Watch the complete 14-minute build tutorial to assemble your own Signet device:

Why this exists

📣 Durable speech when platforms fail

In many places, digital censorship and content suppression are rising. The Signet is built for situations where people need to communicate ideas in public— especially during peaceful demonstrations—without relying on platforms, audio, or live speech.

Instead of shouting a message (which can provoke instant confrontation or get drowned out), The Signet lets a message persist inside the footage itself—so it can be discovered later in recordings from participants, journalists, or fixed cameras. The point is durability: the message travels with the video.

The Signet uses standard International Morse Code (ITU), ensuring global readability and compatibility with both human and machine decoding. A message embedded in footage can’t be muted, algorithmically downranked, or “lost in the crowd” the same way a post can.

🧾 Footage continuity & tamper indication

The Signet can also be used as a continuity marker for recorded footage. By embedding a continuous, time-ordered Morse message into the recording, the signal should remain consistent from start to finish.

• Unexpected gaps, jumps, or resets may indicate cuts, dropped frames, edits, or tampering.
• This can help viewers and investigators spot continuity breaks that might otherwise go unnoticed.

How this differs from watermarking

While The Signet and watermarking both involve embedding information into video, they solve very different problems and operate in fundamentally different ways.

Watermarking

• Added after recording during editing or encoding
• Relies on digital pixel or compression manipulation
• Usually invisible and algorithmic
• Can often be removed or degraded through re-encoding
• Primarily serves ownership and copyright enforcement

The Signet

• Embeds information at the moment of recording
• Uses optical signaling (visible or IR light)
• Independent of codecs, platforms, and formats
• Becomes part of the physical scene, not a digital layer
• Can reveal edits through continuity breaks

Watermarking alters the media.
The Signet alters the scene.

Privacy & Security by Design

• No app required — browser-based configuration only
• No internet connectivity — never connects to cloud services
• Temporary local Wi-Fi AP for configuration only
• Automatic AP shutdown after 90 seconds of inactivity
• No persistent logs or telemetry
• Stateless by power design — power cycling resets to default

Ethical Use

The Signet is intended to support lawful, non-violent freedom of expression, documentation, and artistic or journalistic messaging. It must not be used to enable harm, harassment, intimidation, illegal activity, or to mislead people about what is being recorded or communicated.