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551 points arrdalan | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | 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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tills13 ◴[] No.42289655[source]
If you're like me and you want something that Just Works -- ubiquiti's offering is fully local and has all the features you'd want including alerts, ml detection (on some first party cameras), app, timeline, etc. They recently started allowing third party cameras, too, so all you need is a Cloud Gateway (USG Ultra is $150) and you're good to go.
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sneak ◴[] No.42290360[source]
It is reasonable to assume that Ubiquiti has remote access to your fully local data, given that they run the auth server and also push automatically installed updates.
replies(1): >>42293161 #
tills13 ◴[] No.42293161[source]
> they run the auth server

I don't think this is true unless you are logging into your router using the ui.com console. Logging in to my UDM POSTs to the local address and works without a WAN connection.

> also push automatically installed updates

I suppose if you've enabled them.

replies(1): >>42306917 #
sneak ◴[] No.42306917[source]
Autoupdate is on by default.

Even for local auth, the auth database comes from the cloud service.

replies(1): >>42311033 #
1. tills13 ◴[] No.42311033[source]
Either way I wouldn't say it's "reasonable" that anyone at Ubiquiti has access to your NVR. A very skeptical and doomer take imo.