Turn a Mac and its built-in FaceTime camera into a motion-activated security camera — no extra hardware. When motion is detected it saves timestamped snapshots locally, mirrors them to iCloud Drive, and pushes them to your phone in real time over a Telegram bot you can also command remotely.
Built for the travel / hotel-room case, but it's just a webcam motion monitor — home-office, front-door, workshop, and pet-cam cases work too.
Features
- 📷 Motion detection on the built-in FaceTime camera via OpenCV — no IP camera or Raspberry Pi
- ☁️ iCloud Drive mirroring to a fixed path (
iCloud Drive/mac-lookout/), so evidence is off-device even if the Mac walks out the door — independent of where you clone the repo - 📲 Telegram alerts + two-way control — instant photo push on motion, plus
/photo,/status,/pause,/resume,/say,/alarm - 🗣️ Voice intercom — play Telegram voice notes aloud in the room
- 🔒 Survives screen lock — runs under
caffeinate, keeps capturing while the display sleeps - ⏱️ Arming delay so you can leave without tripping it
- 🙂 Adaptive capture + face detection — dense capture up front to catch a face, then slows for long activity
- 💓 Heartbeat snapshot every 30 min so you know it's alive
Getting started
git clone https://github.com/ergut/mac-lookout.git
cd mac-lookout
./start.shstart.sh resolves Python, offers to auto-create the venv (if uv is present), runs preflight checks, and clearly warns about anything missing (OpenCV, ffmpeg, Telegram credentials, iCloud Drive). See the README for Telegram setup.