
Show HN: Turn any device with a browser into a security camera - geoffchan23
https://uview.io/
======
geoffchan23
We are two developers from Toronto who couldn't find a decent and cheap
solution to monitor our kids/pets through the browser. We originally started
this project because we thought it would be a great opportunity to learn and
build something that could be useful to us. As we dove deeper we realized that
perhaps others would find it useful as well, so we turned it into a product.

We decided to take a web first approach rather than a mobile app first
approach for a few reasons:

1) We are web developers so it's what we know 2) Web browsers are ubiquitous,
meaning users could still access our app on mobile devices via browser or PWA
(more on that later) 3) People spend the majority of their time on computers,
whether for work, study, or leisure. So it makes sense to us to be able to
easily monitor from your computer. 4) We think the web is cool (See reason 1)

Our goals were to: 1) Make it possible for anyone to sign up and create a
security camera 2) Not require any hardware purchase 3) Not require any
application install 4) Put our old devices to good use rather than end up in
land fills!

We wanted to make UView available as a mobile app as well so we converted it
into a mobile app by turning it into a PWA (Progressive Web App). You can
install it on Android using the install button, however iOS users will have to
select the “Add to home screen” button in the browser.

We would appreciate any comments and feedback!

~~~
pgt
Nice job! Some feedback:

1\. Ditch the two pulsing animations. I tried to click on the pulsing
animation top-left and nothing happened.

2\. The logo is hard to read. Consider simplifying your logo, but keeping the
flashing red record icon on home page.

3\. Keep content above the field. I didn't know I could scroll.

4\. Don't make me sign up to try it. Why can't it show my webcam feed on the
home page? At least defer sign up after you've given me a link that will let
me broadcast my feed, then I can sign up on my phone.

5\. The flashing recording icon is distracting after the initial "I get it,"
e.g. on the register page.

6\. Be more up-front about T&C on your access to the feed.

7\. Nowhere on the site does it say, "Why do I need this?" Said what you said
in your post here on your website. "Hey, I'm Geoff. I wanted to keep an eye on
my kids & my pets, so I made uView to save money on a camera, now you can save
too! Here, give it a try: [Request Webcam Permission]"

8\. Hard to read the features with the pulsing thing.

9\. The weight of multiple call to actions conflict: Register, Login and "Try
Free Now" all feel equally heavy.

10\. Hard to read centered text on privacy policy:
[https://www.uview.io/privacy](https://www.uview.io/privacy) \- also, put
Privacy as a main nav link.

11\. Consider making it free for 5 minutes, then you have to keep clicking to
refresh. Or, an ad-driven business model where you show highly-relevant ads
overlaid in the feed, since you know the person using it is interested in
security.

Good luck!

edit: @dang, pleeease can we get Markdown-style list formatting? :)

~~~
excalibur
> 4\. Don't make me sign up to try it. Why can't it show my webcam feed on the
> home page?

I would actually recommend against that. If the user gets prompted for camera
access the moment they reach your webpage, it will turn most people off
immediately. They need to click "yes I want to try this" before they get the
security prompt, it needs to be asking for permission to do something THEY
initiated.

~~~
gffrd
… additionally, you have the burden of proving to the user that you’re worthy
of trust before asking for something like this. Otherwise, this could come
across as malicious.

I mean, my first thought when I read the headline was "Directly through the
browser? Is that even safe?" … so I would expect the website to tread lightly,
anticipating that there are a lot of security concerns when it comes to piping
personal video around the world and addressing a lot of that up front.

------
pvg
There's a combination of overselling and vagueness on the site that add up to
an _appearance_ of sketchiness that you were probably hoping to avoid. Couple
of things that poked me in the eye:

If you have a trial and a real sub, calling the sub 'Pro' sounds silly and
unserious, as does saying it has 'priority' support. Priority over what?

There's a lot of talk about privacy being important but the most important
question - does the service have access to my video feeds, does it store them,
for how long, etc, is not answered straightforwardly anywhere that I saw.
Saying things like 'highly encrypted' is a slightly chiller version of the old
'military-grade encryption' and equally uninformative.

The privacy policy is vague and offers no notification of changes while at the
same time assuring you your email address can be used for promotion.

I realize a lot of this stuff comes from standard-ish templates but if you're
selling something mildly sensitive you probably want to go through the
materials with a fine-toothed comb for details and tone.

