The lab

A doorbell with no cloud in it

A video doorbell with two-way audio that never talks to anyone else's server. A Pi Zero 2 W, go2rtc bridging RTSP to WebRTC, MQTT into Home Assistant, and systemd units holding it up. The point was not saving the subscription. It was that the front door should not depend on a company staying solvent.

Discipline
Hardware & Firmware
Year
2026
Stack
Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W · go2rtc · WebRTC · MQTT · systemd

The commercial version of this works well right up until the vendor changes their mind about what you pay monthly, or shuts the service down.

So: a Pi Zero 2 W, go2rtc to bridge the camera's RTSP to WebRTC so a browser can show it with low latency, two-way audio, and MQTT so the rest of the house knows someone is at the door. Everything is a systemd unit with a documented restart path, because a doorbell that needs a person to fix it is not a doorbell.

Open to interesting problems

Got something
that needs building?

hello@louisreed.co.uk