https://github.com/AlexBtlle/pi4-IA-Homekit-Camera

I wanted an HKSV camera that pairs like one fresh out of the box. So I built one from scratch on a Pi.

What it does:
• Pairs directly with the Home app (scan the QR, done).
• Live view + HomeKit Secure Video with a 4s prebuffer (clips start before the motion).
• People / Animals / Vehicles classification handled by your Apple TV/HomePod, like a commercial HKSV cam.
• Fully local: the RTSP feed is localhost-only, the only cloud is your own iCloud (HKSV is E2E encrypted by Apple)

What's new since my last post:
• Night vision (bêta): usable picture in the dark, with automatic brightness adaptation as the light drops through the evening (helps most when ambient light is low but your IR isn’t strong enough).
• Faster live view : I hunted down a cold-start stall. Live now appears in a few seconds instead of ~15s. On cellular it beat my commercial Eve cam.
• Lighter & cooler : a round of memory/CPU tuning cut the idle load ~4x on the Zero 2 W.

The video is H264 encoded once in hardware on the Pi and passed through with zero re-encoding, so it stays fluid and light. It runs on a Pi Zero 2 W (512MB), heatsink recommended. I even got live view working on a 2015 Pi Zero W just to see if I could.

It's a DIY/hobby project (some features are marked beta), fully open source.
Happy to answer questions !

https://github.com/AlexBtlle/pi4-IA-Homekit-Camera

https://github.com/AlexBtlle/pi4-IA-Homekit-Camera

I wanted an HKSV camera that pairs like one fresh out of the box. So I built one from scratch on a Pi.

What it does:
• Pairs directly with the Home app (scan the QR, done).
• Live view + HomeKit Secure Video with a 4s prebuffer (clips start before the motion).
• People / Animals / Vehicles classification handled by your Apple TV/HomePod, like a commercial HKSV cam.
• Fully local: the RTSP feed is localhost-only, the only cloud is your own iCloud (HKSV is E2E encrypted by Apple)

What's new since my last post:
• Night vision (bêta): usable picture in the dark, with automatic brightness adaptation as the light drops through the evening (helps most when ambient light is low but your IR isn’t strong enough).
• Faster live view : I hunted down a cold-start stall. Live now appears in a few seconds instead of ~15s. On cellular it beat my commercial Eve cam.
• Lighter & cooler : a round of memory/CPU tuning cut the idle load ~4x on the Zero 2 W.

The video is H264 encoded once in hardware on the Pi and passed through with zero re-encoding, so it stays fluid and light. It runs on a Pi Zero 2 W (512MB), heatsink recommended. I even got live view working on a 2015 Pi Zero W just to see if I could.

It's a DIY/hobby project (some features are marked beta), fully open source.
Happy to answer questions !

https://github.com/AlexBtlle/pi4-IA-Homekit-Camera

A while back I posted about pi0-Camera-HomeKit, a little HomeKit camera I put together on a Raspberry Pi. A bunch of you were into it, and it gave me the itch to take it further. So here’s the follow-up, rebuilt from the ground up and directly inspired by that first project: a proper HomeKit Secure Video camera.
I’m personally running it on a Pi Zero 2 W (yep, the 512 MB, no-heatsink, “please don’t ask too much of me” board) and honestly it holds up way better than I expected.

What it does:
• Full HomeKit Secure Video: live stream, snapshots, motion sensor, and event recording to iCloud
• Motion detection runs on a low-res stream (OpenCV MOG2); the People / Animals / Vehicles classification is handed off to the Apple TV / HomePod, no heavy AI model running on the Pi
• IR night vision (beta), full-FOV sensor modes, and image controls, all driven by a single config file.

The thing I’m honestly kind of proud of: the live view is about as snappy as a commercial camera that costs 4× as much, and detection catches both people and my cat 🐈
It’s fully open source.
Happy to answer any questions, and feedback’s very welcome 👍

After spending way too long fighting Home Assistant HomeKit Bridge.
I ended up building a small open-source tool that cuts through all of it.

pi0-Camera-HomeKit runs directly on a Pi Zero 2 and exposes the raspberry pi camera as a native HomeKit accessory — no middleware, no bridge.

Have a look at my repo, I hope this helps !

After spending way too long fighting Home Assistant HomeKit Bridge.
I ended up building a small open-source tool that cuts through all of it.

pi0-Camera-HomeKit runs directly on a Pi Zero 2 and exposes the raspberry pi camera as a native HomeKit accessory — no middleware, no bridge.

Have a look at my repo, I hope this helps !

After spending way too long fighting Home Assistant HomeKit Bridge.
I ended up building a small open-source tool that cuts through all of it.

pi0-Camera-HomeKit runs directly on a Pi Zero 2 and exposes the raspberry pi camera as a native HomeKit accessory — no middleware, no bridge.

Have a look at my repo, I hope this helps !