The privacy friendly smart home
Do we have to choose between privacy and convenience?
Candle is a privacy focused smart home demonstrator. Our prototypes prove it's technically possible to build a privacy respecting smart home while maintaining convenience.
Candle is being developed by a collective of designers, artists and privacy experts from Amsterdam. While the main goal is raising awareness, we're also interested in working with partners to bring these innovations to market.
The project is supported by the Dutch Fund for the Creative Industries, and has received EU funding through the Sherpa research program for ethical AI.
Privacy by Design
Candle is "cloudless": your data never leaves your home.
Respectful
Family and friends shouldn't feel watched or profiled in your home. That's why some of the devices can generate fake data.
Easy to use
Candle has 100% local voice control.
Open Source
To make devices more transparent and trustworthy, all the source code is freely available.
More secure
Because Candle devices do not use WiFi to communicate and do not connect to the internet by default, they are more difficult to hack.
DIY friendly
You can re-create Candle by buying and assembling the parts yourself. Our guides and software make it easy to do - no soldering or programming is required.
In the picture:
Candle was launched at Dutch Design Week 2019
Build your own privacy friendly smart home
The central controller
Candle's central hub stores your data, and allows you to create and manage all the connected sensors and switches. It has many innovative features to manage your data, and even offers fully local voice control.
Design by Jesse Howard
Electricity use sensor
See how much electricity your home uses right now, per hour, and per day.
Design by Jesse Howard
Temperature, humidity and barometer sensor
The barometer can predict the weather on the spot - no need to connect to a cloud service provider to get this information.
Smart lock
Open the door with your voice, the app, or even by sending a password in an SMS. For extra security you can choose which phone numbers may do this.
Design by Jesse Howard
Dust sensor
You can turn off the transmission of data at any time, or even tell the sensor to generate fake data for a while.
Design by Dinie Besems
CO2 sensor
Use the toggle to disable data transmission. Or use the secret button to generate fake data. That way you can pretend there were less people in the room than there actually were.
Design by Jesse Howard
Smart alarm clock
Wakes you up when you are in the best moment of your sleep cycle, thanks to a built-in radar motion sensor.
Design by Dinie Besems
...as well as many commercial devices.
“Our goal is to accelerate the industry towards privacy friendly products by showing innovative examples of what these products could look like.”
— Tijmen Schep
Privacy Designer
Are you a producer of smart devices?
We believe privacy is an opportunity. Learn more about our code, our principles or our workshops.
Shared principles
We are part of a larger movement that is bringing ethics and technology closer together again.
Our principles