Hey everyone,
We’ve built an open-source, privacy-preserving alternative to Ring cameras using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W (called Secluso). It uses end-to-end encryption to send videos from the camera to a mobile app, which is available both in Google Play Store and Apple App Store. We also support Obtainium for people that do not wish to use Google Play.
We’ve put in a lot of effort to make it easy to set up! You can set up our camera on your own Pi in less than 5 minutes with minimal technical expertise using our easy-to-use GUI deploy tool. Here are our setup guide and open source release.
The image shows a Pi in an official Raspberry Pi enclosure that you can use for your camera. We’ve also been working on a HAT for the Pi to add night vision, audio, temperature monitoring for safety, all in a compact form factor. You can see the HAT and an enclosure for the whole camera in the photo.
We’ve been working on this for almost 2 years now, and we look forward to we look forward to seeing what you all think! If you’re interested in our efforts in general outside of DIY, our main website with our pre-built offering is here: click to see our website
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters HA Home Assistant automation software ~ High Availability NVR Network Video Recorder (generally for CCTV) PoE Power over Ethernet Unifi Ubiquiti WiFi hardware brand
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 14 acronyms.
[Thread #312 for this comm, first seen 24th May 2026, 22:40] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Amazing work guys! Looks very promising. If I needed cameras I would use this.
This is interesting. Can you give me a ballpark on your hardware cost for an 8 camera system? What does integration for NAS look like?
You can also flash a Wyze Doorbell v1 with Thingino
https://github.com/themactep/thingino-firmware/wiki/Camera:-Wyze-Doorbell-(V1)
Lots of ways self hosting ways of doing bidirectional rtsp doorbell.
Any good open-source nvrs that support bidirectional rtsp? I know zoneminder didn’t last time I checked.
Frigate has support for bidir audio
But it requires SSL to work, and WiFi cameras are not the greatest option for that kind of bandwidth.
I know, I tried it. It never worked right.
Why not just Thingino?
Thingino looks like a great option for changing firmware of IP cameras to be open-source, and is useful in local NVR-like setups! Our goal is to different: provide an end-to-end encrypted, easy-to-configure and easy-to-use WiFi camera.
I’m sorry, but it’s a pretty big oversight to push the security aspect so hard that you don’t say a single thing about the actual camera. Nothing on the functionality, specs, etc…
Sorry about that! Is there anything specific I can answer?
The base runs on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W. This is capable of running motion and AI detection (human/pet/vehicle). It supports live-streaming and motion/ai-detected events, which sends a 20 second video clip to the mobile app. All of this is end to end encrypted.
With DIY, you’re able to pick between an OV5647 and IMX219 sensor (Raspberry Pi Camera Module V1 and V2 respectively). With V1, it’s 1296x972. With V2, it’s 1640x1232 (97.4% of 1080p).
If you’re selling a complete package you should probably tell people what the specs they’re getting. But there’s nothing about the software features either. Besides security what does the firmware and software offer?
I think they are not selling anything yet, they are just providing software for camera and client and build instructions for hardware
There’s no pleasing some people. 🤣
Very nice. I’m desperately trying to get rid of my Ring cameras. This looks like a viable option.
I’ve been looking for something like this. To be more accurate, I’ve been looking for something that works as a doorbell/intercom, that doesn’t rely on big tech in some way or other. But this seems like a promising start.
I ended up going with Unifi (G4 Pro Doorbell) after my test-run with Reolink went… poorly. It’s technically still ‘big tech’ but all the parts are on my property and my control, and (at least for the doorbell, that’s all I’ve got so far) it works nearly-perfectly with HA (I can’t get custom screen messages to stick when assigned through HA).
Why did you opt for pro vs nonpro out of curiosity?
It’s been a bit but I do remember I wanted the bigger screen, the fingerprint and nfc readers are nice to integrate ‘eventually’, and I think it was only an extra like $75? Oh, and the secondary package cam, that was the main factor tbh.
I wanted to get the poe version + their chime, but I got vetoed since ‘we already have a mechanic chime’ and I don’t have PoE setup in the house. But my pitch for the pro model was successful and an easy sell.
The only thing worse than your partner vetoing you is when they’re right.
Thank you for the response, very informative!
Curious what went wrong with your Reolink run. That’s what I’ve got. Doesn’t require an app or account, and works with home assistant.
I bought a unit + 4tb surveillance drive, to replace a (what we thought was a) dying nest hardwired gen2 doorbell. I was excited - pulled it out of the box, ‘oh, it has an AC brick too! I can set it up and make sure it works before we install it’
Prepped the camera, prepped the nas to ingest the feed and drives, setup the non-proprietary stream (the acronym/letters escape me), all on the AC plug… And the feed, from the cam to the reolink app absolutely ground to a halt. I’m talking like, after 5 minutes of uptime, the feed was 60+ seconds behind. Absolutely wild. I restarted the app, phone, doorbell, no fix. I turned off the open-source (?) feed, going with only reolink’s proprietary stream. Better, but after 10 minutes it was still 30+ seconds behind. Reset the doorbell, set it up again, no change…
So either I got a defective/malfunctioning doorbell, a bad AC plug (but wouldn’t it just die if it was pulling too much power…?), the AC plug isn’t rated for anything more than very intital setup (I saw nothing about that in the instructions, and why would you do that…) or that is ‘working as intended’ which, why even bother if that is true.
