End-to-end encrypted home cameras without the cloud tax

Someone built Secluso, an open-source home security camera system that encrypts footage on the device before sending it anywhere. No cloud subscription. No unencrypted frames sitting on someone else’s S3 bucket. The interesting bit is not the encryption itself. Ring, Arlo, and Nest all claim end-to-end encryption now. The interesting bit is that this one costs zero dollars per month after you buy the hardware. Most consumer camera systems encrypt in transit but decrypt server-side so they can run motion detection, face recognition, and all the features that justify the subscription. Secluso runs detection locally, encrypts the results, then syncs encrypted clips to your own storage. The trade-off is obvious: you need to run the detection models on a Raspberry Pi or similar. A Nest Cam offloads that to Google’s infrastructure and charges you nine dollars per month for the privilege. Secluso makes you provision your own compute. For a three-camera setup, that probably means a Pi 5 with 8 GB of RAM running inference on MobileNet or YOLO-Nano. This is the same fight as self-hosted password managers versus 1Password. Convenience versus control. The self-hosted option always wins on cost at scale, loses on setup friction, and appeals to the same people who run Jellyfin instead of paying for Netflix. For home security, the stakes are higher than movie streaming. If the cloud provider gets breached, your cameras become someone else’s livestream. Secluso avoids that by never sending plaintext anywhere. I would run this if I had a house. I do not trust any company with always-on cameras inside my home, subscription or not.

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Source: Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)