My wife and I just purchased the Hubitat Elevation Hub, and I'm trying to set it up with a baby monitor purchase. We have other devices on our old system - which was the Alarm.com centric Qolsys IQ Panel 2 which we hated because it would have locked us into ADT, or snubbed us every time we were looking to do something with automation.
I'm looking at a solid Zwave or Zigbee (habitat approved) baby monitor for the lil one. She wanted to get the Owlet Baby Cam, but I told her it wouldn't work with our system. It only works with its own app. I like the Lollipop Camera, but this comes under the same criticism. So, I bring it to you guys. Oh, wise ones. I'm not good at this Hubitat ecosystem just yet. What are you using? What workarounds are you using for the best baby monitor? Hopefully, your recommendations don't cost an arm and a leg.
I guess we are looking to get a video feed (with audio) delivered to our phones, but using the hubitat as a controller. We have ring, so I'm actually considering just getting a small indoor ring camera for this project, but this leaves my wife wondering WTH I bought the Hubitat for. I just thought the community would have some workarounds.
Hubitat is an automation platform.. Not a video system..
It’s for automating tasks around the house..
Ex:
Motion lighting. We don’t ever hit a light-switch in my house.. Everything comes on for you automatically and turns off when the room is unoccupied
Thermostat control. I actual have zone-controlled individual person’s comfort settings for each person that goes to energy saving settings when they are not home
Alarm. I use HSM for my alarm... And it is automatically armed when everyone leaves, and disarms when anyone returns home.
Locks. My house locks itself when everyone leaves and unlocks when anyone gets home
Time of day based lighting. My house turns on all exterior lighting at sunset and turns them off at sunrise.. It also adjusts the interior lighting kelvin temperature from daylight white during the day to incandescent at night..
There’s all kinds of things you can do with a home automation system like hubitat that’s useful when you have kids.
For example I have all kinds of lighting scenes in my kids’ room depending on time of day, I can get a text-to-speech alert on a Sonos speaker in my bedroom if one of them opens their bedroom door in the middle of the night. That’s just a couple of examples.
But it’s not intended to “control” a baby monitor or any other kind of wireless camera system.
Your wife’s question is a pretty good one , what else did you have in mind when you bought your hubitat hub?
For the past 4 years I've been using Tinycam Pro for a baby monitor. If you get a compatible camera it works well. Two things that made it convenient for the wife and I is we had two kids so I had two camera feeds on one screen. Also you can have it run in background mode which would turn off the screen and keep audio only on.
I know this isn't Hubitat relate but like others have said I don't think Hubitate is the right option for this.
I'd like to add that while Hubitat won't control your baby monitor, it is possible to have video (or audio) become part of a dashboard for controlling things.
My use case for Hubitat is almost entirely for security (Hubitat Safety Monitor), and I have my 4 security cameras available on my tablets that are used for enabling/disabling the alarm. The dashboard contains still images, updated every few seconds, but clicking on them opens TinyCam via RTSP. If you don't know what RTSP is, and don't want to learn about it, you shouldn't try to get Hubitat to be a video/audio solution for this.
I really like Hubitat because I can do lots of things that weren't designed into the product, but that definitely takes some knowledge.
The RTSP address comes from your camera. Depends on the brand, if it publishes to RTSP. I have one set of cameras that have the main RTSP view at something like rtsp://username:password@192.168.1.21:554/live/main. I have another camera that has the main RTSP feed at rtsp://username:password@192.168.1.22:554//h264Preview_01_main. It really depends on your specific camera.
It's possible that TinyCam has a different connection to the camera that is not RTSP. I managed to find an intent: link that would open the camera as ONVIF rather than just as RTSP:
With that, I can send Pan/Tilt/Zoom, which is different than just opening the RTSP link.
Once you have the correct RTSP link for your camera, if one exists, you should be able to open it either with TinyCam, VLC, or other movie players that can understand that format. If you've already assigned rtsp:// to another app, you might have to remove that default to have it open somewhere like TinyCam. I know TinyCam and VLC both play RTSP, though I'm sure there are other apps that will work.
Once you have the correct link, place it in a Link tile. I made my link tile completely transparent and place it above my image tile, which contains a PNG/MJPEG. The way to change the Link tile to make its background transparent is in Settings/Templates/Link.
Appreciate all the info. It is daunting. As for tiny cam. Did you not use the web server as that is what I thought one must do. Where in tiny cam do you find the rdtp
With regards to link. How do you remove the dashboard name at the bottom of the tile in the advanced css. I too mixed two tiles to make a door contact sensor to tell me if any door is open but it looks messy.Also do you know how to load android apps to work with fully kiosk. Very different to action tiles indeed and might be a big con to Hubitat
, what else did you have in mind when you bought your hubitat hub?
