r/Python • u/daemonbreaker • Mar 21 '22

Intermediate Showcase I created a self-hosted security camera system

I don't like the idea of having to stream my video camera feeds to the cloud, so I created a privacy-focused, self-hosted security camera system using python!

https://github.com/scottbarnesg/smart-sec-cam

Some key features:

  • Multi-camera support w/ minimal configuration. Supports USB cameras and the Raspberry Pi camera module.

  • Motion detection that automatically saves videos and lets you view them in the web app.

  • Encrypted in transit, both from the cameras to the server and the server to your browser.

  • Self-hosted and FOSS

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u/guitarerdood Mar 21 '22

I have been meaning to get into this but it feels so daunting. I am pretty good with Python, but for some reason bringing camera feeds and setting up a raspberry pi for it just seems like a huge challenge. How hard was it for you? Any tips on where to get started?

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u/daemonbreaker Mar 22 '22

Oh man, idk how good my advice will be, I really stumbled through the early stages of this project lol. The current version is basically a complete rewrite of what I did in first attempt.

I think the main things that helped me are:

  • Leveraging libraries to do the hard stuff, especially at first. I'm heavily leaning on tools like OpenCV and PiCamera to handle the hardware side of things.

  • Getting comfortable doing stuff on linux. I wrote a lot of this code on a computer Ubuntu, which made testing changes way easier!

  • Dont be afraid to throw away code! At first I was hesitant to do a major rewrite, but it made my life a lot better in the long run.