Seeking Alternate Uses

We’ll be honest here: when we acquired these, we weren’t thinking of Meh. We were thinking of MorningSave. Because these really are more of a MorningSave product, aren’t they? Something to share with our TV partners and whatnot.

That is, if you take them at face value.

And what are they at face value? They’re doorbell cameras. For TEN DOLLARS! Seriously, wtf? Doorbell cameras felt like sci-fi shit four years ago. And now we have them for the price of a bad lunch? You probably can’t even get a no-frills normal doorbell for that cheap. Crazy, right?

Yes. It is. But also, they’re pretty basic doorbell cameras. Like, the most basic doorbell cameras you can get. We’re talking, just a camera and a button. No two-way audio or anything like that.

You set one up, and it sends a short low-framerate video (basically a 2-second animated gif) to your phone when someone rings it or it senses movement. They’re battery powered (with 3 AAs included), so there’s no wiring or complicated installation. Those AAs should last a few months. If you swap in some premium alkalines, even better. Also, each camera comes with a chime box. That means, if someone presses the button on the main unit, the box will ring. Which is kinda like… wait, what is that thing called? Oh, right! A doorbell!

And, that’s about it.

So, again: not super high-end. Not feature-rich. Won’t do even half the things a $75-250 doorbell cam can do. But they are cheap, they are easy to use, and they are simple to understand.

In short: they’re the perfect thing to sell to the lovely folks who watch daytime talkshows.

But then we thought, if we stop thinking about these specifically as a doorbells and instead think of them as small portable boxes–each with sensors, a camera, a button, and a WiFi internet connection–it feels pretty different. Now, that’s a bit much to try to explain on a talkshow. But it might be something all you Meh weirdos (we use that term lovingly) could understand and get into. And you could potentially help come up with fun, wacky, or even useful ways to use this little toy.

So we pulled a small quantity of these back, and before they’ll air on those shows and sell on MorningSave, we’re using you all as guinea pigs, er, giving you all a sneak peek to try them out. (And we mean it when we say small quantity, so if these sell out, you know where to look in the coming weeks.)

Here’s a few starting ideas we came up with:

• You could set one up in your mailbox. Then you’d know when the mail’s been delivered.
• You could put the chime box in your kid’s room, to let them know when dinner is ready.
• You could put one in your snack pantry, to find out who’s eating all the cookies. (And then, when the evidence clearly shows it’s you, you can delete the files, and no one will ever have to know.)
• Likewise, you could use one for liquor cabinet security purposes.
• Remember those old commercials? With the old people? “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up?” Give one of these to an older family member to carry in their pocket and buzz your phone if they need you.
• Set one up inside your garbage bin, and then do a “me candidly looking at the garbage” series on your Instagram stories.
• What’s that social media thing everyone was talking about this past summer? Be Real? Well, put one of these in a box, and then ask people to look in the box, and then show them an actually real video of themselves.
• Place one inconspicuously on your front porch. Then, if your weird neighbor wants to have one of those long conversations with you when all you wanted to do was drink some lemonade and chill out, slyly press the button to ring the chime box inside and let your spouse/roommate that you need rescuing.

Are some of these sort of a stretch? Sure. Are some of them absurd and ridiculous? Definitely! But then again, we’re selling these things for 10 bucks each. So trying out absurd and ridiculous ideas is what it’s all about.

So chime in (sorry, you know we had to pun somewhere in here) and share your ideas in the comments. Then, get one (or a bunch!) to try out your experiments and let us know what you come up with.