Do you even need a computer for this?
Short answer: not a big one. A couple of Canaries and a palm-sized screen can watch a room and prove what they saw — the only other thing they need is a small always-on message broker somewhere on your network. Add a $60 Raspberry Pi and you unlock real cameras, an encrypted memory, and a vault no single person can open.
Three things to hold onto
Starts small
The Canaries sign what they see and a palm-sized screen verifies it — just a small message broker in between.
Grows with a Pi
Add a cheap Linux computer and it gains cameras, a forensic memory, and a break-glass vault.
You choose
Start tiny, add the brain later — or never. Flip a switch below and see exactly what changes.
First — what even is Linux?
New to Linux? The short version, and a three-layer picture to tap
Linux is a free, open operating system — the layer between the chips and your apps. It runs the web's servers, Android phones and the Raspberry Pi. Tap a layer to see what it does.
In plain terms: a computer is an onion — hardware at the core, the operating system around it (it talks to cameras, disks and the network so no app has to), and apps like our witness kernel on the outside.
The three layers of a computer
tap a layer—
Same word, two things: Linux has a “kernel” (its core); our “witness kernel” is an app that runs on top of Linux.
Why it matters here: cameras, an encrypted database and a safety sandbox are an operating system's job — so the powerful tier needs Linux, and the tiny screen doesn't try.
The dashboard can fit on a screen the size of your palm.
The Canary Dash is a little touchscreen — a Waveshare ESP32-S3 board with a 4.3-inch display. It has no operating system and no hard drive, and it doesn't need them. Its whole job is to listen to your Canaries, check their signatures on its own chip, and show you the truth.
- Verifies every signature on its own silicon — the “verified ✓” on the glass means the same math the Home Assistant integration runs.
- Shows the whole fleet — who's live, who's gone quiet, who reported tamper — with a timeline you can hold-to-acknowledge.
- Finds and cross-checks other Canaries over your local network, and shows a join-QR on its own screen for new ones.
- Keeps working if the network drops — it falls back to short Bluetooth “chirps” so liveness and tamper still reach the glass.
Straight with you: the Dash is in development — the firmware is compile- and CI-tested but not yet validated on bench hardware, and it's a viewer, not a sensor (the sensing Canaries are the ones that mint signed claims). We'll never mark it “shipping” before it is. Join the waitlist to hear when it does.
Add a $60 computer and it grows a memory, cameras, and a vault.
A Raspberry Pi is a full computer the size of a deck of cards. Run our witness kernel on one (it installs as a Home Assistant app), and the little presence network becomes a full forensic system. A Pi 4 with 4 GB is plenty; a Pi 5 or any spare PC works too.
How installing honestly works: there is one command. On Home Assistant, paste
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kmay89/securaCV/main/scripts/install.sh | bash
into the Terminal app and it sets up the whole stack — MQTT broker, Frigate, witness kernel, integration,
dashboards — narrating each step, and it's safe to re-run. Not running Home Assistant? One
compose file
runs the same witness next to Frigate instead. The one-click buttons and the whole funnel live on
the home page.
Why a Pi fits: it's cheap, sips power left on 24/7, and runs Linux — the natural always-on home for the witness kernel. It runs headless; an HDMI touchscreen on the hub can show your dashboard, as an optional one-tick extra in setup.
And you can absolutely skip it. If all you want is honest presence — “someone's at the door,” signed and verifiable — the Canaries and the Dash do that with no Pi in sight (just the broker). The Pi is for when you want to add real cameras and signed, tamper-evident evidence. Start without one; add it the day you want more.
Two honest footnotes: it needs a 64-bit Pi (Pi 4 or 5) or an x86 PC running Home
Assistant OS — not an ancient 32-bit board. And even the “no-Pi” setup wants a little always-on
message broker somewhere on your network; a Pi is just the usual, tidy home for it. The Canaries' link to that
broker is plain by default; both flashers can provision a CA-verified or fingerprint-pinned TLS link (port 8883
suggested), and the hub setup can open the broker's TLS listener on request (--with broker_tls).
Host-tested; not yet run against a TLS broker on hardware.
Flip the switch: exactly what you unlock with a Pi.
Same eight jobs, two setups. Toggle between just the Canaries and adding a Raspberry Pi and watch what lights up. Nothing here is aspirational — it's what the code does today (with the honest notes from above).
- Sense presence & motion, and sign the claim right on the sensing Canary's chip.
- Verify every signature and show the fleet — on the palm-sized screen itself.
- Discover and cross-check other Canaries over your local network.
- Keep going if the network drops — Bluetooth “chirp” fallback for liveness & tamper.
- Witness real IP / RTSP cameras through Frigate — the best-supported camera path.
- Keep an encrypted, tamper-evident forensic log (an on-disk SQLCipher database).
- Seal video evidence in a vault — opened only by an N-of-M “break-glass” quorum.
- Run sandboxed modules, retention, digests and full Home-Assistant dashboards.
—
So — do you need a Pi?
Pick what you're actually after. There's no wrong answer, and you can change your mind later — the tiers grow into each other.
The Canaries on their own
A couple of sensing Canaries and a Dash screen cover this beautifully — signed presence, verified on the glass, no computer to babysit. (Keep a small always-on broker on the network; a spare Pi is a fine home for it, but so is an old mini-PC.)
Start tiny. Grow when you want. Never forced onto a computer.
The Canaries prove what they see whether or not a Pi is watching. Add one the day you want cameras and a vault — and if that day never comes, nothing about the little network is missing the point.