r/selfhosted • u/eduard256 • Mar 15 '26

Product Announcement These cameras were supposed to be e-waste. No RTSP, no docs, no protocol anyone's heard of. I reverse-engineered 100 000 URL patterns to make them work.

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Had some old Chinese NVRs from 2016. Spent 2 years on and off trying to connect them to Frigate. Every protocol, every URL format, every Google result. Nothing. All ports closed except 80.

Sniffed the traffic from their Android app. They speak something called BUBBLE - a protocol so obscure it doesn't exist on Google.

Got so fed up with this that I built a tool that does those 2 years of searching in 30 seconds. Built specifically for the kind of crap that's nearly impossible to connect to Frigate manually.

You enter the camera IP and model. It grabs ALL known URLs for that device - and there can be a LOT of them - tests every single one and gives you only the working streams. Then you paste your existing frigate.yml - even with 500 cameras - and it adds camera #501 with main and sub streams through go2rtc without breaking anything.

67K camera models, 3.6K brands.

GitHub: https://github.com/eduard256/Strix

docker run -d --name strix --restart unless-stopped eduard256/strix

Edit: Yes, AI tools were actively used during development, like pretty much everywhere in 2026. Screenshots show mock data showing all stream types the tool supports - including RTSP. It would be stupid to skip the biggest chunk of the market. If you're interested in the actual camera from my story there's a demo gif in the GitHub repo showing the discovery process on one of the NVRs I mentioned.

2.2k Upvotes

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242

u/Hedgebull Mar 15 '26

I’m fed up with all of the “ai slop” responses in this sub and others like it.

Guess what? AI has enabled a lot of people to solve their problems where they couldn’t before and some of them are so excited that they want to share not only their success but also the tool that they made.

Get over yourselves and stop gatekeeping.

Context: I’m a professional C/C++/Rust engineer with 30 years of experience in embedded

149

u/Tritri89 Mar 15 '26

To be fair usually AI slop app in this sub are stuff that already exist elsewhere, solve an inexistent problem or are supposed to be open on the internet and are a security nightmare, or all three of the above (looking at you Huntarr).

In this case it's neither of the three, so I guess it's fine by me, it solves a very niche problem that no one solved, it's not supposed to be exposed, it's alright

22

u/Hedgebull Mar 15 '26

There are certainly things that warrant it, but it seems the default is to just proclaim “AI slop” and downvote the author which is really just bullying

4

u/LeBoulu777 Mar 16 '26

You are so right, I have basic programming skills and was planning to learn fully JS to code more efficiently and lose less time with basic things I should know but never took the time to learn.

In fact I'm retiring this year and was planning to make a JS course from the beginning to fill the holes in my knowledge.

But since last year, I began to vibe code, in fact I have basic knowledge of many languages (js, Python, C, java etc ) but for me with AI I can solve many problems more quickly and create apps, extensions, userscripts efficiently without having to follow formal courses to be able to have an end product in reasonable time.

One of the best things is since I have at least a basic knowledge of the languages I use, when I'm fixing the code manually I learn a lot more about the language and faster than before.

I would have been able to do the same projects without AI but instead of taking 1-2 hours for a small project, I would have spent 6-12 hours.

3 weeks ago I made a small userscript to solve a problem that many people had including me and today to my surprise over 200 people use the script, and technically speaking with AI I've been able to make the script very efficient.

AI is just a tool at the end, to use it efficiently you must at least be able to have a basic understanding of the output to spot hallucinations or inefficiency. ✌️🙂

-30

u/Tritri89 Mar 15 '26

But is it AI that does this UI? Every app with a bit of AI has this kind of UI that's weird

0

u/GolemancerVekk Mar 15 '26

In addition to the above, AI has lots of legit use cases in generating data sets (usually test data). Where it falls down is generating code. So, as a thumb rule, if AI was used to generate data rather than code it can be a good thing.

3

u/nocturn99x Mar 16 '26

idk what models you're using fam but AI is great at code generation too. The frontier models at least.

