Camera Advice needed

About a year ago i decided to upgrade my early 90's X10 home automation. I had gone to Radio Shack (Boy do I miss them, pre cell phone) and purchased a motion detector and switches to automate my outside flood lights, and notify me when somebody drove up my driveway. There was no problem turning the lights on and ringing a chime and lighting a single light inside after dark, and only ringing the chime and lighting the inside light during the day.

Let me mention that I am a controls engineer / PLC ā€“ HMI programmer, a typical system work on has around 100 digital IO, 100 Analog IO, uses 20 to 40 IP addresses, and the PLC program, if printed would be 500 -1000 pages long. Our instruction manuals are usually 150 to 200 pages long, and out HMI trends 250 channels, and logs 300 bits.

I assumed (yes, i know what happens when you assume) that duplicating this behavior would be easy today. WRONG! I bought into the Alexa/Zigbee world and bought an Alexa, a couple of Blink XT2 "Outdoor" cameras, and a handful of Zigbee wall switches.

Everything arrived, and what do I find, but that Alexa only allows one ā€œtriggerā€ to an action. I can turn the outside lights on when it gets dark, and back off in the morning, or I can turn them on when the camera notices motion, and back off a little later, but not only after dark.

I then started investigating, and purchased a Hubitat Hub. It seemed to make the most sense of the available It is still not easy to make duplicate early 90ā€™s technology, but I was able to get what I wanted except for the lag time caused by the amount of time required for the information to cross the internet, bounce around blinks servers, then travel back to turn on the lights. On a good day this takes 15 seconds, sometimes up to a minute, except when my DSL is down, which happens for at least a couple of hours a week. When the internet is down, Alexa, instead of telling me there is no internet, when I ask her to do something, says something like ā€œThere are many things with that name, which one do you want?ā€ instead of telling me there is no internet. When it is down for over an amount of time that I havenā€™t figured out yet, she gives up trying to connect, and needs to be rebooted. If I donā€™t notice this, my lights donā€™t work.

UNTIL, the ā€œoutdoorā€ Blink cameras saw the first below freezing night of the year. The cameras stop working below freezing, or above around 90 ā°F. Just after I bought them, Blink announced a new generation of camera, that require a $5 a month subscription. Now when they are just over a year old, tone has dies completely, the second says it is offline, but still, sometimes, trigger a motion alarm. Blink support recommends upgrading, at regular cost, to the new generation, and paying the monthly fee.

So, I am looking for an all-local solution. Is there a camera system that will interface with Hubitat and give me what I am looking for, or do I need both a camera (It didnā€™t take long to get used to having a video record of all my driveway motion, and the camera explained many of the ā€œfalse alarmsā€ we had with the X10 system, including deer, turkeys, fox, bear and wasps) and a motion detector? If I go with camera and motion detector, can it be set up so the motion detector tells the camera to record. With either solution I want to be able to view the cameras recording and live across the internet. To make it a little harder, the cameras need to communicate over WiFi, I donā€™t want to dig a 100 foot ditch across my driveway to the cameras on the garage that can see the end on the driveway.

Blue iris. You can use nearly any IP camera with it and the latest version has Deepstack AI that can tell the difference between a human, car, cat, etc. I have BI send a command to Hubitat to turn the outside lights on and off and there are zero false alerts with it. 100 percent local. It's a fantastic combo.

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I consider myself knowledgeable about sec cameras so wanted to take a shot at this. I admit up front I wanted to be able to 'see' my cameras on Alexa Show displays - but I don't care for anything with a subscription. period. I use a committed machine as a recorder and run Blue Iris. This allows me tons of features, least of which is the communication ability back and forth from BI an Hubitat. there is an EXCELLENT BI interface app from a superb community person, and BI also has built in trigger ability - so I can send trigger events on motion etc. It also allows me the ability do integrate voice with the Alexa Monocle Cam app.
Since BI is a robust server, it allows just about any camera, and the ability to create virtual cameras as well. Any Onvif camera, 100's of proprietary cameras and stream controls (sub and main controls you can create). AND. overlays on the cameras. I'm using Onvif supporting PTZ cams, doorbell cam, hidden camera, usb camera and bullets).
Having this integration allows me to put cam images right on my dashboards. :).

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any RTSP camera with something like blue iris or [Beta] Hubitat - Shinobi NVR Integration to trigger a virtual motion detector, then trigger the lights would work