~~~
geoffchan23
Sketchiness is definitely something we are trying to avoid :) Not trying to
make excuses, but we are developers, so we know that creating content and
communication is not our strong suit. Feedback like yours is really valuable
to us, so thank you!

------
anais9
This is slick, although I think you might have more luck with a pricing model
like [https://alfred.camera](https://alfred.camera) (turns any smartphone into
a security/pet/baby camera), i.e. unlimited free use but a subscription
required for HD viewing, recording, and unlimited device count. I was all set
to try it out to supplement my current setup (and likely convert to a
subscribing customer) but I tend to be turned off by trials.

~~~
mdrzn
They actually never write the pricing anywhere, I've even read the FAQ to see
how much is for the Pro and the Premium, and it's not there.

~~~
mceachen
Yeah, it's surprisingly well-hidden. There are references in their forum.
[https://alfred.camera/forum/t/alfred-premium-alfred-plus-
unl...](https://alfred.camera/forum/t/alfred-premium-alfred-plus-unlock-
exclusive-features/156511/7)

It's $4/mo for "premium" for US customers
([https://alfred.camera/forum/t/alfred-premium-alfred-plus-
unl...](https://alfred.camera/forum/t/alfred-premium-alfred-plus-unlock-
exclusive-features/156511#heading--premium)) and some one-time amount for
"plus" (which just disables ads).

FWIW, I have no affiliation with Alfred, although I tried their app several
years ago (and uninstalled due to the video surveillance being uploaded to
random servers in other countries).

------
gnicholas
The pricing on this is tough. Wyze cameras are $20, whereas this is $5/mo. If
I anticipate having an ongoing need, I'll just by a Wyze camera (which also
has infrared). Just my 2¢, as a guy who has wondered about whether a service
like this existed in the past. Maybe consider offering a lower tier
($10/annually?) for just one camera?

~~~
kimjongtrill
not only that but if you are hacky enough you can cobble together a cheaper
solutions with some cameras, a raspberry pi (or similar small cheap machine),
and motion ( [https://motion-project.github.io/](https://motion-
project.github.io/) )

~~~
millzlane
YAWCAM (yet another webcam software) has always worked for me.
[https://www.yawcam.com/](https://www.yawcam.com/)

------
GhostVII
This is actually exactly what I was looking for a couple months ago. Would be
great if there was some feature to automatically record movement, didn't see
it on the site. Not sure about the security section though

> All of our services are managed in-house bringing you maximum privacy.

Having the services managed in house actually gives me less confidence, since
uview has no reputation associated with it. I would be more convinced with
some kind of explanation of how the video connection is made secure - what
kind of encryption is there, what keeps uview from just spying on my video
feed (I suspect not much but don't really know), etc.

~~~
geoffchan23
We decided not to include video recording in our initial launch. We wanted to
put a focus on privacy first. The moment that we record and store video
somewhere we are creating a potential disconnect in privacy. This is a weighty
responsibility that we are taking very seriously. If/when we provide this
feature, we want to implement it in a way that is safest for our customers and
the integrity of their privacy.

Thanks for the feedback about privacy. We'll be working on some messaging to
communicate how and why UView is secure and private and to provide more
transparency into how our platform works.

~~~
netsharc
I wonder if the browser can do continuous recording to disk, I know Mega
(mega.nz) does some sort of magic with client-side JS so it's not the browser
just writing bytes it's getting from the HTTP connection, it's writing bytes
to disk given to it by the JS. If the browser doesn't know how big the HTTP
download is, it just writes and writes to disk, I wonder if that's possible
with the fancy HTML5 save-to-disk.

~~~
mcjord
This is something we are also investigating. Our goal is to have recording
happen on the device, and save directly to the device. We have made some great
breakthroughs with this but are still in the R&D phase. This is our ideal
solution, though.

------
mason55
FYI, noticed a typo in the "Features" section

> _Get notified when something movement is detected on your video feed._

Probably want to remove the word "something"

Also, the super light colored "Available on supported Android devices" seems
like a recipe for pissed off customers. If it's something I care enough about
to prevent me from signing up then it's not like I'll notice it later and say
"oh well, what a great service." I'm just going to be mad. Feels very
deceptive.

