What is FruitNanny?

Fruitnanny is a DIY baby monitor project that runs on a Raspberry Pi with a NoIR camera module, infrared LEDs, and a DHT22 temperature/humidity sensor. It uses Janus WebRTC Gateway, GStreamer pipelines, and a Node.js web UI served through Nginx to deliver real-time audio and video to any modern browser on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, or iOS. The system can be deployed via Docker Compose or a detailed manual installation on Raspbian. It includes basic HTTP authentication, optional Pushbullet notifications for temperature and motion alerts, and 3D-printable case designs. The project is feature-complete but has not had a formal release since 2021.

FruitNanny alternatives

Should you self-host FruitNanny?

FruitNanny scores 38/100 on selfhost.directory (how scoring works) and ranks #90 of 104 in Home Automation. It has 147 GitHub stars.

There was no stable release in the past 12 months, so check the repository's recent activity before you rely on it.

Setup is advanced: plan for several services and some ongoing maintenance. An official Docker image is available. It is written mostly in JavaScript.

Its closest alternative on selfhost.directory is Home Assistant (91/100, 91 854 stars). It scores higher overall, so compare the two before you pick. See FruitNanny vs Home Assistant side by side.

Features

3D-printable enclosure
Basic HTTP Authentication
Cross-platform browser support
Infrared Night Vision
Temperature and humidity monitoring
WebRTC audio streaming
WebRTC video streaming

How to install FruitNanny

Install FruitNanny with Docker Compose

cd /opt/fruitnanny docker-compose up -d

With notifications

docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.notification.yml up -d

Requires Raspberry Pi with Raspbian Buster Lite, Docker, and docker-compose installed

Install FruitNanny with Build from Source

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install vim git nano emacs libraspberrypi-dev autoconf automake libtool pkg-config
alsa-base alsa-tools alsa-utils

Install NodeJS

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_6.x | sudo -E bash - sudo apt install -y nodejs

Enable camera and resize partition

sudo raspi-config

Install GStreamer and plugins

sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-tools gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad
gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad libgstreamer1.0-dev
libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev gstreamer1.0-alsa

Build gst-rpicamsrc from source

git clone https://github.com/thaytan/gst-rpicamsrc /tmp/gst-rpicamsrc cd /tmp/gst-rpicamsrc ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/ make sudo make install

Install Janus WebRTC Gateway v0.2.5

sudo apt-get install libmicrohttpd-dev libjansson-dev libnice-dev
libssl-dev libsrtp-dev libsofia-sip-ua-dev libglib2.0-dev
libopus-dev libogg-dev pkg-config gengetopt libsrtp2-dev git clone https://github.com/meetecho/janus-gateway /tmp/janus-gateway cd /tmp/janus-gateway git checkout v0.2.5 sh autogen.sh ./configure --disable-websockets --disable-data-channels --disable-rabbitmq --disable-mqtt make sudo make install

Copy config files and set up systemd services

sudo cp /opt/fruitnanny/configuration/systemd/*.service /etc/systemd/system/ sudo systemctl enable audio video janus fruitnanny sudo systemctl start audio video janus fruitnanny

Install and configure Nginx

sudo apt-get install nginx sudo rm -f /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default sudo cp /opt/fruitnanny/configuration/nginx/fruitnanny_http /etc/nginx/sites-available/ sudo cp /opt/fruitnanny/configuration/nginx/fruitnanny_https /etc/nginx/sites-available/ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/fruitnanny_http /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/fruitnanny_https /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Full manual installation on Raspberry Pi running Raspbian; requires hardware assembly (camera, IR LEDs, DHT22, microphone)