What if your IP cameras were programmable infrastructure, not just surveillance devices?

Varun Pratap Singh — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 16:55:41 +0000

I've been working on OpenNVR, an open-source project that started around IP cameras and NVR, but the bigger idea is to make camera infrastructure useful for building entirely new applications.

Most camera setups are designed around viewing and recording footage. But what if developers could use the same infrastructure to build their own computer vision applications, AI workflows, event-driven services, and automation systems?

That's the direction we're exploring with OpenNVR.

A few things we're working toward:

Open camera infrastructure — work with ONVIF-compatible IP cameras without being locked into a proprietary ecosystem.
Build your own applications — use APIs and an SDK-oriented approach to build services on top of camera streams and events.
Bring your own AI — integrate your own models and vision pipelines instead of being tied to a single vendor's AI.
Self-hosted and privacy-conscious — keep your camera infrastructure and data under your control.
Beyond traditional NVR — explore use cases ranging from security automation to custom vision applications and AI agents.

The interesting question for me is whether camera infrastructure can become something like a platform developers build on, rather than just another appliance they install.

We're still building and learning, and I'd genuinely appreciate feedback from people working on computer vision, self-hosted infrastructure, AI agents, or open-source systems.

GitHub: https://github.com/open-nvr/open-nvr
Website: https://www.opennvr.org

If the idea interests you, a GitHub star helps other developers discover the project. If it doesn't, tell me what we're missing — honest technical feedback is just as valuable.

DEV Community: Varun Pratap Singh

What if your IP cameras were programmable infrastructure, not just surveillance devices?