Kitchen-table Lab

Face dot

Does the device store your face? Absolutely not. Does it see you? Sometimes yes — and this green dot shows that instantly.

Privacy: Video stays entirely in your browser: no server, no storage, no upload. You only use your webcam and a simple face-detection model running locally on your computer. On first visit your browser loads this model once (about 1 to 5 MB) and caches it; as soon as you close the tab, the camera stops immediately.

Camera asleep

Click Start face dot. Your browser will ask for the camera. Webcam privacy slider just on? Reload the page (F5) first.

Tip: Look at the camera, wave, cover it with your hand. Green dot = face in view. No dot = not (anymore) visible.

Just enabled your webcam privacy slider? Reload the page first (F5) — otherwise your browser may not detect the camera.

Why this gimmick?

Many smart doorbells, baby monitors and toy cameras watch along without you noticing. With no screen, you never see when a face is actually in view. This dot makes that process visible: green means detected instantly, and the dot disappears as soon as you cover the camera or close the page. Where real devices often send those images to the cloud, this simple demo shows that live recognition does not automatically mean your data is stored.