Helm

An award-winning security-focused monitoring application that assesses physiological threat indicators via camera input. Combines a Python GUI frontend with a C++ backend interfacing using the SmartSpectra SDK for real-time measurements (pulse, breathing, blood pressure, stress indicators).

Use cases: Smart doorbells, security cameras, access control systems.

Setup

Requirements

• Ubuntu 22.04 on WSL2
• FFmpeg on your Windows PATH
• SmartSpectra API key from physiology.presagetech.com
• Logitech Brio 4k 60 FPS webcam (support for other models coming soon)
• uv by astral-sh

Configuring in WSL

# Essential build tools
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y build-essential git lsb-release libcurl4-openssl-dev libssl-dev pkg-config libv4l-dev libgles2-mesa-dev libunwind-dev

# Install latest cmake
sudo apt remove --purge --auto-remove cmake
sudo apt install -y software-properties-common lsb-release wget gnupg
wget -O - https://apt.kitware.com/keys/kitware-archive-latest.asc 2>/dev/null | gpg --dearmor - | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/kitware.gpg >/dev/null
echo "deb https://apt.kitware.com/ubuntu/ $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kitware.list >/dev/null
sudo apt update
sudo apt install cmake

# Download the GPG key
curl -s "https://presage-security.github.io/PPA/KEY.gpg" | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/presage-technologies.gpg >/dev/null
# Copy the PPA list
sudo curl -s --compressed -o /etc/apt/sources.list.d/presage-technologies.list "https://presage-security.github.io/PPA/presage-technologies.list"
# Install/Upgrade the SDK
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libphysiologyedge-dev=2.0.4
sudo apt install libsmartspectra-dev=2.0.4

# At this point you may need to update your drivers, depending on the state of your webcam and stuff like that

.wslconfig

Create a file called .wslconfig in your Windows user directory ( C:\Users\<YourUsername>\.wslconfig ) with the following contents:

[wsl2]
networkingMode=mirrored

Python environment in Windows

# Install deps and setup venv
uv sync

# Set up API key
cp gui/example-settings.json gui/settings.json
echo "Configure your API key in gui/settings.json!"

Build & Run

Building the detection layer in WSL

cd src/build
cmake ..
make

Python runtime

uv run main.py

Press Ctrl+C to quit, or click the "Quit" button in the GUI.

Architecture

helm/
├── main.py                  # Python entry point (orchestrates backend + GUI)
├── lib/
│   ├── startup.py           # FFmpegStream + HelmBackend (Windows↔WSL communication)
│   ├── threat_eval.py       # ThreatDetector (vitals normalization, threat scoring)
│   └── threat_summary.py    # Claude AI-powered threat summaries
├── gui/
│   ├── app.py               # PySide6 MainWindow (camera feed, MediaPipe overlay)
│   ├── designer2.ui         # Qt Designer UI definition
│   └── settings.json        # API keys configuration
└── src/
    ├── main.cpp             # C++ SmartSpectra SDK integration (JSON output)
    └── CMakeLists.txt       # Build configuration

Data Flow

  Windows (Python)                     WSL2 (C++)
┌─────────────────┐                ┌─────────────────┐
│ main.py         │                │ helm_vitals     │
│   ↓             │  TCP stream    │   (main.cpp)    │
│ FFmpegStream ───┼───────────────►│   SmartSpectra  │
│   (startup.py)  │                │       ↓         │
│       ↓         │  JSON stdout   │   JSON output   │
│ HelmBackend ────┼◄───────────────┼─────────────────┘
│       ↓         │
│ MainWindow      │
│   (app.py)      │
└─────────────────┘

License

See LICENSE for details.