Guides, tutorials & notes.
Setup walkthroughs, camera-specific tutorials, and why keeping your footage yours matters.
Feed, Dash, Push — where each Calyston alert goes
Every Calyston alert rule has three switches — feed, dash, push — plus a zone and a cooldown. Here's exactly what each one does, and how to combine them so you see everything without being buzzed by anything.
ReadGet camera alerts on your phone, three ways — Telegram, ntfy or Discord
Calyston pushes detection alerts — with the snapshot — straight to your phone through Telegram, ntfy or a Discord channel. No vendor cloud, no monthly fee, no app lock-in. Here's the five-minute setup for each.
ReadRemote access in ten minutes: Calyston + Tailscale, step by step
The hands-on guide to reaching your cameras from anywhere — install Tailscale on the Calyston box and your phone, join the same private network, done. No port forwarding, no vendor relay, free for personal use on every Calyston tier.
ReadYour cameras become sensors for your whole home — Calyston + Home Assistant
Point Calyston at your MQTT broker — four fields, no YAML — and every camera shows up in Home Assistant as a device with motion, person, vehicle and animal sensors. Here's what appears, what you can build with it, and exactly how it works.
Read16 to 32 cameras with full AI — on an €80 used graphics card
Most AI camera systems push you to buy special hardware. Calyston runs its AI on the CPU you already have — and when you want more cameras or a sharper model, a cheap second-hand GPU does the rest. We measured it on an €80 GTX 1060. Here are the real numbers.
ReadA second check before anything on your NVR changes
Logging in once and then having full power over a system forever is how most software works — and it's a problem the moment someone else is at the keyboard. Here's how Calyston re-asks before destructive actions, and how you recover if you ever forget the password.
ReadWhat Calyston's AI actually detects — the object list, explained
Calyston has two layers of AI. A fast object detector that recognizes a fixed set of things — people, vehicles, animals — and a natural-language search that finds anything you can describe. Here's exactly what each one knows.
ReadWatch your cameras from anywhere — without opening a port or trusting a cloud
Remote access usually means either punching a hole in your firewall or handing your video to someone else's cloud. Calyston takes a third path — a private, encrypted tunnel straight to your own box.
ReadWhich cameras work with Calyston (and which don't)
A plain-English buyer's guide to camera compatibility for a self-hosted NVR — what to look for, what to avoid, and why cloud-locked cameras never work locally.
ReadWhy your camera footage should stay on your own machine
Most camera systems quietly ship your video to someone else's cloud. Here is why a self-hosted NVR keeps you in control — and what to look for.
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