dancam

dancam is a do-it-yourself, iPhone-only dashcam. A Raspberry Pi camera unit records safely to its own microSD card, the iPhone app owns the product experience, and CarPlay provides a constrained voice, status, and control surface.

The system

• Camera unit (raspi/) -- captures, encodes, and stores footage locally, then serves status, preview, and requested clips over its direct Wi-Fi network.
• iPhone app (app/) -- controls recording, shows live preview, browses and pulls clips, manages settings, and permanently owns incident footage.
• CarPlay integration -- lives inside the app and provides voice control, automatic start/stop, status, and alerts. Live video stays on the phone.

The Pi is deliberately narrow and reliable; the app is the brains. Wi-Fi is never part of the recording path. Read the system overview for the full architecture and cross-cutting principles.

Documentation

Browse the documentation book locally:

just docs-serve

just docs-build builds the book and checks its links. Useful entry points:

• Roadmap -- current build sequence and Icebox.
• Hardware -- selected parts and physical constraints.
• Pi setup runbook -- flash, provision, deploy, verify, and operate the camera unit.
• App-Pi transport boundary -- local API, events, preview, clip pull, Wi-Fi pinning, and trust.
• Pi recording and storage -- capture durability and the footage ring.
• App architecture and incidents -- product state and permanent evidence.

Developer and agent conventions start in AGENTS.md, with focused guidance in app/AGENTS.md and raspi/AGENTS.md.

Repository layout

dancam/
  docs/                  mdBook source: overview, design, setup, and research
  contract/events/       canonical shared event bodies and SSE framing
  app/                   Swift/UIKit iPhone app
  raspi/                 Pi camera owner, Rust service, and provisioning
  references/            gitignored, pinned upstream source clones
  Justfile               common build, test, docs, and deploy tasks