this post was submitted on 24 May 2026
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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

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[–] MortUS@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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?

[–] jkaczman@lemmy.zip 10 points 19 hours ago

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.

[–] FoxtrotDeltaTango@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Finally, open source surveillance

[–] utopiah@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago

Sousveillance

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago

Surveilance cameras aren't necessarily a bad thing

[–] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 3 points 22 hours ago

This one won't automatically be a spy for any agency that asks tho, so that's cool...

[–] mtoboggan@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The iOS app is not available in my country in Europe.

Is there a way to integrate this into Home Assistant as well?

[–] jkaczman@lemmy.zip 4 points 19 hours ago

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.

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 325 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (10 children)

These comments are why privacy products will always be behind. Why open-source is full of dead projects. 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.

[–] Fedegenerate@fedinsfw.app 4 points 19 hours ago

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.

[–] SuspiciousCarrot78@aussie.zone 39 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

No good deed goes unpunished. The sense of self entitlement some people display is staggering. FOSS project? Well, you should have done x y or z.

Also, I gave you $3 via Ko-fi, so you need to provide customer support in perpetuity and come to my house and install it. And heaven forbid you try to recoup costs!

Projects don't just die out - a lot of them are killed (one way or another). For example, I had a fully specced out FPGA design that would capture the signal from Wii GPU and do internal upscaled resolution (think: like what dolphin emulator does but with actual hardware) not just post process sharpening. Total cost under $100 and some know how.

The amount of flack I copped for it made me shut down the github and work on it for myself. Once it's perfected, I may post about it again but I sure as shit am not compelled to deal with the fucking peanut gallery anymore.

[–] favoredponcho@lemmy.zip 113 points 2 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world 35 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] felbane@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

You do you, but I'm holding out for it... and only in fully automated, luxury, gay form.

You have my blessing.

[–] mecen@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 day ago

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

[–] mabeledo@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I used to think Reddit users were too negative. Then I joined Lemmy.

Loud people are negative. Doesn't matter the website.

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 32 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I see this with open source hardware a lot.

People want to get atoms for free. That doesn't work. Give your money to companies like this.

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[–] lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Very nice. I'm desperately trying to get rid of my Ring cameras. This looks like a viable option.

[–] Bloomcole@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago

desperately

Yes I don't know how people survived before door cameras?
It's like these people complaining about Bezos but always find an excuse to keep using Amazon.

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 9 points 1 day ago

Amazing work guys! Looks very promising. If I needed cameras I would use this.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] Ascend910@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

okay this is actually a cool project to work on

[–] Machinist@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

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?

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 34 points 2 days ago

I like what this project is trying to do, self hosted security cameras need to be more accessible to get people to stop using corporate spyware.

[–] Snowhuoue@feddit.uk 56 points 2 days ago (13 children)

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.

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[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (3 children)

But does it do frigate? Can it be used applessly?

[–] jkaczman@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] turmacar@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] jkaczman@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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.

[–] stinkytofuisgood@lemmy.zip 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] jkaczman@lemmy.zip 1 points 18 hours ago

It should not be too difficult to set that up with Tailscale. There's no advanced configuration or anything of the sort. Download runtime binaries -> unzip -> generate a user credentials QR using the config tool -> put the user_credentials file in the user_credentials folder next to the server binary -> setup a service for the server on the machine you intend to use.

Our post was taken down on Reddit a couple hours after it was made due to a misunderstanding. The moderators re-instated it a day or two later.

[–] turmacar@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

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.

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[–] brown567@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Nice! I've been wondering lately if there was an open-source solution for this

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[–] jabjoe@feddit.uk 4 points 1 day ago (5 children)

You can also flash a Wyze Doorbell v1 with Thingino

https://github.com/themactep/thingino-firmware/wiki/Camera:-Wyze-Doorbell-%28V1%29

Lots of ways self hosting ways of doing bidirectional rtsp doorbell.

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[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 22 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

The poster’s account is under 1 day old. There are multiple brand new accounts interacting with this post, too.

And one of them is replying with positive sentiment.

But the one calling it sus is also 5 days old, and making good points.

🤔

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[–] Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 18 points 2 days ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

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
IP Internet Protocol
MQTT Message Queue Telemetry Transport point-to-point networking
NAS Network-Attached Storage
NVR Network Video Recorder (generally for CCTV)
PoE Power over Ethernet
SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption
Unifi Ubiquiti WiFi hardware brand
VPN Virtual Private Network
VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)

10 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 15 acronyms.

[Thread #312 for this comm, first seen 24th May 2026, 22:40] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

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