, and peer at a peephole four inches away. Now, for reasons of privacy they have installed a one way mirror at the end of the peephole facing the hallway.
I think I may have mine installed the wrong way around, because whenever I look into the peephole, all I can see is my eye. So in short, it is useless. I thought of ways that I could improve on the experience, and then I saw the webcam on my desk.
I hopped on newegg.com, priced the cheapest, smallest wireless webcam I could find and considered installing it in the door instead of the one way mirror.
I got to the power cable routing phase until I realized what I was doing, emptied the shopping cart, and quit.