How to Capture Camera Motion Alerts from your NVR

If you own a NVR with output alarm relays (which most have), you can setup the NVR to send motion alerts to Hubitat when your cameras sense motion. All you need is a NVR with output alarms and a Zooz Zen17. My NVR has 2 output alarms and I have 4 cameras. From the NVR software I setup the cameras in the frontyard to trigger alarm output 1 and the cameras in the backyard to trigger alarm output 2. To send the motion alert to Hubitat, hook up a Zooz Zen17 to the 2 alarm outputs using the NO1\C1 and NO2\C2 ports on the NVR and the S1\C1 and S2\C2 ports on the Zen17. You will not be using the Relay ports on the Zen17. Finally from the Zen17 device page set Input Type Relay 1 and Input Type Relay 2 to "Dry contact". The Zen17 documentation states to exclude the device and then re-include it after setting these values. This is so the Zen17 child devices that are created on inclusion are created using the proper driver (Generic Component Switch). At this point you will have 2 Zen17 child switches that will turn on when motion occurs and off when motion stops. If you want to track the motion with a motion device simply add a new Virtual Motion Device in Hubitat and setup a Rule Machine rule to set the Virtual Motion device (custom action) when the Zen17 child devices turn on and off.

I hope some of you find this useful, Cheers!

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