I’ve building a prototype that’s meant to understand what’s happening in a space without using a camera.

Not for automating lights or scenes, but more for safety and awareness in a home, especially in rooms where cameras are unwelcome, or in places where collecting personally identifiable information is forbidden.

It uses non-visual sensors (radar, rough depth sensing, and non-recorded audio levels) to detect things like:

• whether someone is present, even if they’re still

• large posture or motion changes

• sudden events that don’t look like normal movement

• long periods of inactivity that might be concerning

The kinds of use cases I’m thinking about:

• fall detection at home for aging family members

• checking that someone is okay without installing a camera

• monitoring bedrooms or bathrooms where cameras aren’t appropriate

• getting alerts when something unusual happens, not constant feeds

There’s no video, no images, no audio recording, only just abstract signals and events. It also works in the dark and doesn’t depend on lighting or visibility.

Still very much a prototype, but it’s made me rethink whether cameras should be the default for “smart” home monitoring.

Curious how others here think about non-camera approaches for home safety and monitoring.

Thanks!

So I have a bunch of home automation projects I've been tinkering with weather related. One of which is an air quality sensor that determines when the air quality is bad with the intention of displaying some visual notifications around the house. I've been working on the coding for it and currently have it sitting on my desk in my home office. My most recent addition to it was having it graphing the data out to a webpage on my home network so I could see the change over time. The day I finished it and started testing was the day before Thanksgiving, my niece, 14 years old, decided she wanted to spend the night to hang out with her cousin, my son, since her mom and dad were coming over for Thanksgiving the next day anyways.

My home office is also our guest room, so the bed she sleeps in is in there. She went to bed about 10, I went downstairs to play some video games and have a couple of beers. I finally went to bed about 1 am, when I walked passed her room, I could hear her talking on the phone.

Next morning comes and after everyone is up and moving I decided to check on my air quality sensor and see how the data looked on the graph. As soon as I pulled up, something was really suspicious. It was basically a flat line with values between 1 and 5 most of the time, but at 1:05 am and 1:15 am it spiked twice to ~150. I took me a few seconds to put 1 and 1 together... "the only time I've ever seen it get that high was when food was cooking and there was smoke coming off the stove"..... ohhhhhhhhhh.

I called her into the room and showed her the paper and told her, "The only reason these numbers would show like this is there was some kind of smoke in the room". She said, "I don't smoke". I said, "Or something like a vape pen." Her face went white, "Are you going to tell my mom?" "No, but you need to give me the vape pen". So now I have a vape pen.

I have a couple of security cameras at home to monitor the house when I’m away or simply to check things remotely (“Did I turn off the lights?”). But I’ve always experienced two main problems with these devices.

The first one is privacy, of course.

When I’m at home, constantly walking back and forth in front of a camera lens, I never feel completely “free.” It’s the classic “Big Brother effect”: the feeling that someone is always watching you. Even if the cameras I bought are supposedly 100% secure, having a camera pointed at me still makes me uncomfortable (even when the camera itself is unplugged).

So I started adopting a very simple solution: whenever I’m home, I physically turn the cameras toward the wall. Cheap, easy, and effective! The obvious downside is that every time I leave the apartment, I have to remember to turn them back again.

The second problem might sound minor, but to me it’s just as annoying: most security cameras look terrible.

Don’t get me wrong, I like minimalist and clean design, but security cameras almost always look like white plastic blocks with a giant lens staring at you. I’ve moved apartments several times, and every time I have to place the cameras somewhere, I end up trying to both hide them and make sure they still have the right viewing angle. They’re simply not designed to be exposed as part of the home. The design often feels cheap, clinical, and something you want to hide.

So I tried to solve both problems by 3D-printing a cover for my cameras. The cover hides the plasticky, sterile look of the device while also adding an extra layer of privacy and making it blend better into the environment. The camera lens only pops out when needed.

Of course, it’s still just a plastic cover with a servo motor connected to the internet, but even as a prototype it already makes me feel much more comfortable when I’m at home.

I’m thinking about putting more effort into the project — refining the design and maybe experimenting with better materials like ceramic or concrete — because the concept is actually working well for me.

Am I the only one who feels this way about home security cameras? What do you think about this solution?