RoomieWatch

Privacy-first motion surveillance that runs on your laptop. Detects motion, captures snapshots, streams live — all local, no cloud.

Built because I don't trust my roommate.

Why

You move to a new city. You get a room with strangers who are yet to become friends. Getting a good roommate is blissful — but what if you don't? You want to know what happens in your room when you're away at work.

Cloud cameras send your footage to someone else's server. Cheap IP cams have known vulnerabilities. Most "smart" security wants a subscription. RoomieWatch runs entirely on your machine — your webcam, your disk, your network. Nothing leaves your laptop unless you explicitly set up remote access via Tailscale.

I hope you never need this package. But if you do — it works.

Features

• Motion detection — OpenCV-based frame diffing with configurable sensitivity
• Live dashboard — MJPEG stream + stats + recent captures in a dark-themed web UI
• Privacy-first — no cloud, no third-party servers, all data stays on your machine
• Remote access — E2E encrypted via Tailscale (or self-hosted with Headscale)
• Runs locked — keeps working when your screen is locked (macOS caffeinate)
• Auto-restart — launcher script recovers from crashes automatically
• Zero config — works out of the box with your laptop webcam

Install

pipx install roomiewatch

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/xghostient/roomiewatch.git
cd roomiewatch
pip install .

Quick Start

# Motion detection only — captures saved to ./roomiewatch_captures/
roomiewatch

# With live web dashboard
roomiewatch --stream

# Full setup — stream + prevent sleep
roomiewatch --stream --caffeinate

# Custom settings
roomiewatch --stream --port 9090 --sensitivity 5 --cooldown 10

Lock your screen (Ctrl+Cmd+Q) and leave. Do NOT close the lid.

Remote Access (Tailscale)

View your feed from anywhere on your phone — E2E encrypted, no middleman.

# On your machine
brew install tailscale
sudo brew services start tailscale
tailscale up

# Start roomiewatch (localhost only — not visible on your network)
roomiewatch --stream

# In another terminal, expose via Tailscale only
tailscale serve 8080

# Install Tailscale on your phone, sign in with the same account
# Open the Tailscale URL shown by `tailscale serve`

The stream never touches your local network — only devices signed into your Tailscale account can reach it.

Why Tailscale over Cloudflare Tunnel? Cloudflare terminates TLS at their edge — your images pass through their servers in plaintext. Tailscale is direct device-to-device WireGuard encryption. Nobody sees your footage.

For full self-hosted setup with zero third-party trust, use Headscale.

Launcher Script

For long-running sessions with auto-restart and sleep prevention:

chmod +x start_roomiewatch.sh
./start_roomiewatch.sh             # stream + Tailscale
./start_roomiewatch.sh --no-stream # motion detection only

CLI Options

How It Works

1. Captures frames from your webcam at ~15 FPS
2. Converts to grayscale, applies Gaussian blur
3. Computes absolute difference from previous frame
4. If changed pixels exceed the sensitivity threshold — saves a timestamped JPEG and logs the event
5. Flask serves a live MJPEG stream and a dashboard with stats and recent captures

Files Created

roomiewatch_captures/
├── motion_20260302_143022.jpg   # snapshots with timestamp overlay
├── motion_log.txt               # text log of all motion events
└── launcher.log                 # launcher/restart log

Troubleshooting

• Camera not opening — Grant Terminal camera access in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Camera
• Stream not loading — Check if port 8080 is in use: lsof -i :8080
• Too many false alerts — Increase sensitivity: roomiewatch --stream --sensitivity 5
• macOS sleeping — Don't close the lid. Use the launcher script which runs caffeinate

Requirements

• Python 3.9+
• A webcam
• macOS or Linux (Windows: untested but should work)

License

MIT