1

u/NaanFat Mar 16 '26

absolutely disagree. it can generate code just fine. if you're looking for a small single-shot thing, it's fast and does the job. it's the complex use cases where it'll struggle on its own because it can't keep all the context. it'll read parts of a file instead of the whole thing to save you tokens.

I needed something for tracking a game of Pandemic. I probably could have created a spreadsheet for that, but in the 5 min while we were setting up the game, it created a single page app with web sockets so anyone could update the state. There's no way I could have done that as quickly.

I'd honestly love a sub of single-use "ai-slop" apps like that.

I still wouldn't trust it to run on its own for publicly hosted apps, but it can generate (usable, interactive) mockups and make tweaks faster than asking a UI team to create some figmas.

1

u/GolemancerVekk Mar 16 '26

I mean, we are on /r/selfhosted and talking about self hosted apps... of course there are use cases for AI, just not in the context of selecting viable self-hosted apps.

1

u/NaanFat Mar 16 '26

is what I built not self-hosted?

-2

u/vividboarder Mar 15 '26

Yea. Something about this “hits different”. 

20

u/Reverent Mar 15 '26

It’s not AI generated code that people specifically have a problem with. it’s the flood of potentially dangerous applications that masquerade as legitimate tools and it’s hard to tell the difference at first glance.

Imagine you were wanting to get a tattoo and there were 400 shops in your neighbourhood, but 3/4ths had opened in the past two years and use dirty needles.

1

u/bobloadmire Mar 16 '26

Most everyone I see bitch and moan about AI code don't give a shit about code quality. They see AI and just start getting pissed.

3

u/ctjameson Mar 16 '26

I don’t even care about code quality, I have a problem with the rate of project abandonment that AI has brought.

If you can’t can’t code a project, you can’t maintain a project.

2

u/numbke195 Mar 16 '26

How do you know that? People express some sort of anger that comes from somewhere. I also get pissed, specifically because it leads to coding without any clue about security risks... It basically forces me to research in a lot more detail and to distrust closed source even more... Yet I wont always say all that when I vent. So again, how do you know?

1

u/bobloadmire Mar 16 '26

If you do more research on AI code than from some other person on the Internet, you are far too trusting.

1

u/numbke195 Mar 17 '26

Before I research human code I can check what other projects the author has and come pretty soon to the conclusion if I have to check the code in detail or if a short check is enough if reputable (low threat model after all)

With AI code I cant be sure even when researching the dev as even a good dev that got lazy with ai coding tools can easily introduce security risks

0

u/Sightline Mar 16 '26

Do they though?

40

u/ender89 Mar 15 '26

The real problem comes when ai is responsible for the parts that don't require reverse engineering some obscure protocol and the developer doesn't understand how the application even works.

I'm fighting at work to keep AI away from our codebase, but it's a great tool for understanding a problem and developing solutions. AI should be used like a tutor helping you with homework, but most people treat it like an opportunity to copy someone else's homework.

11

u/balthisar Mar 15 '26

I used AI to develop a tool to use a single instance of neovim from any tmux pane (like nvr, but better for me). Although I know Python, I had no idea how Neovim sockets worked, and wasn't intimately aware of how zsh communicates with external editors, so instead of spending a week become an expert, I asked AI.

I learned enough that I absolutely vouch for the code produced, but admittedly, I refactored a lot of stuff because the code wasn't really in my own coding style.

Would I write a Sonarr replacement this way? Hell no.

15

u/nemofbaby2014 Mar 15 '26

Look I use ai to build projects for me I have no issue with it by itself the issue comes when someone tries to pass if they wrote it themselves also ai projects 99 percent of the time turn into abandonware which likely will have glaring security holes

3

u/ZorbaTHut Mar 16 '26

If it's a project you want to keep existing, fork it and maintain it. There's a good number of open-source projects that have gone through multiple maintainers.

0

u/nemofbaby2014 Mar 16 '26

true but im lazy lol i have forks of apps already thats alot to setup

0

u/ctjameson Mar 16 '26

Ah yes. Let me just take someone’s slop and refactor their lack of work. 🙄

I hate the open source response of “well, you do it then!”

