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Comment by Huongngtm | Hacker News Reader

This app lets you turn your unused phone into a security camera. It has AI event detection (person, face, animal) and smart alerts, but the smart functionality runs offline. No footage is sent to our server. Actually we don't have a server. You don't need to sign up or create a profile. Notification is sent through Apple's server (we currently have only iOS app).

We are doing beta program (free). We'd love to hear your feedback, and especially learn about your use case.

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We have cameras on driveways, etc where there is no power or ethernet. These cameras (and perhaps a solar powered wifi mesh network, which these could form if they had the right software) are a reasonable solution to that problem:

https://m.reolink.com/

I’d love to have it take video feeds from something like those. (Perhaps via a standard network protocol.)

Store + ml recognize them locally, and simultaneously client-side encrypt and stream them to an s3-compatible bucket (eg backblaze b2).

Bonus points if the gizmo has a sim card and backup battery so it keeps working if power / internet are cut. (Most of the time it’d upload via residential broadband (wifi/ethernet), but while the house is being broken into, it’s fine if it burns a few GB of cell plan data.)

Make sure the box is compatible with some sort of ssd/nvme drive (no moving parts), and not just hdd.

One model for monetizing it: AGPL or BSL it, and offer some cloud side services for convenience features like managing the encrypted bucket, pruning “boring” videos after 30 days, etc. edit: or, provide a nice (open source, simple) nat hole punching vpn service so phones can see the video in real time. Maybe charge for access to bounce servers and automatic setup.

Thanks for sharing this. I was not aware that Reolink was introducing solar-powered cameras. I like their brand because back in 2017 I was searching for 802.3af PoE IP cams and they were the most recommended. Been running a couple since then and have had good results overall. I hope they are still producing them as good now as they were back then.

Thanks for your suggestion. But are these functionalities not better implemented on a desktop computer? A mobile phone is limited in compute capability but very portable, so it easy to use it for occasional situation like when traveling, or when you only need a security camera for a short time and do not want to invest much.

I would give it a try if there was an Android version. I don't have an unused iPhone, basically because their value in the second hand market makes it worth to sell it insted of keeping it.

An Android version is also planned.

You say "unused phone" but the minimum iOS version is 14.1. As a comparison, I think apps like Baby Monitor 3G required iOS 9 until recently.

This app focus on running on-device AI algorithms so it needs latest OS software in able to do it.

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