A new open-source project called Secluso wants to give the Nest and Ring crowd a serious DIY alternative, built around a $15 Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and a strict no-cloud-required design. Developed by Secluso, Inc., co-founded by UC Irvine professor Ardalan Amiri Sani and John Kaczman, the system uses Messaging Layer Security (MLS, RFC 9420) to keep video traffic end-to-end encrypted between the camera and the user's phone, so any relay server in the middle, whether self-hosted on a VPS or running on Secluso's free beta relay, only ever sees ciphertext.

The hardware side is intentionally modest. Alongside the Pi Zero 2 W, the build calls for a Raspberry Pi Camera Module V1 (OV5647) or V2 (IMX219), a HAT carrying a microphone and a safety temperature sensor, and either the official Pi Zero enclosure, a 3D-printable shell, or Secluso's IR-pass acrylic cover. On-device AI handles human, pet, and vehicle detection, which keeps motion classification off any external server.

The software stack is where the project gets more ambitious. The camera hub and server have been rewritten in Rust to sidestep the memory bugs that plagued the previous OpenSSL-based C implementation, and the protocol layer adds post-quantum encryption to harden archived footage against future harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks. Reproducible builds cover Secluso OS and the mobile apps, firmware updates only install if signed against trusted GitHub releases, and the project ships on the iOS App Store and Google Play with Obtainium support for sideloading the Android build straight from GitHub. Push notifications make Firebase Cloud Messaging optional on Android via UnifiedPush, with Secluso running its own relay for iOS.

The v1.0.2 release introduces Secluso OS, a minimal Yocto-based Linux image, plus a desktop deploy tool for Windows, macOS, and Linux that flashes the SD card, injects unique credentials, and configures the relay over SSH without ever asking the user to open a terminal. The full source, build instructions, and a security whitepaper are on GitHub under the GPL, with a Build Your Own Guide for anyone sourcing parts independently.

For users who would rather skip the parts list, Secluso is opening pre-orders in May 2026 with a limited run of 100 DIY Kits at $50 (€46), bundling the night vision camera module, the custom mic and temperature HAT, the housing, and one year of Secluso Cloud, with an estimated 2 to 3 month lead time. A fully assembled Plug and Play unit runs $100 (€92) with a 4 to 6 month wait and the same free cloud year, after which Secluso Cloud is optional at $5 (€4.60) per month or $50 (€46) per year. Pre-orders ship to the US only at launch.