A 24/7 seven-camera NVR, an Intel iGPU detector, and a 3D cat court that posts YouTube Shorts by itself.

00 · The system

What is running right now, with the numbers we measured.

The build, measured

Part	What runs, and what we measured
Cameras	Eleven defined in Frigate on one LAN, RTSP over TCP; the ones on the cat are TP-Link Tapo (C120 / C210). Seven watch Helen, three watch the house, one is a spare that is switched off. Main stream 2560×1440 at 20 fps for recording; sub-stream 640×360 for detection at 2 fps. Which cameras work, and what the streams are.
NVR	Frigate 0.17 in Docker inside WSL2 (Ubuntu, systemd on, mirrored networking). go2rtc pulls each camera once and re-serves it locally to the detector, the recorder and the live streams. With everything running, the Linux side of the six-core CPU sat at 13.6 % when we captured its stats. The WSL2, Docker and boot files.
Detector	OpenVINO ssdlite_mobilenet_v2 on the Intel UHD 630, in a separate Python process using Frigate’s zmq detector type. About 12.4 ms per inference including the round trip; 3.29 million inferences at last count. The detector, line by line.
Recording	Three days continuous plus 21 days of anything with a cat in it; the house cameras keep 21 days continuous. Measured: 16.4 GiB per camera per day at 1440p, 107 GiB a day across nine recording cameras, on a 3.7 TB drive. The retention math.
Live streams	Six ffmpeg processes: four stream-copy tiles, one 2×2 mosaic (h264_qsv, 1080p, 10 fps, 3.5 Mbit/s) and one Face cam (d3d11va decode, 15 fps, 2.5 Mbit/s). Both encoders together under 4 % of the CPU. A watchdog restarts a stream whose RTMP socket goes dark. The scripts.
Shorts	A task every 15 minutes: Frigate events become visits, visits become a shot list, the shot list becomes a 1080×1920 cut with a caption, and the YouTube Data API uploads it. One per run, 25-minute cooldown, four publish windows a day, and a rule that refuses a cut that runs backwards. The pipeline.
The court	three.js 0.170 on Vite 6, no framework. Four live JPEG textures refreshed round-robin, meshopt-compressed GLBs, adaptive resolution and an output dither. The build went from 92 MB to 11 MB; the critical three.js chunk is 648 kB (168 kB gzipped). The court in code.
Treat	Stripe PaymentIntent → signed webhook → Home Assistant webhook → a 5-volt dry-contact WiFi relay soldered across the dispenser’s remote. $2, a cap of 120 a day, an 8-second cooldown, one dispense per payment. The whole path in plain Node.
Shop	Sixteen print-on-demand products in a three.js room, each object wearing the real print file as a decal. A hand-kept catalog bound to Printify variant ids, 49 variants, and the same Stripe webhook turning a paid intent into a print order. The 3D shop and print-on-demand.
Web tier	One vCPU, 3.8 GB, Ubuntu. Caddy in front, pm2 for the Node API, releases as dated folders behind a symlink so a rollback is one mv. Caddy, pm2 and symlink releases.

01 · What runs where

A desktop at home does the video. A small server does the web.

02 · The files

The pages with the actual files in them.

1. Frigate detection on an Intel iGPU under WSL2. Frigate could not see the graphics inside the processor from its container, so a 170-line OpenVINO process next to it does the finding over ZMQ. 12 milliseconds a look, three million looks and counting.
2. The WSL2, Docker and boot files. wsl.conf, .wslconfig, docker-compose.yml, and the PowerShell that brings Frigate back after every reboot.
3. The full Frigate config.yml. Eleven cameras, annotated line by line, with the retention numbers from a real 3.7 TB drive.
4. Two 24/7 YouTube streams from ffmpeg. No OBS, no capture card: tile restreams, a four-camera mosaic encoded on the iGPU, and a watchdog that notices when YouTube half-closes the socket.
5. The Shorts pipeline. Frigate events become visits, visits become shot lists, shot lists become a vertical cut with a caption, and the guardrails that refuse a bad one.
6. Stripe webhook to Home Assistant to relay. The whole $2 treat path in plain Node: signature check, idempotent dispense, daily cap, the automation, the relay.
7. The three.js court. Live cameras as textures, a 738 kB cat, a split chunk, adaptive resolution and a dither. 92 MB down to 11.
8. Caddy, pm2 and symlink releases. Both site configs, the deploy script, and four outages that each became a rule.
9. The 3D shop and print-on-demand. A three.js room whose mugs and tees wear the real print files, a hand-kept catalog bound to Printify variant ids, and the webhook that turns a paid Stripe intent into a print order.
10. The 3D website, plainly. Why a cat livestream has a WebGL room and what it is made of, then the deep pages: one renderer across 25 pages, what a visitor downloads, laying out the shop in 3D, and testing a WebGL site without a GPU.
11. 3D and image generation, plainly. What image-to-3D is fed and what comes back, then every Tripo task and credit, 61 MB to 2 MB, which pictures a model drew, and what it cost and saved.
12. The AI models. What ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude, Gemini and the 3D generator actually did here, what a person still does, how the cat was generated from one photo, and which tool did which job.

