If you need an open-source hardware+fw design for a camera with a motion sensor:
https://github.com/maxlab-io/tokay-lite-pcb
or can be purchased at:
https://www.mouser.ca/ProductDetail/Maxlab/TOKAY-LITE-01?qs=...
Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)
41–50 of 180 posts
Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)
#42I've been wishing for a self hosted alternative to cloud cameras. My house was recently robbed and it was incredibly frustrating to know that criminals were literally in my house but not be able to see them due to the general crappiness of modern big tech software.
Seems silly to pay to upload all my video of my own house to who knows where and struggle to download it back with absurdly sluggish proprietary software when I have perfectly good computers here already. I should be able to check my cameras without waiting 10-30 seconds for loading spinners and I should be able to scrub through time instantly instead of waiting for interminable loading every time I touch the seek control.
What camera hardware are people using for custom setups? Is there anything out there that is wireless but with high quality/security firmware and reasonably priced?
Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)
#43I've been wishing for a self hosted alternative to cloud cameras. My house was recently robbed and it was incredibly frustrating to know that criminals were literally in my house but not be able to see them due to the general crappiness of modern big tech software. Seems silly to pay to upload all my video of my own house to who knows where and struggle to download it back with absurdly sluggish proprietary software…
Ubiquiti cameras store the data on-prem.
Not open source, and not the cheapest (but not absurd either). App is acceptable.
Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)
#44Having had cameras and a couple of breakin attempts for a while now my biggest must-have for these sort of things is:
- reliable human detection (not just motion)
- integration via some sort of API or MQTT etc.
This project appears to have no "smarts" in terms of human detection nor APIs which is a shame. Just pure motion detection on its own is ok, but you're going to pick up all sorts of things that you don't care about.
E.g. I have foxes that run around my garden all night. I don't care about those. But the second a human steps into my garden and starts approaching the house in the night, all the perimeter floodlights are activated, in-house lights turn on, a fake-yet-loud barking dog MP3 starts playing and I get pushover notifications on my phone that won't stop until I ACK them etc (to wake me up).
So far, from personal experience, the most reliable way to stop an attempted burglary in-progress is for lights to switch on from inside as they are attempting to force entry.
Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)
#45Seeing all this focus on security I thought you might be interested in the fact that there are cameras out there with Secure Boot, Axis is one manufacturer I know of that focuses on this feature.
Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)
#46There is also https://shinobi.video/, as another alternative.
Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)
#47I've been wishing for a self hosted alternative to cloud cameras. My house was recently robbed and it was incredibly frustrating to know that criminals were literally in my house but not be able to see them due to the general crappiness of modern big tech software. Seems silly to pay to upload all my video of my own house to who knows where and struggle to download it back with absurdly sluggish proprietary software…
So you did have a cloud camera system in place but it didn’t record them, or you don’t have one because all available options are shitty?
Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)
#48I've been wishing for a self hosted alternative to cloud cameras. My house was recently robbed and it was incredibly frustrating to know that criminals were literally in my house but not be able to see them due to the general crappiness of modern big tech software. Seems silly to pay to upload all my video of my own house to who knows where and struggle to download it back with absurdly sluggish proprietary software…
So you did have a cloud camera system in place but it didn’t record them, or you don’t have one because all available options are shitty?
I do (Nest), and it did record them, but the shitty app made it really hard to see what was happening. Takes forever for the app to load, and it can't show all the cameras at once, and tapping into each camera shows another loading spinner, and then seeking through time is frustratingly slow and imprecise. Then there's the split between old cameras in one app and new cameras in another because Google can't be bothered to update old cameras to work with the new app (which is not any better than the old one anyway, worse if anything). It took minutes longer than necessary to get the full picture of what was happening, and when criminals are rifling through your stuff every second matters. Then after the fact it was a huge pain to get the recordings in a form I could archive and share, and there's time pressure because the recordings disappear after just a few days unless manually archived.
OTOH our alarm system (Ring) performed very well.
Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)
#49I've been wishing for a self hosted alternative to cloud cameras. My house was recently robbed and it was incredibly frustrating to know that criminals were literally in my house but not be able to see them due to the general crappiness of modern big tech software. Seems silly to pay to upload all my video of my own house to who knows where and struggle to download it back with absurdly sluggish proprietary software…
Ubiquiti cameras store the data on-prem. Not open source, and not the cheapest (but not absurd either). App is acceptable.
I read elsewhere that people are upset since Ubiquiti now requires using Unifi hub, at least for initial configuration. Maybe others do too?
Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)
#50I've been a happy user of frigate ( https://frigate.video ) with fully local isolated setup: multiple poe cameras on a dedicated network, coral to supplement on-camera recognition, HA+Prometheus for alerts and smarts. Excited to see another project, especially in Rust(not for the memes; python env management has bit me a few times when hacking). One major gripe with frigate that I have is the way it treats detection…
A fully isolated setup on a dedicated network can certainly provide good privacy. A key benefit of Privastead is that it can send the videos to your smartphone remotely using a strong (MLS-based) end-to-end encryption. And I share your excitement about Rust. :-)
FWIW, e2ee is a feature that mostly matters to me when I don't own the infrastructure, and my bytes are flowing over someone else's platform.
If I do own all the infra, it seems like a lot of extra effort and complexity in the application which could be farmed out to other solutions (I.e. wireguard).