A fully isolated setup on a dedicated network can certainly provide good privacy. A key benefit of Privastead is that it can send the videos to your smartphone remotely using a strong (MLS-based) end-to-end encryption.

And I share your excitement about Rust. :-)

The remote access part can be solved by wireguard or tailscale for less hands-on approach. Ntfy.sh/telegram/whatever cool kids use these days for notifications.

This and my previous comment probably amount to a full Dropbox comment now :)

Can you elaborate on the sending video part -- do you transfer the whole file or a link to the file on the server? Curious about the replication piece I mentioned

Privastead uses end-to-end encryption between the hub and the app. The hub encrypts the whole video file and sends it (through an untrusted server) to the app. The app will have a local copy of the video. The hub deletes the video upon delivery to the app. The server never has access to the unecrypted video.

WebRTC might provide a good way to handle this.

Yes, indeed. Using WebRTC and MLS together should provide good performance and privacy. In fact, Discord recently did that: https://discord.com/blog/meet-dave-e2ee-for-audio-video

It's something I plan to look into at some point.

I've been using locally hosted NVRs going on two decades now and so I definitely appreciate another local NVR option. But given the current lack of common requirements (e.g. more than 1 camera), curious if you're seeing any usage outside of your own? As others have mentioned Frigate is filling a nice gap for many, currently. I can only connect to it via a VPN I control and I can easily get notifications via Home Assistant.

I feel as though I have protection of getting the feeds to my phone securely, already. And while I'd love to be able to trust exposing Frigate and making it more accessible, I really don't have a need nor would I as the barrier to entry is already low enough to not impose much friction.

My intent isn't to dissuade you (obviously you wrote it for yourself) but I'd be curious if implementing a more secure transport in an existing OSS NVR that has traction was something you considered?

Your local setup plus VPN/wireguard is a good design. For me, port forwarding on my router was a no-go due to the increased attack surface. Therefore, I wanted to use the cloud to route the videos and hence I decided to use a strong end-to-end encryption scheme (MLS).

Regarding the limitation you mentioned: I plan to address them. The next task on my plate is to support multiple cameras. :-)

I actually don't do any port forwarding for my VPN. I end up back hauling over a public termination point on existing tunnels. All tunnels originate outbound in this manner.

Looking forward to seeing your project progress!

FWIW, e2ee is a feature that mostly matters to me when I don't own the infrastructure, and my bytes are flowing over someone else's platform.

If I do own all the infra, it seems like a lot of extra effort and complexity in the application which could be farmed out to other solutions (I.e. wireguard).

That's right. My assumption is that the server is untrusted and that's why I use end-to-end encryption. This allows me to use any server, possibly even one operated by a third-party service in the future.

How is video streamed to the apps? Push notification services are not meant for real time video streaming.

RTSP

Push notifications are for notifying the apps of events (e.g., motion). The actual encrypted video (either motion-triggered video or livestreams) are transferred through the server.

Have you found cameras you’re happy with? That’s the main thing holding me back is not knowing a good PoE camera to use.

Hikvision and reolink are highly rated onvif ones that support poe, but as long as the camera support ONVIF from there just compare as normal

Search for "Hikvision compromised" though. The results are damning. I suppose there's not much of a concern if using a proper firewall on a managed network, however.

I can second Frigate and welcome any work in this space, so nice work OP will have a look. For others asking, I have found so far Hikvision POE PTZ domes like DS-2DE2A404IW-DE3 have been reliable, depends on your budget. I have cams themselves fully locked down from internet and on a separate subnet on the local net. OPNSense is also a friend here. I would love some OSS firmware for these cams. For remote, I find ZeroTier to Frigate & Home Assistant machines is all I need. I get why others WireGuard too. YMMV

Oh wire guard is a requirement imo, regardless of NVR or camera vendor. I'm less worried about a nation on the other side of the Pacific getting a livestream of my property than I am someone social engineering some rando employee at Ring/whereever and figuring out the best time to rob me or whatever.

Also set up alerts on shodan opencve etc. If you have anything but a phone and personal computer on your home network, assume they're hacked and treat it like you would coffee shop wifi during defcon.

Because... Well they are. Zero days are a thing, and by definition by the time you learn of one it's too late.

Honestly I'm more concerned about the compromised device being an attack vector for network sniffing etc moreso than the video itself... Which is yet another reason why I try to 100% VPN even at home, but man okta doesn't play well with VPNs.

Aren't HikVision the ones banned by many governments because they have dodgy "call home to China" firmware?

Persoanlly I go with the Eyeball Entities Omnicam with an Omniscient Systems Xcam-REAM control centre [0].

[0] https://cybershow.uk/media/ads/cctv-ads.mp3

Even if it does have phone-home functions, why does the camera itself need internet access?

IMO, audit the hardware for wireless radios (PoE cameras shouldn't have them), and put them on a camera-only VLAN that can only talk to the video server.

Maybe not suitable for super secure TS locations, but in general should be fine for 99% of situations.

I think if you've got total control over them, not a problem compartmentalising. Problem is, they're like loitering munitions, next person comes along and connectes them up to a router or misconfigures a firewall... Much as I hate e-waste sadly best place is in the bin. They're cheap but, easy come easy go.

Reolink have not disappointed me so far. I am using a duo 2 cam watching over the front of the property and a collection of their bullet cams. There's a lot of recommendations on frigate github discussions. Some models indeed have quirks.

On top of decent cameras they also have pretty well-documented API.