We have just this past weekend installed a Ring 2 video doorbell at the front of our house and I’m a little obsessed.

Several times a day I call up the “live video” feed “just to see what’s going on” although we live on a quiet suburban street where the most disruptive activity is a three-kid family walking by on their way to the grocery store.

It tells me when family members go to and from the house, as long as they’re using the front door. This satisfies what I characterize as a universal human desire to keep track of one’s loved ones and make sure they’re safe, although my 18-year-old daughter doesn’t see it that way at all.

And I love the “neighbors” feature where folks with a Ring installed can post incidents, updates and questions along with the related video: “Do you recognize these guys ringing my doorbell?” is common. So are thefts of delivered packages and video of suburban wildlife out and about at night, doing suburban wildlife things while we sleep.

I’m intrigued by how speedily news gets around on this network. Remember Gladys Kravitz on “Bewitched?” She’s gone digital and every neighborhood snoop is quick to share what they know with anybody tuned into the network. It’s a stretch to say this network disaggregates the police. On the other hand, you'll learn about every incident and transgression in the community on the Ring network long before any local media coverage will tell you what's going on.

And I thought about what a Ring-type digital community might mean to meat producers and processors. What would it mean to have inexpensive, high-resolution cameras at all doors and facing key areas of the facility? To get an alert on your cellphone (or several managers’ cell phones) if Direct Action Everywhere members are sneaking into your barns or holding pens? If activists could be caught in the act?

Or, just as important, if errant employees could be stopped from mistreating livestock long before somebody else videotapes them and drops it onto the internet?

Many companies have such video systems installed, but I suspect a little tinkering with the existing Ring (or similar) technology could yield a relatively inexpensive, out of the box, technologically effective system that could be more widely adopted. The neighborhood network system could be customized, and secured, so that processors can lodge reports and updates to one another away from prying eyes.

The platform is not without its drawbacks. A camera that is turned on by motion would quickly burn through its resources keeping up with a pen full of live animals. The unit can be hard-wired into a network, but reviews that I have seen indicate that the less expensive wi-fi option can be glitchy. But when the home version is $200 plus about $50 in useful accessories, that seems like a price point accessible to a lot of smaller plants that might be vulnerable to activist or employee transgressions.

Perhaps someone already has installed such a device; if so, how is it working for you? And if you haven’t, what would it take for you to beta test a system?

Ring, Ring --- It’s for you?

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