Guide · Technology

No camera, no cloud: how a sun-tracking mirror stays private

A device that reflects sunlight has one hard job beyond aiming: it must never put the beam in someone's eyes. The obvious way to detect people is a camera — but nobody wants a camera pointed at their garden, cloud-connected or not. Here's how a heliostat can be both safe and private: by skipping the camera entirely.

The problem: safety usually means a camera

To keep a sunbeam off faces, a system usually needs to know where people are — typically solved with a camera streaming video to a cloud or at least to a chip inside the device for analysis. For a product that lives on your terrace and looks toward your home, that's a hard compromise to justify.

The answer: no camera in the first place

The ohoya Heliostat solves this differently: the mirror is slightly convex, so there is no focal point where light could concentrate — by design. You set exclusion zones (e.g. over a neighbor's window) once, using augmented reality on your own smartphone — the device itself needs no camera for this. Firmware remembers these zones permanently and blocks any movement into them, even after a reset or a move.

Four layers that keep it private

• No camera on the device. Never. There's simply nothing on the heliostat that could capture an image.
• Glare protection by geometry. The slightly convex mirror can't concentrate light by its shape alone — independent of any software or sensor.
• Exclusion zones, set once. AR setup runs through your phone's camera, not the device's. Zones are world-anchored and stay valid even after a reset.
• An additional thermal sensor. A discreet, imageless sensor (AMG8833) on the device front.

Why "no cloud" matters beyond privacy

Because the sun's position is computed locally from clock, date, GPS and compass, the heliostat doesn't need the internet to do its core job. That means no account to create, no server outage that can break it, and no ongoing data outflow. Local control is also faster and keeps working if your connection drops. (New to the concept? Start with what a heliostat is.)

Note: the ohoya Heliostat is in pre-series development. Stated safety characteristics are development goals and are verified per EN 62471 before public marketing.