The porch is watched.
Nobody else is.
PineSentry turns webcams — USB or IP — and the PC you already own into a private security system. Local AI spots people, cars and animals, knows when a package is left or taken, hears glass break and notices if a camera is blocked. No cloud, no subscription, no footage leaves the house.
Cheap until something moves.
Most of the time there's nothing on your porch, so PineSentry does almost nothing. It only wakes the AI when pixels actually change, and the AI runs on the graphics chip that's already in your PC. No GPU to buy, no fan noise, no cloud bill.
Watch
Any USB webcam or RTSP IP camera (Tapo, ONVIF, ...). Add as many as you like — each gets its own thread, zones and labels.
USB + IP · multi-cameraNotice
A tiny grayscale copy of each frame is compared to the last. No change, no work. IP cameras with a mic can also listen for sounds.
idle CPU ~5%Identify
On motion, an OpenVINO model checks for people, cars, trucks, bikes, cats and dogs; a YAMNet model listens for glass breaking, shouting and knocking.
~10 ms on Intel iGPUTell you
A snapshot goes to your phone on Telegram and as a lock-screen push. A short video clip of the whole visit follows right after.
per-label cooldownMore than motion.
A motion detector texts you every time a headlight sweeps by. PineSentry understands what's happening on your property — and stays quiet about everything that isn't worth waking you for.
Packages
Draw a zone on the porch and PineSentry watches it through each visitor: 📦 package left when one arrives, 🚨 PACKAGE TAKEN when a later visit takes it. Shows what's waiting, with an "I picked it up" button.
Sounds
IP cameras with a mic can listen for glass breaking, shouting, knocking, alarms and more — classified on-device, on top of the video. The sound itself is never recorded or sent anywhere.
Tamper
A covered, sprayed or blocked lens, or a camera knocked out of position, gets 🚨 VIEW BLOCKED or CAMERA MOVED — with a before-and-after picture — and an all-clear when it's back.
Visits, not floods
One arrival is one visit, across every camera: the first thing it sees alerts, repeats are grouped, and a new person or sound still gets through. Each visit gets a short video clip, sent as a reply.
Parked cars stay quiet
PineSentry remembers the car, bike or raccoon that's always in view and only alerts when something new shows up. People are never quieted. Draw alert zones to ignore the street entirely.
Who's home
Link household phones over Tailscale — no extra app, no location sharing — and alerts get context: "probably Sam arriving", "nobody's home", or an optional guard while everyone's out.
On duty when you want. Off when you don't.
Guard 24/7, or only during your windows: overnight, while you're at work, all weekend. Outside them PineSentry actually sleeps. The camera is released, the LED goes dark, and nothing is watched or saved.
Guard. Watching, detecting, alerting — with live vitals: checks per second, time since the last frame, today's counts. Hold it on for an hour, four hours, or until you say so.
Sleep. Camera released, streams disconnected, LED off. Nothing watched, nothing saved.
Peek. Want a look while it's asleep? Open the live view. It wakes for you, without detection, and goes back to sleep about ten seconds after you leave.
Guard mode
Guarding · scheduleEverything from your phone. Nothing from the internet.
A PIN-locked web dashboard served by the same box. Add it to your home screen and it opens like an app. Every setting applies on the next frame, so there's nothing to restart.
Live
Every camera with a HUD, a thumbnail strip for switching, guard mode with live vitals, packages waiting, snapshot, test alert, snooze, and a 24-hour activity chart.
Events
One card per visit — snapshots, length, clip — grouped by day. Filter by person, car, sound, package or camera, then step through it, download or delete.
Cameras
Add USB or IP cameras, find cameras on your network, test the connection before saving, set alert and package zones. If DHCP moves a camera, PineSentry finds it at its new address.
Detection
Guard Hours, confidence, motion sensitivity, cooldown, which labels, still-there alerts, packages, sounds, tamper. Applies on the next frame — nothing to restart.
Access
One PIN per person, admins and viewers, the household list that powers who's-home, and every signed-in device with its own sign-out button.
System
Health, counters, storage used. Retention and cleanup, a check-in link for a watchdog service, restart with one tap. After a power cut it tells you it was down.
Home-screen app
Install it on iPhone or Android. Full-screen, its own icon, its own login — and new alerts drop in as banners while it's open.
Lock-screen push
Real notifications to your phone's lock screen and watch, alongside Telegram. Each device picks its own kinds and cameras; a package theft stays up until dismissed.
Offline & outages
A camera that stops sending gets a "camera offline" alert, then a "back online" photo. If PineSentry itself goes down, it says so when it returns — and can ping a free watchdog while it can't.
Admins full control
Change settings, manage people, pause alerts, hold Guard or Sleep, delete footage.
Viewers watch only
Live view, peek, and browse events. Good for the rest of the household. Enforced on the server, not just hidden in the UI.
Your porch. Your network. Nobody else's.
Cloud cameras send your front door to someone's server and then charge you monthly to see it. PineSentry keeps everything on your own machine. The only things that leave are the alerts you asked for.
Footage stays home
Snapshots, visit clips and the event log live on your disk, with automatic cleanup after the number of days you pick.
AI runs locally
Detection and sound recognition happen on your own hardware. No frames are uploaded for analysis, ever — and no audio is ever recorded or stored.
LAN + Tailscale only
The dashboard is for your home network and your private tailnet. No port forwarding, no public URL, ever.
Locked properly
PINs are hashed, wrong guesses trigger a lockout, and removing someone signs them out instantly. Phone alerts are encrypted end to end — push services deliver them but can't read them.
Probably stuff you already have.
An always-on PC
Linux, macOS or Windows with Docker. An Intel iGPU accelerates detection, but the CPU works too — an old office mini PC is perfect.
A camera or three
Any USB webcam that works on your OS, or any RTSP IP camera — Tapo, ONVIF, you name it. IP cameras can listen for sounds too.
A Telegram bot
Free, two minutes with BotFather. Alerts reach Telegram and, over Tailscale's HTTPS, your phone's lock screen.
Tailscale (optional)
For the dashboard away from home without exposing it — and for lock-screen push and the who's-home household feature.
Honest note on night vision: detection is excellent in daylight and decent at night. Most webcams have no infrared, so leaving the porch light on helps a lot. The install guide ships with the repo.
Built on OpenVINO and OpenCV, with the detection model, the YAMNet sound model and their runtimes borrowed from the Frigate project's container image. Thanks to everyone behind it.
Open source is coming soon.
We're polishing PineSentry for its public release. It'll be free to run on your own hardware, like the rest of Pine.
The porch is watched. 🌙