Run your own CCTV without a cloud subscription

A step-by-step guide to a full home security system on a $35 Raspberry Pi. Your footage never leaves your house.

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chapter-3.pdf · page 24

Point the Pi's camera module at the driveway, then start the capture daemon:

pi@cctv:~$ cheapsec start --cam usb0 --motion
# rec 1080p → /media/vault · 0 cloud calls

Verify the local stream is live:

Why most home CCTV fails

The problem with off-the-shelf cameras

$120/yr

Typical cloud-cam subscription just to keep more than 24 hours of recordings.

3rd parties

Your driveway footage sits on someone else's servers — indexed, mined, and breach-prone.

Bricked

When the vendor kills the app, the camera you bought becomes an expensive paperweight.

What's inside

01Hardware shopping list for Pi 4, Pi Zero 2, and Orange Pi builds

02Flash, harden, and headless-boot the SBC in under 20 minutes

03Motion-triggered recording with tuned false-positive filtering

04Local NVR storage that rotates without filling the SD card

05Remote viewing over WireGuard — no ports exposed to the web

06Firewall rules that prove your cameras never phone home

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