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
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.
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.
Finally, open source surveillance
Sousveillance
This one won’t automatically be a spy for any agency that asks tho, so that’s cool…
Surveilance cameras aren’t necessarily a bad thing
okay this is actually a cool project to work on
Very nice. I’m desperately trying to get rid of my Ring cameras. This looks like a viable option.
I will keep pushing for my alternative : buy some out-of-order cameras and stick them in highly visible places.
0 maintenance, 0 infrastructure, 100% of the deterring effect working cameras would have had.
That works well enough to deter thieves from stealing your packages. But not so useful when you wake up to find a hit and run driver clipped your parked car over night.
Eh ! If the car still works, who cares ? Besides, if you can afford security cameras and a house, you probably have a garage. Use it.
But does it do frigate? Can it be used applessly?
Hi muusemuuse, this is meant to be a drop-in replacement to WiFi cameras (and therefore accessible to non-technical users, easy to use and easy to setup). Frigate is great, and we definitely recommend it if you have the time to get it up and running.
In regard to being able to use it without the app, that’s not possible unfortunately due to the end-to-end encryption that takes place. An application needs to be on the other end to decrypt things.
Our app is available through Obtainium if you do not like the Play Store. It is also reproducible, so you can verify to make sure it was derived from our mobile_client codebase.
Are only VPS relay’s supported at the moment? Presumably so the feed is accessible over the web?
I get that the project seems to be going for replicating a ring/wyze/etc style experience but being able to self-host a relay somehow seems like a logical addition. Would probably have to disavow connecting outside of the home network and leave that the responsibility of the user.
If you’re technical, you could probably put together a locally hosted server on your Linux machine and use Tailscale or something like that, it should work fine with the code as-is. Our server binary is in the runtime-binaries zip in the core GitHub release.
I would imagine most in this community would opt to use Tailscale or even Headscale rather than relying on a VPS.
I do find it funny how your post on Reddit only got a few upvotes yet here it gets a bunch. Really goes to show you the difference in attitude in each community.
Fair enough. Really appreciate the work ya’ll have put into this, definitely going to have to mess around with it. Just brought it up because of the community this is in.
I think the point is to be easier than frigate. Eg a full image like home assistant, not needing to fiddle with docker.
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.
Amazing work guys! Looks very promising. If I needed cameras I would use this.
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.
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?
Nice! I’ve been wondering lately if there was an open-source solution for this
iirc pine64 so has a camera in their store
Great to see.
The ubiquiti bell is the best but it is american and overpriced. I want something that can record, two way talk and display a message. The parcel camera is a bonus. It also needs to be able to be silenced at set times.
How much does it cost?
And add F-Droid
Thanks for your interest!
We tried adding it on f-droid, but it seems like they have a backlog of projects to add. They haven’t gotten to test it out yet it seems.
This is why we now support Obtainium for people that do not wish to use Google Play. It can be hooked up to our mobile_client repository releases to pull the universal APK.
We do not charge anything for DIY. For our future offering, we have some information on the main page (secluso.com) of our site in section 4, along with what you would get.
Great, can you make some promotion video.
With maybe camera feed at night and at day.
Because from information on your site I wonder how looks camera feed at night and at day.
Yes, we are working on such a video. I will follow up here once that is ready.
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.
