Building Privacy-First Communication Tools: From Raspberry Pi to Production

Speaker: Jim Arasim

Room: CC 202

Time: Sat 4:00 pm – 4:30 pm

Format: Workshop/Tutorium (all-day)

Difficulty: Some experience required

Track: Creative

Additional Tags: Live Event

Presenter Location: In-person

Experience: first time speaking

Description:

Privacy shouldn't require trusting someone else's promises. This session demonstrates how to build communication and media platforms where privacy is architecturally guaranteed, not policy-based.

The talk covers two production projects: Stuffed Animal War (ephemeral real-time chat) and Analog Archive (self-hosted music streaming).

Both run on everything from $15 Raspberry Pi hardware to cloud deployments, proving that privacy-first design doesn’t require expensive infrastructure.

You’ll learn:

Zero-persistence architecture patterns (no databases, no logs, no user tracking)

WebSocket-based real-time communication with room isolation

Deploying self-hosted services across hardware tiers

Client-side processing to avoid server-side data collection

Practical fallback mechanisms (auto-AP mode, graceful degradation)

Technical stack: Node.js, WebSockets, systemd services, Apache2 reverse proxy, Backblaze B2 integration

Takeaway: Working code, deployment strategies, and architectural patterns you can implement immediately. All projects are open source and production-tested. These systems have been running in production for years, serving real users who want communication tools without surveillance capitalism.

Target Audience:

Self-hosting enthusiasts

Privacy advocates

Web developers interested in real-time applications

System administrators deploying personal infrastructure

Anyone building alternatives to commercial services