The new BEE from the creator of Belabox seems to just miss the boat for so many IRL use cases. You can tell it was conceived by someone who doesn’t do a lot of variety IRL streaming. Here’s a list of its flaws:
Requires 12 volt power supply. At first this seems like the right thing to do, if you are thinking like an engineer, but this makes mix and matching power supplies in the real world nearly impossible. The BEE requires it because it has an on-board capture card, which is a bad idea.
On-board capture card can only be used for BEE. I find the Elgato Camlink to be a perfectly acceptable solution. It is also the industry standard for converting any camera signal, anywhere. For example, I have several of them and even use it to stream directly to my PC from the same camera that I use as a back-up for my IRL rig. This is entirely impossible if you purchase a BEE instead.
Assumes use of “USB modems”. I cannot overstate what a huge mistake it is to remove the battery from a wireless modem from the manufacturer (Verizon/Inseego, ATT/Nighthawk). The amount of convoluted crap that people do to get it to not think the device connected is in need of charging is insane. The BEE does nothing to address this problem instead assuming that you are going to use one of those shitty USB modems that fluctuate in power radically (probably why the 12 volt is now required) and have ridiculously bad performance. Anyone who has actually used them for an extended amount of time in a low-signal area will tell you that a Mifi with its own battery in that same condition will radically out-perform those shitty modems. DO NOT BUY THEM! They are a waste of money.
Forces on-board wifi as only access, no terminal. This one blew me away, but it doesn’t surprise me. The creator continues to push people away from any terminal access to the Belabox software pushing people toward the web GUI, which is fine. But there is nothing like plugging a terminal in when you really need to see exactly what is happening. I hate that all the terminal now shows is the IPs and tells you to do SSH into it without allowing some other SSH method. But not of that is relevant with the BEE because there is no terminal connection at all. I suppose you could attempt it over USB. The idea is that you will use ssh over the local wifi (which I suppose you just have to magically distinguish from the 300 other available wifi routers in your building). This an absolutely shitty design decision that all by itself makes the BEE utterly useless to most of the people who are likely to run Belabox. I know this is trying to commodify IRL on the Belabox, but that was a huge mistake even so. Most IRL streamers have “managers” who are tech people and they will not like that this is now gone.
$100 US more expensive than “homemade” version. I ran the numbers, and my rig is far cheaper than this one and just as sturdy (if not more so), so what if I used gaffer tape instead of aluminum and carbon fiber, which by the way are just unnecessary.
Completely unsustainable for serious IRL streamers. It is taking people up to a month to even get their BEE fulfilled (in one case even though the shopping site gladly charged them anyway). Why would any serious IRL streamer ever put their entire stream at such risk? What happens when something goes wrong with the BEE? Nothing about the proprietary internals is documented at all. It is impossible to do your own repairs, or to find replacement parts that will work. Any decent IRL streamer has full redundancy in their rig and kit for all the parts needed. I’ve learned the hard way to always have a redundant component for everything, and to carry as many of them with me as possible — especially when planning long amounts of time away from home. Imagine if hitch or robcdee got a BEE and then having something not work out or go bad and having to wait around for up to a week to even stream anything. It’s just absolutely ridiculous to add that much risk to your streaming, even if you are a casual. Building a “custom” rig based on easily replaceable components, even if slightly harder to get and admittedly more quirky than the latest (like the Jetson Nano 2gb), it is far more sustainable to create dependencies on such technology than depending on a “beta”, proprietary BEE that may or may not be available at any given time.
Bottom line, I have no idea why people are so gaga for the BEE. When they get one they will quickly realize they face so many of the same problems as before, and other problems are compounded by having it.