03 · The whole build

Eight steps from a room to a channel.

1. Dress a room. Stage the furniture, the glow, and the stations. You are not directing a cat. You are giving ordinary visits a place to land.
2. Give the cameras five jobs. Water, food, treat, the walk, the face. We run seven cameras on those five jobs, the extras as second angles; if two cameras do the same job from the same place, one of them is wasted.
3. Let Frigate watch for a cat. When a camera can see her, that is a visit. You do not call action. You wait.
4. Put a 3D court on the website. Visitors walk the same room. The live show is a court they can move through, not a pile of raw cameras.
5. Cut a Short in time order. Open after she arrives. Close before the room is empty. The crop follows the cat.
6. Write a ten-word title. One decree. Bottom third. The top of the frame belongs to her.
7. Post four times a day. 05:00, 07:00, 17:00, and 19:00 Eastern. If she did not move, that door stays shut.
8. Turn a treat into an on-camera event. Solder a 5-volt WiFi switch to the dispenser’s remote — not a 120-volt switch. A payment on the live site presses that button. Treat Cam is already aimed.

The kit

Normal machines. Amazing things.

What we bought, and what it became

Ordinary machine	Amazing thing it does
Five home-network cameras	A walkable 3D court, and five angles of the same visit.
Wide pictures, 2560×1440 at 20 frames a second	A tall 1080×1920 Short. The crop follows the cat so a phone still has a subject.
A regular computer that stays on. No graphics card.	The processor decodes the cameras; the Intel graphics inside it finds the cat. Same box cuts the Short. No graphics card. No cloud farm. How it runs on Windows.
Frigate on that computer	The room is watched while we sleep. A detection is a visit. We cut the visit, not a 24-hour tape.
A white PetSafe dispenser and its handheld remote	A treat that already drops when a thumb clicks. We did not wait for a “smart” bowl.
A 5-volt dry WiFi switch, not a 120-volt one	A payment on the shop presses that same remote. Two wires. One solder joint. An event in the sitting room.
YouTube Studio	Four doors a day: 05:00, 07:00, 17:00, 19:00 Eastern. The Shorts feed is where people find the court.

The computer — what we actually run

Part	Spec we actually use
Kind	A regular Windows PC that stays on. Not a studio rack. Not a rented GPU box.
Graphics card	None. The Intel graphics built into the processor does the finding, through OpenVINO, at about 12 milliseconds a look. The CPU does the decoding and the cut. Why we never bought a Coral.
Watcher	Frigate from frigate.video. Detection set to cat. Seven home-camera streams watched at two frames a second. What Frigate is. The whole config.
Cut	Same computer. Ordinary tools: Python and ffmpeg. Wide 2560×1440 at 20 fps in. Tall 1080×1920 Short out. The crop follows the cat.
Upload	YouTube Studio on that same machine. Four doors a day. Skip a still visit.
Website	The 3D court is a normal website. The computer at home watches. Visitors never see the watcher screen.
What you do not need	A gaming GPU. A Coral stick. A cloud render farm. A second “AI computer.” If the PC can stay on and see the cameras, it can do this.

04 · The court

Stage stations, not a performance.

1. Water. High over the fountain. Night is when this frame earns the channel. You want glow, not a puddle.
2. Food. A dining wide. Body and bowl. You want the approach along the runner, not crumbs.
3. Treat. Eye-level, close, warm. This is the beauty cam. Whiskers have to read on a phone.
4. Court. Overhead of the whole room. Geography and transit. A walk only makes sense if a viewer can see where she came from.
5. Face. Head-on at the bowl. This is frame one. If the first half-second is empty room, you already lost the swipe.

Then put the same room on the site

Build a 3D court people can walk. Same five stations. A visitor should be able to stand at water, turn toward food, and understand the room the way you do from the wide. Four public chambers can refresh from the live site. Face Cam is not on that public strip — show a frame you chose, not a stream you cannot share.

