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

(github.com)
551 points arrdalan | 2 comments | 30 Nov 24 22:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.559s | source

I needed a security camera inside my house, one that would send motion notifications to my smartphone and would allow me to livestream remotely. 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. Therefore, I decided to use my spare time to build one from scratch. Called Privastead (as in Private Homestead), it uses OpenMLS for end-to-end encryption (between the camera local hub and the smartphone) and is mostly implemented in Rust (except for part of the Android app that is implemented in Kotlin). The system is functional now and I've been using it in my own house for the past couple of weeks.

Based on some of the discussions I've seen online, it seems like there are other users who are also concerned with the privacy implications of home security cameras. Therefore, I decided to open source my solution for everyone to use. If you need a privacy-preserving home security camera, please give it a try and provide feedback. Note that trying out the system requires you to have a supported IP camera, a local machine connected to the IP camera, a server, and an Android smartphone. I have put together detailed instructions on setting up the system, which I hope makes it easier for others to get the system up and running.

In addition, consider contributing to the project. The prototype currently has a lot of limitations: mainly that it has only been tested with one IP camera, only allows the use of one camera, and only supports Android. I'll continue to improve the prototype as time permits, but progress will be much faster if there are other contributors as well.

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amluto ◴[01 Dec 24 03:44 UTC] No.42286011[source]▶
Nifty. Have you considered trying to make the server be able to run as something like a Cloudflare worker?
replies(1): >>42286078 #
1. arrdalan ◴[01 Dec 24 04:00 UTC] No.42286078[source]▶
Not yet. The server is currently fairly simple and doesn't do much other than relaying ciphertexts (and MLS group welcome messages). It should be okay serving one user and several cameras, but is certainly not scalable. I have plans to improve its scalability, but that is not at the top of the todo list. I'll check out Cloudflare workers for sure. Thanks.
replies(1): >>42288062 #
2. amluto ◴[01 Dec 24 12:22 UTC] No.42288062[source]▶
I wasn’t actually thinking of scalability. I was thinking that Cloudflare’s Tunnel is a handy, and often free, way to make a LAN service available from outside, and the combination of Tunnel and Workers could make for a nice, easy to deploy, solution.