~~~
mcjord
Great catch! We'll also work on communicating the native notification support
more transparently. Unfortunately this is a limitation on iOS devices and the
Safari browser. Browser based native notification support is still in its
infancy for Apple, likely due to the pushback against PWAs as well as to
combat potential notification abuse. Thanks for your feedback.

------
z3t4
You got a good product with a decent market size, skip the free trail, and
start selling, help people set it up if needed. Dont add more features until
you have a bunch of customers and know your market. Make it possible for
customers to create view links so that your customers will help you get more
customers.

~~~
geoffchan23
Thank you!

------
shankspeaks
Do you have any recommendation for minimum sys requirements of hardware to
effectively run this full-time? Considering the number of old Android mobiles
I have sitting around gathering dust, this is a great idea to tinker with.

BTW your verification email is landing up in spam in Gmail.

~~~
geoffchan23
We don't have minimum system requirements just yet. I can tell you that we've
tested it on iPhone 6 with iOS 12 and a Samsung S4 running the latest OS
possible on it. We're still trying to put together a more comprehensive list.

Thanks for the heads up about the verification email!

------
WMCRUN
I feel like this has the potential to be misused unless it is clear when the
device is in camera mode. I haven’t installed this so I’m admittedly
unqualified to comment on whether that’s true, but please don’t give people a
DIY NSA capability

------
jaclaz
Only as a note, I tried your site on an (admittedly old, deprecated and what
not) XP laptop and couldn't even load your site.

Tried with Opera, Chrome (Iron browser) and QTweb.

I can get to it with Basilisk (which is an experimental, modded and alpha/beta
level browser derived from Firefox).

I believe that you should provide:

1) a "simplified" site accessible with _any_ (including old) browsers/OS

2) a list of the browsers/OS's actually tested and working with the service

Right now, it seems to me that most of the (cheap as myself) people interested
in re-using old (even very old) hardware they have handy as per your main
points are cut out.

------
gpm
Does the video touch your servers? Or does it stream directly from the device
with the camera to the person watching it?

~~~
mcjord
Great question! In 85-90% of cases, the two devices are communicating directly
through a STUN connection and do not require any middleman. In the other
10-15% (which is normally due to the device being behind NAT), the connection
has to be facilitated through a TURN connection. We do not have any internal
visibility to these data streams.

------
bufferoverflow
I had the same idea, but for human detection with the free Yolo. As most of
security is about detecting humans where they shouldn't be. Simple motion
detection is nearly useless - any cat or a bird will trigger it, or even
branches moving in the wind.

------
FillardMillmore
This looks really cool! The notifications for movement detected is a plus but
is there any way to customize that in a way that notifications wouldn't get
pushed every time the cat decides to jump up on the couch?

~~~
geoffchan23
Thanks! Yes, you can customize notifications per device so that you aren't
bombarded with notifications. We have sensitivity settings in each cameras
settings menu, which can help prevent this.

Side note: The motion detection happens directly on your device. We don't
process frames or video streams on our servers in order to provide you with
the most privacy that we possibly can.

~~~
Sohcahtoa82
> We don't process frames or video streams on our servers in order to provide
> you with the most privacy that we possibly can.

A side benefit for you that I imagine you already thought of is that it
greatly reduces the amount of processing power you have to pay for to run the
service.

~~~
geoffchan23
It's just the two of us and we're completely bootstrapped :) so yes, this is
definitely one of our motives.

------
tdubhro1
I just get a "The camera has failed to load" message, and the link to the
"Please see our faq for reasons why" is just a link to the homepage, not any
faq.

~~~
geoffchan23
Sorry about that! The link it should have brought you to is
[https://uview.io/faq](https://uview.io/faq). We'll make sure to fix the link,
thanks for catching that! If you are still having problems setting up a
camera, please make sure that you have allowed video/audio streaming through
your browser. If you have declined this for our site before then you will not
be able to use our application.

------
aldoushuxley001
I would consider using this, but I'd likely only use it for 1 camera, as such
$5 a month is untenable. You should consider a lower tier payment option.

------
leowoo91
Does it feature hiding the green light next to the camera?

~~~
jsjohnst
Not possible to do on an Apple device built since 2009, unless you consider
low tech solutions like black tape.

------
brian_herman__
This is a great idea!

~~~
geoffchan23
Thanks!