B&H accepted both doorbell and drive, opened, no questions asked. Was very excited and it genuinely ruined my day. :(
Sorry to hear your bad experience. Was the acronym you were looking for ONVIF?
Yeah, that’s it!
I thought ONVIF is just the control, not the stream. the stream is normally RTSP
Maybe - I have two decades in tech but camera stuff is basically still new to me. I just know that the ootb system for reolink doesn’t play nice (or at all) with any systems that are foss/not reolink, so I had to toggle the setting for it to cooperate.
These comments are why privacy and open-source will always be behind. These people are just trying to make a living off making privacy-focused products. And all the comments are like “They’re a for-profit company? They had marketing material prepped to reply to people’s comments?!”. The code is open-source, self-hostable, built using commodity hardware (raspi), and they’re just trying to make it sustainable by providing an optional paid service. This is not the enemy.
deleted by creator
Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free. What a blessed utopia that must be.
A “privacy product” inherently involves a lot of trust. When the creators are academics with little to no professional footprint, you need to assess things based on what information they do provide you. Whether that be code (yay open source) or customer interactions (forum posts).
I know we all yearn for the days of “Use Google. Their motto is ‘do no evil’ so you know they are our friends!”. But… that was a much stupider time.
Like, even if you suckle at the teat of Saint Capitalism, you should at least want a good product. And… this looks like enthusiast code with minimal maintainability but a heavy emphasis on marketing.
deleted by creator
Loud people are negative. Doesn’t matter the website.
Yeah, free, open source is fun, but we should also just support companies that have good ethics and want to make enough money to earn a living and keep making good products that respect people.
Yeah supporting companies which makes privacy focused products, will create incentives for selling them to people which want them not just gaining additional profits from selling your data or showing you with ads
I want utopian space communism, but I’m not going to hold out for only that ideal when I can support alternatives that are better than the current system.
You do you, but I’m holding out for it… and only in fully automated, luxury, gay form.
You have my blessing.
Besides, it’s just a good way of doing it. For the people that want to DIY: here’s the instructions. For people that just want the thing: here’s the payment instructions.
Sometimes I just want the thing.
Agreed, however the number of positive comments from one-day old accounts is suspect for me.
This is a security product where trust is paramount, so I get a bit itchy about anything like that, but I could be overreacting.
I can’t speak to the account thing, I checked the guy you replied to and it seems like his is 3 months old, not yesterday.
I wanted to mention that we plan to get a third-party security audit by a reputable firm sometime this summer.
Yea I edited that part because Lemmy was not showing me the right info, but there are more below, which is… Odd.
In any event, great to hear about an SA, and I have starred the project to check it out.
I see this with open source hardware a lot.
People want free hardware. That doesn’t work. Give your money to companies like this.
Secluso is developed by Secluso, Inc. and co-founded by:
Ardalan Amiri Sani, a UC Irvine professor with expertise in computer security and privacy
John Kaczman, an open source and privacy enthusiast with experience in automation, systems, and AI.
~70% Rust. Are they all Rust programmers? How much of this app was generated through LLMs?
The only thing AI is used on in this project is strictly for user interface work (our website, the front-end for the mobile app, the front-end for the deploy tool). We carefully vet anything like that.
I think you may have misinterpreted my “automations, systems, and AI” (you put it in bold), that is intended to show my experience in machine learning (example: I spent 4 months in a lab helping improve the accuracy of wearable ECG abnormality detection). I do not rely on LLMs.
How does it scale? Can I do 50 cameras?
Can I do 20 users with granular permissions?
We’ve only tested with a few cameras, and it’s able to support that well.
We have work in progress for users. We use OpenMLS for end-to-end encryption and it allows for creating groups. We’re using that to allow multiple apps/devices to receive encrypted videos from the camera. We have the core function implemented, but haven’t added UI support in the app for it yet.
Now hack ring cameras so existing installed cams can connect to your own hosted network.
The iOS app is not available in my country in Europe.
Is there a way to integrate this into Home Assistant as well?
We’re exploring Home Assistant integrations for the next update.
Unfortunately, iOS does not allow us to publish in 20ish countries, which are all Europe-based. This is due to certain legislation.
What exactly is preventing you from publishing the App in Europe? There‘s all kinds of similar apps on the Appstore already.
This intrigues me.
Ideally the thing should be broken into a “Camera captures images and makes it available in an open format” side and an “Application for Linux/Windows/Mac/iOS/Android/whatever reads said open format data and shows it to the use/records it in local hardware”, so that if one’s chosen provider for one of the sides enshittifies you can easily replace it, but I can understand the tendency to make and launch the whole thing fully integrated as one non-interoperable big bundle from a single provider given that in practice “do it and they’ll come” projects that just provide data in an open format in the expectation that other people will make the software that uses it, almost always fail.
