Unblink

Unblink is an open-source camera monitoring application from zapdos-labs, published under the AGPL-3.0 license. It connects local cameras to a publicly reachable server through a private node and applies a vision language model to analyze video frames. Users can chat with their camera feeds and search recorded frames in natural language.

What It Is

Unblink is a camera monitoring and NVR-style system built around a vision language model. According to the README, it uses Qwen3-VL for frame analysis and summarization, offers a chat interface for natural language interaction with camera feeds, and supports searching recorded frames using natural language.

How the Relay-Node Architecture Works

The system has three main parts. A server is publicly reachable, manages nodes, handles authentication, and stores configuration. A node runs inside your own network as a private proxy and forwards traffic to local cameras over RTSP or MJPEG. The frontend is built with SolidJS, TypeScript, Vite and Ark UI, the database is PostgreSQL, and go2rtc handles RTSP and WebRTC video.

Setup Path

The node can be run from prebuilt unblink-node archives for Linux and Windows (x86_64 and ARM64) from GitHub Releases, or installed from source with the Go toolchain. On first run, the user authorizes the node by opening a displayed URL in a browser. A Render deploy button is provided for hosting the server, and a make-based development workflow with an environment file is documented for contributors.