SecureHome

From AI doorbells to behavior-based CCTV — this is the future of smart home security. Meet SecureHome.

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Inspiration

Recently, there was a sudden break-in in our community.
Like most people, our first instinct was to look for CCTV cameras and smart doorbells.

But that’s when we realized something surprising — even the most expensive systems would only show us what already happened, not help prevent it.

Smart doorbells and home security systems today are expensive, limited, and often not truly “smart.”
Commercial options cost anywhere from ₹10,000 to ₹25,000, yet still fail to recognize who is at the door, warn parents about unsafe situations, or detect suspicious behaviour around the house.

Traditional CCTV systems are even worse — they either record endlessly with zero intelligence or trigger basic motion alerts for everything, offering no understanding of context, intent, or risk.

We wanted to change this.
Instead of building another notification system, we built something that understands, responds, and prevents.

What it does

SecureHome transforms a house into an intelligent, proactive, and conversational security system.

  • Detects and identifies known vs unknown visitors
  • Interacts with visitors autonomously using an AI-powered smart doorbell
  • Enables two-way communication between homeowner and visitor
  • Detects suspicious behaviour like loitering, crawling, crouching, and climbing
  • Sends real-time alerts, images, and video clips via Telegram
  • Tracks door activity with child-safety alerts and escalation every 5 minutes
  • Simulates human presence by intelligently controlling lights at night to deter intrusions
  • Maintains structured visitor and activity logs
  • Supports natural-language queries like:
    Who came today?
    Why was someone at the door at 3 PM?

How we built it

  • Computer Vision: YOLOv8 + OpenCV for detection and behaviour analysis
  • Backend: Node.js with REST APIs
  • Database: Structured logs for visitors and events
  • Hardware: ESP modules for door sensors and lighting control
  • AI Doorbell: Local STT + TTS for offline interaction
  • Alerts: Telegram bot integration for real-time updates
  • Frontend: Web interface for monitoring and control

Challenges we ran into

Securing user data & authentication
Implementing hashed passwords, secure tokens, and protected APIs for safe access control.

Improving model accuracy in real-world conditions
Handling low light, side angles, and complex behaviours using OpenCV preprocessing and a custom Suspicion Index.

Two-way voice communication
Optimizing audio encoding and buffering for smooth, low-latency communication.

Multi-mode safety logic
Synchronizing child safety, presence simulation, sensors, and alerts using a rule-based system.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Built a fully integrated smart home security system
  • Achieved real-time behaviour-based threat detection
  • Designed a practical child-safety alert system with escalation
  • Implemented presence simulation to prevent intrusions
  • Enabled offline AI-based visitor interaction
  • Created a system that is both powerful and affordable

What we learned

  • Real-world systems require reliability over just accuracy
  • Integrating AI + hardware + backend is non-trivial but powerful
  • Security must be human-centric, not just feature-heavy
  • Good systems focus on prevention, not just detection

What's next for SecureHome

  • Improve model accuracy with more diverse datasets
  • Develop a dedicated mobile app
  • Expand behaviour detection (group activity, anomaly detection)
  • Enhance AI assistant with deeper contextual understanding
  • Scale for apartments and gated communities
  • Integrate with additional IoT devices

In Summary

SecureHome reimagines home security as an AI-powered guardian.

It doesn’t just record events —
it understands them, responds intelligently, and prevents escalation before something goes wrong.

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