Privacy-first, open-source cameras
Three things. One witness.
SecuraCV runs on your own hardware — no cloud, no subscription — and turns cameras into witnesses.
Two ways in
One of these is you. Pick it and skip the rest of this page.
I already have cameras
RTSP cameras and a Pi, running next to Frigate. +$0 on an existing Home Assistant stack — no new hardware, nothing to print.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kmay89/securaCV/main/scripts/install.sh | bash
Paste it into the Terminal app (or any SSH session into the box) and it sets up the whole stack — the Mosquitto MQTT broker, Frigate with a curated config, the Privacy Witness Kernel app, the SecuraCV integration, blueprints, and dashboards — narrating each step as it goes. It detects what you already have and is safe to re-run.
Each button opens your Home Assistant and pre-fills the repository — you approve every step there. This path is click-through rather than hands-off; the one command above does everything for you.
One compose file starts the sidecar: quickstart.compose.yml — or the with-broker variant if you don't run an MQTT broker yet. Events announce themselves over MQTT discovery to anything that listens, and if you add Home Assistant later it discovers everything with nothing to reconfigure.
I want to build one
Print the case, buy the board anywhere, flash it from your browser — $27–$55 a node. Kits are the roadmap, not the store, until FCC authorization is complete.
Start in the Lab — nothing to buy → 🚀 Already have a board? Flash it → 💎 See the hardware →Neither, yet? Is it for me? · Find your path
This is the output. All of it.
Notice there are no images on this site. That's intentional. The system outputs semantic events — text that describes what happened. It outputs events like "package at front door", never faces, plates, or identities. The surveillance data on the right? That code doesn't exist. Not disabled. Not hidden. Missing.
Your robot vacuum needs to see. Your doorbell needs to see. Your elder care system needs to see. None of them need to identify, track, or remember faces.
The cameras of the future will have eyes — they just don't need to surveil.
Made for people who want cameras, not surveillance
Three kinds of people use SecuraCV today. If you're one of them, there's a path in — and if you're someone else entirely, find your path: every door, sorted by what you came to do.
Home Assistant & homelab users
You have RTSP cameras and a Pi. Frigate keeps recording as usual — SecuraCV runs alongside it, adding the privacy boundary and a tamper-evident witness log. No subscription, ever.
Install in 5 minutes →People who need a record no one can quietly rewrite
Tenants, journalists, activists, abuse survivors. Every event is signed and hash-chained — evidence of what was recorded, where any later edit, by anyone including you, becomes detectable.
See how it's enforced →Builders & tinkerers
Cheap ESP32 boards become independent "Canary" witnesses — camera, radar, and WiFi-sensing variants with printable enclosures. Try the real firmware in your browser before you solder anything.
Meet the Canaries in the Lab →Three things. One witness.
When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, he fused three things you already owned — an iPod, a phone, an internet communicator — into one. A Canary does the same, with one twist.
A camera
The job Ring and Nest sell.
It watches the doorway — but only a sentence leaves the sensor, package at front door, never a face or a plate.
A notary
The job a signature does.
Every event is Ed25519-signed and hash-chained, so tampering doesn't get blocked — it gets seen, verifiable offline.
The twist: Jobs' three helped each other. These three were always enemies — a camera kills privacy, privacy kills evidence, evidence means a stranger's cloud. So we stopped making you pick two. See how it fits together →
Moved: Privacy by absence and Three intentional constraints to How It Works · Why build it this way? to About
Same camera. Same question. Different futures.
Watch how "is the coffee ready?" becomes something else entirely.
Six months later, a policy changes...
"We need to identify who's been using the break room excessively."
HR requests usage report
"Generate a list of employees who spend more than 15 minutes in the break room daily."
Legal requests footage
"Lawsuit filed. Preserve all break room footage showing employee interactions."
New vendor integration
"Our wellness platform wants camera data to track employee stress patterns."
Retroactive analysis request
"Apply our new 'productivity scoring' algorithm to the last 6 months of footage."
The first webcam just watched a coffee pot.
In 1991, Cambridge researchers pointed a camera at their break room coffee maker. The only question: is it ready yet?
Thirty years later, that same question requires facial recognition, behavioral tracking, and cloud storage. We think the original idea had it right.
Different tools for different needs
This isn't a replacement for existing systems — it's a different category.
HomeKit Secure Video
Consumer cloud video with E2E encryption
Frigate NVR
Open-source local NVR for Home Assistant
witness-kernel
Semantic events only, no identification
Different goals, not better or worse
HomeKit and Frigate are excellent at what they do. If you need face recognition, plate reading, or easy video export — use them. Witness-kernel exists for cases where those capabilities are liabilities, not features.
What's built, what's in progress
This is prototype software. Here's where we are.
Frame isolation types
Hash-chained event log
Break-glass quorum
Event contract enforcement
Cryptographic signatures
Encrypted vault envelopes
RTSP video ingestion
WASM module sandboxing
Ready? Install in 5 minutes on the cameras you already have · or start over at the fork
Try it before you build it
No hardware, no install, no sign-up. The Lab runs the real device firmware in your browser — as a six-stage build line, from choosing one to watching it prove itself.
Meet your Canary before you build one
The display devices run their actual shipping firmware — same faces, same mood engine, same Ed25519 signature checks — compiled to WebAssembly. Touch it, break its network, watch it stay honest. Everything runs locally; nothing phones anywhere.
Open the Lab — six stations, nothing to buyMeet the Canaries
Every display device boots its real firmware behind the glass.
Find your Canary
Four questions match you to a device and its printable enclosure.
Enclosure lab
Spin real STLs in your filament color, straight from the OpenSCAD sources.
Build it
Bills of materials with real part numbers and honest totals.
How privacy is enforced
Six mechanisms that design surveillance out — enforced by hardware and code, not by policy.
Frame data is private
Raw pixels are inaccessible. Analysis modules only receive abstract representations.
Export requires multiple approvals
No single user can extract video. A configurable quorum of trustees must authorize.
Timestamps are coarse
Events are bucketed to 10-minute windows. Precise timing isn't stored.
Log is tamper-evident
Each event includes a hash of the previous. Modifications break the chain.
Access tokens are single-use
Emergency access tokens work once, for one time window, then expire.
Rules apply forward only
New detection rules cannot be applied to historical data. No retroactive surveillance.
Data flow
Camera ──▶ RawFrame ──▶ InferenceView ──▶ Module ──▶ SealedEvent (private) (no pixels) (hash-chained) │ ▼ FrameBuffer ──▶ BreakGlass ──▶ VaultEnvelope (30s max) (N-of-M) (if authorized)
Don't trust us — check the code
Every claim on this page can be verified by reading the source.
Verify the log can't be tampered with
Run the verification tool to confirm the hash chain is intact.
cargo run --bin log_verify -- --db witness.db
Verify frame data is inaccessible
In src/frame.rs, confirm the raw bytes have no public getter.
Verify export requires quorum
In src/break_glass.rs, confirm approval counting before token issuance.
Don't read code? Start here. A plain-language walkthrough of what the kernel actually does and how the cryptography really works — sign a real claim, then forge it; break a real hash chain and watch the math catch you. No install, no cloud, nothing to trust but the math.
Read the source. Verify the claims.
Everything on this page is checkable. We're not asking for trust — we're asking for review. Or skip the reading and poke the running firmware yourself.