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551 points arrdalan | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.214s | 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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globalnode ◴[] No.42285453[source]
You are a champion, thank you for this. Will have a look at it when time permits. I've had an irrational and random dislike for anything Rust for some reason... probably because big business seems to like it, but will have to choke on that for this project :)
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gauge_field ◴[] No.42286624[source]
Regarding big business, I kind of have the opposite reaction that it has been more community maintained and been the one of the reasons I kind of admired it as a software project. They also tried to make this choice clear by making the tools, documents as accessible as possible.

If you look at the history of Rust, the crates, cargo-team, etc, it is mostly community maintained.

An example of such community-oriented large project is Bevy.

It was only when libraries, rust itself was mature enough, the big tech companies started get involved (apart from Mozilla of course).

Whenever the project gets big and important enough, it will get attraction from large companies. The same is true for C++, as well.

replies(1): >>42288010 #
globalnode ◴[] No.42288010[source]
Your comment persuaded me to have a little look at Rust. And I kinda like what I see. Every time I say to myself "I'll never use that tech", I end up using/learning it.
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1. gauge_field ◴[] No.42292934[source]
If you want to watch a talk from a person with good presentation skills on this point, I would recommend the following video: https://youtu.be/cWSh4ZxAr7E?t=3314