05 · Shooting

Write patterns. She will not hit a mark.

1. Wait for a visit. She arrives at a station. That is the only cue. Do not invent a scene around an empty room.
2. Let the camera that can see her say so. Frigate is the watcher. One clear yes is enough to start.
3. Follow a path through the frame. A line of points tracks her. You do not guess where she will sit.
4. Crop for a phone along that path. A tall window pans so she stays in the Short. A hard centre crop throws away ears.

06 · The cut

Keep time. Follow the cat.

1. Stay in time order. A later shot must not start before an earlier one ended. We once shipped a cut that ran backwards. Look at the clocks on the frames before you let it go.
2. Open after she arrives. The first picture is a cat, not a set. Face at the bowl is the opener we use now.
3. Close before empty room. The last shot ends as she leaves. The loop returns to frame one. Nobody should see a vacant court.
4. Let the crop follow her. The source is wide. The viewer gets a tall slice. Too tight clips ears. Too wide and she becomes furniture.
5. Then let a script do it. Once the rules hold, a program applies them to every visit: the pipeline that cuts and posts four Shorts a day.

Drag: tight crop on the left, hybrid on the right. The source is wide. The viewer gets a slice. Hybrid spends resolution to keep the whole cat. Use the slider until you can see which ears survive.

07 · The copy

Ten words. Then four beats.

1. Ten words. That is the title and the first breath. If you need a twelfth word, you do not have the line yet.
2. Bottom third. Nothing else in the middle of the frame. The top belongs to Helen. Type that fights her face loses.
3. Four beats for a chapter. A line arrives, holds, and leaves. You read while she eats. She does not pause for the joke.
4. Judge the same episode as frames. Open on Face. Stay while she eats. Close before empty room. If a beat needs a still to explain it, the line is too long.

The court has received a letter. It is not good.

Same episode, judged as frames

08 · The series

Write a season. Pick by looking.

1. Write the season first. Name the story. Ours is The Missing Seal. The fictional court takes it seriously. The cat does not know there is a court. The joke is the gap. Never make her act.
2. Give each episode a beat and a camera list. Prefer Face to open. Prefer Court when she walks. Prefer Treat when someone in the world becomes an event.
3. Pick by looking at frames. Not by a score. Not by a clock that says it is time. If the visit is thin, wait.
4. Leave the auto-air paused. Daily Shorts can post themselves. A season chapter should not. Mark it aired only after you have watched it.

09 · YouTube

Four doors a day. Skip the still ones.

1. Open four doors. 05:00, 07:00, 17:00, and 19:00 Eastern. Same hours every day so the channel has a pulse a person can learn.
2. Skip a still clip. If she did not move, do not post. An empty slot is better than a painting of a room.
3. Rewrite a title that already ran. If this week already used the decree, write another ten words. Do not repeat yourself into the feed.
4. End on the live domain. The last seconds fade up one ask and one address, then ride the loop back to frame one.

10 · The channel

The first half-second is the whole game.

11 · Shop and treat

A viewer can become an event.

1. Sell on the performing site. The Royal Collection lives where people already watch. This page does not take money.
2. Aim Treat Cam before the button exists. If the quilt is not in frame, a treat is only a sound.
3. Solder a 5-volt dry WiFi switch to the remote. Not 120. That click is the trick. The payment only has to close two wires.

12 · The control room

If you cannot see a source, leave the card empty.

1. Mock the cards you can explain. Today’s slots. The season. A health card. That is enough to teach the honesty rule.
2. If a card cannot see its source, it stays empty. It does not invent a green light. It does not guess a number.
3. Keep money and mail off the public page. A workshop can show the shape of a desk. It cannot show yours.

13 · Lessons

What we would tell you on day one.

1. A success note is not proof. Every bad ship on this channel was declared fixed by someone who stopped at a cheerful line. Pull the frames.
2. You cannot direct the talent. Write patterns. Keep time order. Leave room for a cat who will not hit a mark.
3. If she did not move, do not post. If a camera is missing, do not fill the hole with a guess. An empty slot is the honest outcome.
4. A backup that ran can still be the wrong room. Check what it kept, not that it finished.
5. The first half-second is the cut, not the packaging. Open on a readable cat. The rest of the craft is how you keep them.
6. Do not invent a number. If nobody counted it, cut the claim.

Questions

Ask the methods in plain words.

Crowd-shaped

Tell us what to try next.