Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to I made a tiny camera with super long battery life
Hey HN! A few years ago someone kept trying to steal my motorcycle, so I decided to make a small camera with really long battery life to catch them. The hardware/software is totally open source, but the companion app only supports macOS currently. (I'm a big fan of native apps, and didn't want to block releasing on Linux/Windows support.) I wrote some blog posts about the process: PCB design: https://toaster.llc/blog/pcb Enclosure design: https://toaster.llc/blog/enclosure Image pipeline:…
This is a small, open-source camera designed for surveillance with exceptional battery life. It was created to monitor a motorcycle against theft and features hardware and software that are fully open source. The… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier. I made a tiny camera with super long battery life launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
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Hi HN! This is a trail companion web app (think AllTrails) I hacked together in a couple weeks time. I was inspired to create this project while training for an extended backpacking trip. My motivation was to create a UI tailored exactly to my liking, and to be able to track my progress along the trail without draining my battery. I also wanted to experiment with PWA technologies. I successfully used it on my five day adventure along the Knobstone Trail in southern Indiana, and even though it's web-based it hardly consumed any battery life on my old first-gen Pixel XL. It's set up currently…
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
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The battery app your Mac has been dreaming about
2023 · its alternatives →
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I needed a security camera inside my house, one that would send motion notifications to my smartphone and would allow me to livestream remotely. However, I could not find one that I could trust due to privacy concerns. Many of them upload the plaintext of videos to their servers and none is fully open-source as far as I know. Therefore, I decided to use my spare time to build one from scratch. Called Privastead (as in Private Homestead), it uses OpenMLS for end-to-end encryption (between the camera local hub and the smartphone) and is mostly implemented in Rust (except for part of the…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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EverCam▲313The wirefree security cam with 365-day battery life
2018 · kickstarter.com · its alternatives →
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Notchie▲301Hey HN! 3-4 weeks ago I was trying to record a webinar for another side project. Screen recording, full screen presentation, talking through slides — should be simple. Except I kept forgetting what I wanted to say. And every time I glanced at my notes, it was obvious on camera. Worse — when recording full screen, there's nowhere to put notes without them being captured. Tried a few teleprompter apps. They either covered half my screen, scrolled at a fixed speed I couldn't match, or showed up in the recording. So I thought: I've been a full-stack dev for 20+ years. Never touched Swift or…
Dec 2025 · notchie.app · its alternatives →
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Heeey! I built a macOS copilot that has been useful to me, so I open sourced it in case others would find it useful too. It's pretty simple: - Use a keyboard shortcut to take a screenshot of your active macOS window and start recording the microphone. - Speak your question, then press the keyboard shortcut again to send your question + screenshot off to OpenAI Vision - The Vision response is presented in-context/overlayed over the active window, and spoken to you as audio. - The app keeps running in the background, only taking a screenshot/listening when activated by keyboard…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
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OwnClip▲104Native macOS screen recorder with local-first AI privacy
Jun 2026 · ownclip.io · its alternatives →
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Take raw photos with proof they're real, not AI
May 2026 · vwfndr.camera · its alternatives →
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Chronoid▲51Hi HN, I've been building Chronoid, a native macOS time tracker. It runs in the menu bar and automatically logs apps, windows, and file activity using macOS accessibility APIs. Everything is stored locally, no sync or cloud service. At first I tried using DuckDB as the storage engine. It looked promising for analytics, but after ~2 weeks I realized it was overkill for my needs—extra dependencies, trickier integration, and not much real benefit at the scale of a single-user app. I switched to SQLite, and it turned out to be the simpler, more reliable choice. The codebase got smaller and the…
Nov 2025 · chronoid.app · its alternatives →
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MacMonitor▲106Real-time Apple Silicon system monitor for your menu bar
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Cyluma▲89Your Mac’s battery as a living, breathing landscape
23d ago · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
