Run the hub on a Raspberry Pi

A Raspberry Pi makes a quiet, low-power hub that’s always on.

What you need

• A Raspberry Pi 5 or 4 (recommended), or a Pi 3B/3B+ or Zero 2 W for one to three cameras, with 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS (Bookworm or newer). Any 64-bit Debian or Ubuntu machine works the same way.
• The 32-bit Raspberry Pi OS isn’t supported. If your Pi runs it, reinstall with “Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit)” in Raspberry Pi Imager. The Pi 1, Pi 2, Zero and Zero W can’t run Glimpo.
• A wired network connection if you can. Cameras stream continuously, and Ethernet is steadier than Wi‑Fi.
• Storage for a few days of local footage: a large microSD card works, a USB SSD is better.

Install

Want pictures for every step, from writing the SD card to pairing? Follow the Raspberry Pi guide with pictures.

On the Pi (or over SSH), paste one line:

curl -fsSL https://unicam.si/install.sh | sudo bash

It downloads the latest hub from glimpo.si, checks its SHA-256, then checks your Pi, installs ffmpeg and Node.js if needed, creates an unprivileged unicam service user and sets up the hub as a system service that starts on boot. On Pis with less than 1.5 GB of memory it leaves out the on-device AI (smart detection and AI search); everything else works the same. When it finishes it prints:

• the hub address, like http://192.168.1.20:7700
• the pairing code for your first device, which you can also see any time at http://<hub-address>:7700/pairing

Open the Glimpo app, enter the code, and you’re paired. To update later, run the same line again; recordings and settings stay. See Pair a device.

Useful commands

# Follow the hub's log
journalctl -u unicam-hub -f

# Restart the hub
sudo systemctl restart unicam-hub

How it’s locked down

The service runs as its own user with a read-only system, no privilege escalation and private file permissions. The hub’s data folder is readable only by that user. Camera passwords and cloud tokens are encrypted at rest.

Recording to a USB drive or NAS

Mount the drive or share on the Pi under /mnt or /media and give the unicam user write access to it, then add it in the app under Storage → Folder / NAS / USB using the mount path. See Storage destinations.

Next

Add your cameras, then see how remote access works away from home.