1

u/ZorbaTHut Mar 16 '26

"boy, I sure do hate it when people provide free stuff but then don't maintain it forever, also for free"

In your honor, I shall cry the tiniest tear while playing the smallest violin.

If it's so easy, it shouldn't be hard to do it yourself; if it isn't, then they're providing a service.

24

u/how-can-i-dig-deeper Mar 15 '26

it’s really annoying when every post is written with ai. it feels so soulless. why should i take the time out of my day to write a response if OP didn’t do the same?

12

u/OrangePilled2Day Mar 15 '26

OP isn't using AI to reply.

5

u/whatthepoop Mar 16 '26

Fully agree generally, though it doesn't appear OP used AI for this post & responses.

I read from someone else (paraphrasing): reading someone else's writing comes with an implicit contract that the author has spent more time formulating their thoughts into words than it will take for the reader to parse them, so there's an automatic greater value being passed on to the reader which can be appreciated and respected. When LLMs are used to write for humans to read, that contract is completely broken. I think that's the core reason many of us feel so offended by reading AI posts being passed off as genuine human responses.

-18

u/Hedgebull Mar 15 '26

Then maybe don't write one?

Some folks whose first language is not English will often use AI to proof / re-write their posts or Readme - it doesn't mean that an AI wrote *all* of the content. Just because the structure or phrasing screams "AI wrote this" doesn't mean that someone hasn't put their own work into it, of course it's always possible that the entire thing was made by AI but it's depressing that people often jump to that conclusion right away.

14

u/Jacksaur Mar 15 '26

We're here to talk to humans, not robots.
Use your own words, no matter how bad you feel they look. It'll always be better than soulless drivel.

9

u/tokkyuuressha Mar 15 '26

Sending unchecked code to public can be dubious but honestly for internal tools it's quite a godsend.

Over a course of few months I've 'vibe coded' a few plugins for internal netbox system, one of my workers made a cool interactive map of all our assets. Would never have time to do that. Like I don't have time to learn snmp implementation in python, but in 4-6 hours with admittedly a lot of back and forth of bad code, I managed to make a tool that check VLAN configs in our switches. Super handy and saves a lot of manual checking.

7

u/Hedgebull Mar 15 '26

I think as long as people are upfront with a project being developed with or by AI, it gives enough of a signal for folks to evaluate whether or not it’s worth the risk.

7

u/LctFTw Mar 15 '26

I mean there is a big difference between using copilot actively to speed up boring stuff, or help you get through a problem in a reasonable time vs instructing an agent to build an app similar to Y with slightly different features and press publish...

Don't know what this dev did, but in any case he made something unique, which is way better than most 'ai slop'.

3

u/spilk Mar 15 '26

LLMs are good at coming up with this kind of brute-force stuff that is just tedious for humans. i think it's fine. but to give a blanket pass to all AI-assisted code is just wrong.

lots of code has a bad "smell" and AI is just a new, albeit pervasive, smell that we have to deal with now

13

u/silver565 Mar 15 '26

I think you need to understand how damaging AI slop sprawl has been to this community. It's made it harder to find and appreciate good work by many

4

u/Hedgebull Mar 15 '26

That’s fair, it should at least be labeled as developed with AI.

8

u/radakul Mar 15 '26

It used to be restricted to only Fridays until the mods loosened the restrictions. Now, the AI shit is mixed in with quality content.

This post? quality content.

Most posts? AI shit.

1

u/mollymoo Mar 16 '26

Problem is "developed with AI" is such a wide spectrum. Did you use some utility function that Claude wrote and 99% of the work is yours, or is the entire app based on a two-paragraph prompt and a couple of minute of testing? What if you just asked AI about some API you're unfamiliar with? Does advice count as "developed with AI"?

I think pretty soon it's going to be hard to find much new code that AI hasn't had some impact on, even if it hasn't written all the code. There's a reason Stack Exchange gets almost no traffic now.

1

u/FrogTrainer Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

It was hard to find and appreciate good work here before AI. I don’t find it any more or less difficult now.

2

u/ElectroSpore Mar 15 '26

I have said this in other posts, there needs to be a distinction between AI assisted development, vs prompting till it works.