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I've never posted on ShowHN before, but I wanted to share my Xmas 2025 project; to try a new approach to controlling our kids screen time. This also involved massively over-engineering a solution in order to play with a shiny new gadget (and avoid the in laws at Christmas, obviously) I've shared some learnings on AI coding with embedded devices, and how I approached the product design/hardware selection side of things. The Web App is at https://screenie.org - and I'm Open Sourcing the device and web app code later today (links to follow on that site)
Jan 2026 · partridge.works · its alternatives →
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Several months ago, I posted in Show HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42284412) about this project (previously named Privastead, now changed to Secluso). It's a privacy-preserving home security camera that uses OpenMLS for end-to-end encryption between the camera and the mobile app. The post received a good amount of attention and there were many good comments. Since then, my project cofounder and I have made major improvements to the project. The project previously would act as a hub for an IP camera, which was otherwise closed source. But now, our camera software can…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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GlanceCam▲72View as many IP cameras as you like on your Mac
2021 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
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my first app, a Mac menu bar utility to remind you to blink more. any feedback would be much appreciated. or make it your own and share :)
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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I made my first macOS utility app that ships with a bundled Gemma 4 model, specifically the Gemma E4B one. It made my app DMG have 5.3 GB in size, but I think it is a small size for the power that this free local model can provide. It runs fine on CPU, but can also run on Apple Silicon GPU, although I did not notice any performance improvements with GPU (tested on a M5 chip). I think these local lightweight and multimodal models will open multiple possibilities for new software tools where privacy is essential.
May 2026 · snapname.app · its alternatives →
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Synapse is a free Mac productivity app with Notch Shelf, Smart OCR, Clipboard History, Lo-Fi Radio, and Network Meter. Native, lightweight (~4MB), and privacy-first. Download free for macOS 14+.
Jun 2026 · synapsemac.com · its alternatives →
- 19II
Greetings, HN! I have created a new kind of 360º video camera with GPS and live streaming capabilities. A device like this has never existed in this form factor or price point before. After launching on Kickstarter, it has gotten coverage in Techcrunch and Boingboing, and received 89% funding in the first 24 hours. I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts about the device, the Kickstarter campaign, and any ways of publicizing the campaign that I might be missing. I'm most interested in hearing anyone thoughts about how the Kickstarter page might be improved to boost conversions, as the clock is…
2012 · kickstarter.com · its alternatives →
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AttackerView▲13Last week I wrote about building a scanner that writes its own exploits. A cron job runs Claude Code every night, it reads new CVEs, writes proof-of-concept checks, tests them against vulnerable and patched Docker instances, and opens PRs. I review and merge in the morning. That post was about how t
Feb 2026 · attackerview.com · its alternatives →
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Hey Hacker News! The past few months I’ve been working on this open-source software stack that makes it easy to build your own privacy-first security camera. When searching for a security camera (e.g. Google Nest, Amazon Ring..) that guarantees privacy I was surprised to find out there’s no such option, apart from going the old-school route. Many of the big players also had major privacy scandals. It has gotten even worse over the last couple of months with Amazon Ring now working together with Flock Safety, a company helping law enforcement with mass surveillance. Using the ROOT software…
Jan 2026 · rootprivacy.com · its alternatives →
- 22
Intermittent fasting made simple
Nov 2025 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
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Hey HN, I built an SDK to help me create apps I wanted on my Kobo. My Kobo device has a single core <1GHz processor and 512MB RAM, much less than a Raspberry Pi, but the eInk display and larger battery life opens up a lot of use cases. I have since used it to build an approval sidekick for my Mac's Claude code and codex, a Hacker News Client for Kobo, a Gutenberg reader, an RSS search and reader and more. All the code is in the repo. If you have a different device than mine (Clara BW) would love for you to test it on your device and submit a PR to enable this for more device profiles. Thanks.
Aug 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Turn your Android into a webcam for Windows. Open source, secure, zero-config. - danielbolivar/vancamera
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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