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Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)

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Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)

#101

Post by dylan604 »

arrdalan wrote: post #100
SushiHippie wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The open source/degoogled alternative to that is UnifiedPush, did you take a look at this? https://unifiedpush.org/ https://ntfy.sh/

I did not, but I will. I would just point out that Privastead assumes the the push notification infrastructure is untrusted anyway.

it's not about trusted/untrusted as in what will they do with the data. it's entirely about will the service be available long term or if theGoogs will deprecate it in the future.

I have no skin in the game of push notification infrastructure, but we've seen plenty of ShowHNs where a critical part of the Show is a total dependency on a 3rd party shim. While this isn't something like a dependency on a Twitter API that suddenly got yanked, it is still something that devs should really consider. Especially given theGoogs' track record.

Maybe this isn't the case it is a library deeply embedded in the Android ecosystem, but anytime a ShowHN mentions a dependency on theGoog it sets of the SpideySenses

Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)

#102

Post by arrdalan »

0points wrote: post #77

Certainly interesting project, but I do encourage people to do more thorough research before starting a new project and claiming they needed to fill a void. > However, I could not find one that I could trust due to privacy concerns. > Many of them upload the plaintext of videos to their servers and none is fully open-source as far as I know. There's Frigate [1] which is off-cloud, opensource and self-hosted and it do…

Thanks for the pointers. Frigate, Home Assistant, and HomeKit were mentioned in other comments and we had some discussions there. They're certainly good setups.

A key design decision for me was using a strong end-to-end encryption scheme between the camera/hub and the app. MLS fit this need perfectly and therefore I came up with the design that is now Privastead.

I was also less concerned with supporting many cameras since all I needed was one camera inside my house. Rather, I wanted a lean solution that I could fully understand and reason about. I will however look more carefully into the NVRs you listed to see if I can borrow some ideas to support more cameras more easily in Privastead.

Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)

#103

Post by INTPenis »

goodpoint wrote: post #52
INTPenis wrote: post #45

Seeing 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.

What's a realistic use-case for secure boot on a camera? It's such a corner case...

A friend discovered it when he was wanting to monitor his datacenter and considering local security. A situation where someone has access to your DC and could theoretically erase images of them being there since they also have local access to your cameras.

Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)

#104

Post by [deleted] »

0points wrote: post #77

Certainly interesting project, but I do encourage people to do more thorough research before starting a new project and claiming they needed to fill a void. > However, I could not find one that I could trust due to privacy concerns. > Many of them upload the plaintext of videos to their servers and none is fully open-source as far as I know. There's Frigate [1] which is off-cloud, opensource and self-hosted and it do…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)

#105

Post by chgs »

arrdalan wrote: post #8
ranger_danger wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best time to have security cameras is yesterday. Same for a dash cam. Please protect yourself and your loved ones.

I completely agree that security cameras can be a disaster for one's privacy. That's why I decided to build Privastead for my own use in the first place. It's fully open source, so we know what we're getting and what we're trusting. It also uses strong end-to-end encryption provided by Messaging Layer Security (MLS): https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9420/

You should do a ShowHN on it!

Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)

#106

Post by corytheboyd »

amluto wrote: post #19
EthicalSimilar wrote: post #3

Did you look into Scrypted? It is OSS. With HomeKit (which is how I use it) it is also E2EE. I’m not sure if their app is E2EE though, I only use HomeKit. It’s pretty good and has an extensive ecosystem. The dev can be a bit… feisty though. It’s very performant and easy to setup. I don’t use the NVR features as I already have an NVR, I essentially just use it for HomeKit integration of my cameras + doorbell. https://…

> It is OSS. Barely. A lot of functionality is gated behind the NVR plugin, which is closed-source and fairly expensive. > easy to setup In my experience, it’s easy to set up. But it’s extremely configurable in all the wrong ways and quite difficult to configure in the ways that one might actually want to configure. And the front end is not fantastic IMO: event filtering is extremely weak and scrubbing is bizarre.

> But it’s extremely configurable in all the wrong ways

Damn that feels exactly like my experience with Zoneminder. I’m sure it is decent software under the hood, but the UX is downright hostile to anyone who just wants to get IP cameras to do very basic motion detection to record some full resolution footage, which feels like the major, obvious use case that should be optimized for.

I am thankful for OSS existing in this realm, but why do so many solutions make the same mistakes? Am I crazy in thinking that a good out of the box experience is important? Is some critical part of the formula locked behind private walls? Something else? Genuinely curious.

Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)

#107

Post by EGreg »

A few years ago I wanted to build a self-sovereign home security system for entire communities and HOAs. We spoke to IBM engineers about scanning video at the edge with machine learning models.

I bought cameras that use RTMP and RTSP, and sent them to my developers. From there, it is not a hard task to use WebRTC (which has end-to-end encryption) to stream somewhere. But my use case involved retaining encrypted videos (every minute and every camera would have a different key) and have a well defined protocol for decryption. To me, the issue of security is not just on one end (recording the crimes) but the other end (mass surveillance, aka who watches the watchers?)

Here is a longer write-up I did: https://community.qbix.com/t/balancing-privacy-and-accountab...

If anyone is interested in working on a startup with me and selling to homeowners and gated communities, reach out to greg at the domain qbix.com

Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)

#109

Post by xyst »

mattlondon wrote: post #44

Having 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…

> 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).

Wow this setup seems like overkill for a residential setup. I have lived in “bad” neighborhoods before and have never felt the need to get this kind of setup.

The most I have is a single camera pointed at primary ingress/egress point which is configured to upload to Apple iCloud via “HomeKit Secure Video”.

Re: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)

#110

Post by [deleted] »

wkat4242 wrote: post #93
michaelt wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And even if someone did manage infiltrate Google, they'd very likely target someone high-value before me The risk isn't just an evil insider infiltrating Google. It's also that a lot of home security companies are in the business of having a friendly relationship with the authorities. So if the cops were investigating a fender-bender down the street and they ask Google for your videos? Better hope that living room…

Yeah ring had a dirty habit of doing this too. But they've stopped apparently: https://www.wired.com/story/ring-police-rfa-tool-shut-down/ Still, I've disabled the microphones in mine and they only see my front door anyway.

[deleted]
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