Though Apple’s HomeKit home automation platform has supported cameras for over a year, manufacturers have been slow to bring compatible devices to market. Learn how you can create your own HomeKit security camera for around $60 in this tutorial.
Other than HomeKit support, the one thing most compatible cameras have in common is a high price tag. To help alleviate potential sticker shock, we put together an extremely simple guide on how to create your own. About $60 and four easy steps are all that separate you from your own DIY HomeKit camera.
For this project, we are going to make our own HomeKit camera using a Raspberry Pi. It will essentially be plug-and-play, though you will need to answer a couple setup questions once you power up the camera. After you walk through the setup, you will be able to view live camera feeds while at home or away assuming you have some form of Home hub such as a HomePod or Apple TV.
Background information
This project was built using HomeBridge. HomeBridge is a lightweight server that runs on the Raspberry Pi and emulates the iOS HomeKit API, bringing support to your own projects or (via plugins) to products that don’t currently interface with HomeKit or Siri.
For those who like to really tinker, it isn’t especially difficult to install HomeBridge yourself. However, we wanted this project to be accessible for anyone, so we’ve provided our own custom disk image for you to use.
The disk image we provide will include a copy of Raspbian Lite (the Raspberry Pi’s operating system), the necessary plugins and components for HomeBridge, as well as a few customizations to make the experience better.
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