Secluso Turns a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W Into a Privacy-Centric, End-to-End Encrypted Camera System

Developer Ardalan Amiri Sani and colleagues have decided to do battle with smart camera companies on the privacy front — offering a roll-your-own alternative powered by low-cost Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W single-board computers: Secluso.

"We've built an open-source, privacy-preserving alternative to Ring cameras, using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, called Secluso," Sani explains of the team's work. "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've put in a lot of effort to make it easy to set up! You can set up our camera on your own [Raspberry] Pi in less than five minutes with minimal technical expertise using our easy-to-use GUI deploy tool."

Secluso aims to deliver a more private approach to smart camera systems, without losing features like instant notifications and live-views from a user-friendly mobile app. In its most basic form, it needs nothing more than Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W single-board computer and a compatible camera — with the team recommending an official Raspberry Pi Camera Module and the combined module-and-computer case.

Software running on the Raspberry Pi captures video and streams it through a relay server, using end-to-end encryption between the camera and the mobile client to protect privacy. While the easiest way to get started with Secluso involves using Sani and colleagues' own relay server — which is provided free-of-charge while the platform is still in beta — you can also roll your own onto a virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated hardware.

"We've also been working on a HAT [Hardware Attached on Top board] for the [Raspberry] Pi," Sani notes of the hardware side of things, "to add night vision, audio, temperature monitoring for safety, all in a compact form factor."

More information is available on the Secluso website, where interested parties can sign up to for a waitlist to be notified when pre-built packages are available to order priced at $50 for a DIY kit and $100 for a plug-and-play version; the project's source code is available on GitHub under the reciprocal GNU General Public License 3. Further discussion can be found in Sani's post on Reddit.