Hikvision IP Camera as a Motion Device

Mr_B · January 4, 2021, 2:23am

Greetings! Newbie here - I'm about 2 weeks in, have everything working in a basic way, and am now in the midst of tweak mode.

My NVR does not have alarm outputs but I was pleased to discover that some of the newer cameras do have "HTTP Data Transmission" abilities. I am able to create a device with a corresponding DNI and the event logs show activity that seems to be encoded as base64 coming in on port 39501. These events only occur when there is motion.

Is there a simple way to use this to trigger a virtual device/sensor to use in RM? I've been looking at sample drivers without getting a grasp of what exactly is necessary to accomplish this. As mentioned, I was thinking any traffic from the IP/MAC might be able to trigger this rather than decode and parse the incoming message (although that would certainly be a bonus).

Fwiw, the decoded "body:" portion is XML like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<EventNotificationAlert version="1.0" xmlns="urn:psialliance-org">
<ipAddress>192.168.1.7</ipAddress>
<protocolType>HTTP</protocolType>
<macAddress>84:9a:40:e6:ca:9d</macAddress>
<channelID>1</channelID>
<dateTime>2021-01-03T20:21:58-5:00</dateTime>
<activePostCount>346</activePostCount>
<eventType>VMD</eventType>
<eventState>active</eventState>
<eventDescription>Motion alarm</eventDescription>
<channelName>Porch Cam</channelName>
<Extensions version="1.0" xmlns="urn:psialliance-org">
<serialNumber xmlns="urn:selfextension:psiaext-ver10-xsd">DS-2CD2555FWD-IS20191104AAWRD81786723</serialNumber>
<eventPush xmlns="urn:selfextension:psiaext-ver10-xsd">VMD&amp;&amp;DS-2CD2555FWD-IS20191104AAWRD81786723,2021-01-03T20:21:58-5:00,1,1.0</eventPush>
</Extensions>
</EventNotificationAlert>

Thanks for any pointers.

MRB

welby1978 · January 4, 2021, 2:51am

I use blue iris that records my hikvision cameras to send a web request to hubitat and use the local end point trigger in rule machine to turn lights on at night. You should be able to do the same thing directly from the camera though i think.

Mr_B · January 4, 2021, 4:25am

Sadly, that isn't an option. All of the camera events get sent to the hub.

JDWx · January 4, 2021, 8:43am

Would love to hear more about Blue Iris integration into Hubitat. I'll search for it as well. Thanks for the nudge!

djh_wolf · January 4, 2021, 9:06am

Blue iris is amazing.

I use sharptools.io as my hubitat dash. (work in progress )

welby1978 · January 4, 2021, 9:36am

Yeah ok didn't realise that what about the email option in the hikvision config? Could you somehow make that work even with pushover maybe?

Mr_B · January 4, 2021, 4:06pm

Thanks for chiming in. I realize there are other options but this one should be the quickest/least complex and could be useful by others with these cameras. I believe this is a recent addition to the camera firmware that many may not be aware of.

Originally I had hoped that I could send http requests from the camera to Maker API but that isn't the case.

Angus_M · January 4, 2021, 4:38pm

rob121 · January 4, 2021, 5:11pm

I have amcrest cameras and pair with this software to turn a email into a http hit to hubitat

This might work for your use case?

Mr_B · January 4, 2021, 5:48pm

Thanks for this. I'm a long time tinycam user and will check it out - didn't even realize there was a windows version until now.

Mr_B · January 4, 2021, 5:57pm

Thanks for the suggestions. I was hoping to "cut out the middle man" by notifying the hub directly, however. It seems within grasp (the hub is receiving these events) but I lack the experience/chops to seal the deal.

My backup plan was to wire ecolink z-wave dry contact sensors directly to the cameras in order to avoid having to run additional computers/email servers etc but I'll still have to weigh the options.

Mr_B · January 4, 2021, 5:57pm

Looks good. Is it quick?

rob121 · January 4, 2021, 6:25pm

Typically from the time I have motion in front of the camera to the virtual motion sensor triggering is < 1s. I'm surprised at how fast it actually is. I suppose it may vary by camera, but mine are fast.

Mr_B · January 7, 2021, 1:25am

Spun up a linux vm and it works great. Seems like the best option for me at the moment. Thanks.

rob121 · January 7, 2021, 3:52am

Cheers! Glad it worked for you!

kleung1 · February 3, 2021, 11:35am

A lot of the newer cameras don't have the wired alarm output, so I'm interested in getting the "HTTP Data Transmission" working. @Mr_B: What was your setup to receive the HTTP transmissions in your first post?

Mr_B · February 3, 2021, 7:44pm

To boil it down, Hikvision DS-2CD2555FWD-IS with "HTTP Data Transmission" enabled can send encoded xml events to the app port (39501) on the Hubitat hub. That's as far as I got.

djh_wolf · February 3, 2021, 8:07pm

Blue iris?

This will integrate wonderfully with any compatible ip cam and hubitat.

an39511 · February 4, 2021, 12:47am

I just moved over to Blue Iris a few weeks ago. It's amazingly flexible. Getting cameras to trigger hubitat automations and vis versa is easy. Plus it can do so much more. I was using iVMS before which worked good but limited.

kleung1 · February 4, 2021, 10:43am

@Mr_B: I took a stab at it and got HTTP Data Streaming to work. I'm a HW engineer, so my coding skills are very limited and date back more than a couple of decades. Give me a few days to flush out the code, add some features, learn how to setup a repository on github and I will share it.