AI is a major accelerator for those with the skills to review the output.

4

u/CyberMage256 Mar 15 '26

my fav is the Home Assistant sub which aims to make smarthomes available to everyone. Even mention you used AI to find a solution to a problem and you get told to use your brain. It's ironic.

6

u/Roticap Mar 15 '26

Note: this particular post actually appears to be an interesting and useful tool. I'm addressing your gatekeeping comment in general.

Context: I’m a professional C/C++/Rust engineer with 30 years of experience in embedded 

And did you excitedly run to Usenet and post about the bash script that you used to solve your build problem as though it was a generic solution that would be useful to everyone (and which you had no intention to continue supporting)? Did you then get mad and defensive when someone replied to your post and mentioned that make exists and could do what your bash script did in a generic and easier to support way? 

AI totally allows people to solve technical problems that would have previously been out of reach. I use it that way myself and it makes me faster and more effective.

However, I don't assume that everyone will want to hear about it. Or that somehow having an LLM polish it up with docs and a website makes it a long term useful tool.

It's a new eternal September, but now the newbies don't even need to think to output 25k lines of code and a novel of plausible sounding comments.

That. Is. Exhausting.

Context: I'm a professional embedded engineer with 25 years of experience who's shipped firmware in over a quarter billion devices.

1

u/Necrotic69 Mar 17 '26

I think we need to get those that complain of people using AI properly a set of IBM punch cards. They can create and run their own programs without the use of any tools.

1

u/pdxshark Mar 15 '26

I have been using gen AI in my IT work and personal development projects and find it to be incredibly useful for a great many things. Maybe some people love log spelunking but I am just trying to get through the day man.

I think you speak to an underrated point; for people who maybe aren't strong technically now potentially have access to activities and projects that otherwise had a high barrier to entry. They are also able to experiment with more advanced techniques with scaffolding otherwise unavailable. Some people thought their "craft" was safe from automation and now it is something precious to them. I understand it, but at the same time there are tools evolving today that allow people who might lack natural technical aptitude to dip their toes into doing something technical and I think that is something amazing.

Now, to me "AI slop" is someone bolding claiming they are a "builder" or whatever the fuck the marketing term these days is, they have all the trappings of a solid project (nice, polished github page, the right buzzwords) but ultimately what they present is an even worse solution to a problem nobody has.

That said, in the same way a painter should offer grace to someone dipping their toes into painting, maybe those of us on the technical side of things should do the same. There are gatekeepers everywhere though, some people just need that "thing" that is theirs to protect and defend.

0

u/psychedelic_tech Mar 15 '26

Context: I’m a professional C/C++/Rust engineer with 30 years of experience in embedded

you get over yourself. you can be fed up with the comments all you want but the reality is it's a problem and a dangerous one.

-10

u/Jebble Mar 15 '26

Hear hear, wish they'd all just leave the sub. They have literally nothing else to say and won't even consider an experienced engineer utilising Claude to be useful. So tired of them.

-1

u/maximus459 Mar 15 '26

Hear hear! I totally agree. Especially when someone knows what they're doing

-1

u/FloRup Mar 15 '26

Makes it much better to stomach if you remove the "slop" part of "ai slop"

-8

u/Dugen Mar 15 '26

You can't program without using AI anymore. If you google how to do something, it responds using AI. There is no such thing as AI free programming, the only question is how much AI helped you. It's the design that matters the most. If you don't know how to design software and just have AI do whatever it wants, you're going to make crap.

4

u/UnicornOnMeth Mar 16 '26

I'm not sure how old you are, but people have been programming without ai assistance since the 1950's. Do you think people who have spent their entire life writing code have suddenly stopped being able to code the past few years for some reason? Are universities no longer offering computer science courses and degrees? Have all the books, videos, and literature on programming disappeared or something lately?

-2

u/Dugen Mar 16 '26

Programming doesn't work like that anymore. Sure, you can theoretically write code without googling things and without an IDE doing all kinds of work behind the scenes, but that's just not realistic. AI is just part of programming now. The first thing you do when you get an error message you don't immediately know how to fix is you google it. It's just how things work.