Nest camera integration with Google account migrated from nest

🚧 Developers
1

Yes, I migrated my account from Nest before I realized the impact of that decision. I've seen a lot of posts around Google locking down their API with plans to possibly open it up at some time in the future. Also about using ActionTiles and Kiosk Browser but really wanted to try to get it working with an Image Tile if possible.

I use a Honewell IP-W0 camera in my garage using an image tile to display the video on my dashboard and wanted to do something similar with a google nest feed.

First off this was found with a strip of the HTML source off the nest cam video feed. It's experimental but seems stable so far. I'm happy with it now and all the streams are password protected. If anyone else wants to try it out here are the steps. If you password protect your streams you will need to launch the Nest.com shared URL and enter your password on each stream for each device so it will cache the credentials on the device before you will be able to see them on the dashboard for that device.

  1. Open up google chrome and go to nest.com and sign in to My Nest Home.
  2. Click on one of your camera feeds and then click on the gear in the upper right corner.
  3. Scroll down to Camera Sharing and click on the blue Camera Sharing button.
  4. Click on Share with a password and come up with a password and then click Share with a password again.
  5. Copy the Share with this link URL and paste it in the top of the browser to open the link.
  6. Once the video feed comes up enter your password.
  7. Click the F12 button to bring up the source of the webpage.
  8. Expand the line that says <section id="video" class="video-loaded" style="display: block
  9. Expand the next line that says < div class="container"
  10. Expand the line that says <div class="video-wrapper" data-token=
  11. Expand the line that says < div class="video-js vjs-default-skin vjs-controls-enabled vjs-workinghover vjs-playing vjs-live nest-video-dimensions vjs-has-started vjs-user-inactive" id="nest-video" role="region" aria-label="video player">
  12. On the line that says <div class="vjs-poster" tabindex="-1" style="background-image: url(" Right click and select Edit as HTML
  13. Highlight the URL and right click Copy https://nexusapi-us1.camera.home.nest.com/get_image?uuid=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&width=540
    Dont forget to cut off the "& quot;);"></ div>" at the end.
  14. Open up a dashboard and create a new Image tile and paste the url into the tile. Select whatever refresh rate you want. I used 1 second for all 8 cameras and everything runs fine. I resized my camera tiles to 4 high 3 wide so I can keep the mobile sizing the same. If you click on one of the tiles it will open up the tile to full screen.

I'm assuming this URL will be good for however long you keep the camera shared for but haven't tested it for any length of time. Be sure to bookmark your camera feeds from the Nest website so you can put in your password again if needed. If something breaks I'll come back and post an update on what I found.

2

I’m pretty sure that the only way to view a camera on a dashboard is if it’s an mjpeg stream.

3

I'd be fine with using the image tile but it doesn't work for the nest camera. It does work for my Honeywell camera in the garage though.

4

But the image tile is showing individual frames of the video as jpegs that refresh every x seconds right?

5

Nope. Its like it doesn't understand how to play the stream. type="application/x-mpegURL"

6

I'm digging around in the webpage source code at the moment and I managed to get a still image using
https://nexusapi-us1.camera.home.nest.com/get_image?uuid=c74b59e62397421bb905d5d69dfcda54&width=540&public=U1bK1E533r

7

If all else fails you could try this approach (tinyCam supports Nest cams)

8

Yeah there are a lot of options but I'm hard headed and will figure it out eventually without all the extra stuff.

1 Like
9

Yeah sounds good. I've really added tinyCam mostly because it has nifty motion/object recognition (for free!) which is quite cool. Good luck with sorting out your cameras.

10

I'm just trying to avoid local processing so I don't have to run another server. I already have nest aware for people and packages and such.

11

https://nexusapi-us1.camera.home.nest.com/get_image?uuid=c74b59e62397421bb905d5d69dfcda54&width=540&public=U1bK1E533r

With 1 second refresh on image tile works well enough for the moment. I'm going to kill the feed now. Already got people talking to my kids saying "I'm watching you! Isn't this creepy?"

12

Let me know if anyone has any issues and I'll try to help as best I can.

13

The streams are all password protected now so shouldn't have any more people being wierd.

14

The links expire. Oh well I'll have to figure something else out.