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!
Just out of curiosity, why?
GitHub content, profit website, automatic over air updates, content like “Earn $5 in Secluso credit for every qualifying referred pre-order.”
Just sounds like not actually secure marketing itself as super secure.
I could dig more, but i don’t care much.
Edit: also how super fast they commented on your comment with a copy paste answer. Or just a bot
I think they’re just a privacy-focused startup that just wants to make a living off their work
Additional comment,
Caligra.com
A computer that has its own Linux distro that does work but it clearly a demo.
Been taking $99 preorders for… two years?
Secluso will be taking “preorders” this month. Wanna bet how many years before it launches its hardware?
You don’t have to pre-order, just wait until it’s released and buy it then. And in this case you can get a raspi and test the product for yourself, so why spread FUD?
You’re not listening
this reply adds nothing. Please explain your position
No. I suggest you buy and use their product. Especially, you should put a deposit on it. Do it. Go. Now. Shhhhhh.
Ok so you’re a troll then. Fearmongering doesn’t help the community. If you’re against something give evidence. There’s a balance between fearmongering and blind hype.
And that makes them a corporation that cannot be trusted. Because if they have any data or access in any fashion… it’s not actually private.
And from what I can see it’s two people? Who are they. I want to know where they live and how they vote. It’s a lot of faith in the very very unknown. How will they handle government data requests?
You can already run DietPi and cam software for a very secure camera setup on your own for like $40 per camera (I dunno about price hikes lately)
Matrix. Bitwarden. Nextcloud. There are many examples of open-source, self-hosted applications that have for-profit companies that offer to host them for you as a service. Now if you use one of those Nextcloud providers to store your notes, can that providers read all your data? Of course. But for people who don’t want to self-host, it’s often a more trusted option than Google.
You’re not listening.
Hi kibblebits,
I pulled the links from the cloud camera controversies page from our website. We already had them compiled there. I didn’t pre-write any answers. And you can see from our GitHub history that we’ve been around for over a year and a half, and that we’re real people. Not bots.
Our automatic updates rely on immutable releases, ensuring that we can’t pull them back to try to hide something malicious. Additionally, we have reproducible builds, proving that the binaries / deploy tool / OS were derived from our codebase.
Everything is self-host able, you do not need to pay us to get anything working. Our plug and play camera is completely optional, we’re using it to help support our open source efforts and provide something that benefits the community.
Your audience is people who don’t want a corporation involved in their cameras yet you’re trying to start a corporation who is involved in their cameras. You should prepare yourself for significant pushback.
You can’t expect them to give away free Pi and cameras, you jerk
Open source hardware companies sell hardware. Are you surprised?
You’re purposefully not paying attention because you want them to not be shady.
There certainly would be a market for a network camera ecosystem provided by a company that people can trust. I don’t think it has to be all or nothing, plenty of people really are in no position to self-host.
I’m not sure if there is anything out there that regular consumers currently could migrate to in case they want to get away from questionable companies. There are completely local systems (local recorder, no remote access), but those are lacking the home automation features / notifications, and well-respected brands that have been around (let’s say, Axis?) that are still closed source, not cross-platform and with pricing often not aimed at end customers.
I didn’t check out this project, so I’m certainly not saying this is it and there habe been various criticism of this particular project here, but I’d love if a decent project would emerge in the space.
Would you consider using a managed cloud solution + app if it’s open-source and properly end-to-end encrypted? How would a hypothetical company have to behave to be trustworthy, while still being allowed to profit? People here seem to like e. g. tuta.io for encrypted mail, I don’t see why a similar model could not work for network cameras.
These are genuine questions btw., I myself am really annoyed at the status quo with its data breaches, blatant lies to customers about encryption, and corporations willfully cooperating with fascist governments by proactively providing video data. I’m not even going to talk about AI training.
I would consider someone making a system that would run on a VPS and made zero external connections in regard to the camera software.
The problem is auto updates, telemetry, how they probably require a phone app when a web browser is 100% capable. Did I compile that phone app myself? No.
Most people don’t even know what to look for. Poor education. 🤷♂️ it’s too hard to help them. They should just get a local closed circuit system. It’s just about Amazon packages anyway
Hi kibblebits, please see below!
We’d be happy to add an option to disable auto update in our next release.
If you have any other ideas for features we can add or changes we should make, please let us know.
What date is your hardware shipping? The exact date.
Agreed, it’s all very commercial. It’s nice that there’s a way to run it self hosted but in that case I prefer something like LightNVR.
Yuuup some red flags going on. “Look at all these possible controversies and doubts you may have! We already have the answers because we really want you to use this product!”
At least with other cameras they may be stealing my data and selling it but at least I can join a class action lawsuit and get some free credit monitoring out of it.
Right, I was just thinking about that. These two people, allegedly, are going to sell hardware and software and cloud storage in an industry that could very easily sue them… ehhhhhh. It doesn’t seem too thought out.
Typically these things try to make a huge separation between the code and any actual hardware or cloud service etc.
“We are super not looking at the videos you upload to our private cloud that is definitely not audited”
Common commercial cameras such as Ring/Blink/Nest are privacy-invasive and have lots of controversies, some examples being…
We started on this project a long time ago to fix these issues by making it so that no cloud provider can see your home security videos. It’s completely end to end encrypted and private-by-default. It also is super easy to use and doesn’t compromise on features. As it’s a Raspberry Pi and it’s open source, it’s completely auditable and not a black box (unlike these common camera providers).That means you can verify that nothing bad is going on within your camera, instead of relying on a promise from someone.
No I meant why it was being questioned as “sus”. No agenda, just genuinely interested to hear opinions.
Just like standard ONVIF RTSP cams with a local NVR? It’s not like this is a new thing.
Hi Bloef, this is meant to be a drop-in replacement to WiFi cameras (and therefore easy to use and easy to setup). A local NVR is great, and we definitely recommend it if you have the time to get one up and running.
Oddly ready with all the copy paste content.
Yep, 8minutes for the answer. A bit suss.
Not really. If I am posting something that I figure would generate discussion like this, I would have sources at the ready too. And though I am disabled now, I used to hash out 140+ wpm without errors, so this post would take maaaaaybe as much as 90 seconds, mostly formatting and a quick proofreading.
Not everything has to be ‘sus’, ‘dawg’.