Possibility of triggering a camera action

⚙️ Custom Apps and Drivers webCore
1

I am looking for possibilities of integrating my IP cameras with Hubitat.

I think there is no direct camera support on Hubitat. Please let me know if I'm wrong.

So, is there any action that we can maybe trigger camera to take a photo and send via camera's own notification interface ?
triggering the camera via an http GET/POST request ?

or any other 3rd party app that would work on a PI server to integrate a camera action ?

What I'm trying to achieve is triggering the camera on a "door open" event from Hubitat, capture a photo and send by any way (either from Dashboard or directly from camera)

2

RM and webCoRE both have the capability of generating a HTTP POST or GET I believe, and Node-Red on the Pi can also.

3

Definitely can do it in RM. One of the first things I did when I came over from ST.

4

Search will reveal several discussions about cameras. It's not simple and depends on many things. For example Linux implies certain choices for camera software. Windows has different choices. Will that software work with the camera you have? You need that combo working first. Then you can deal with getting events in and/or out of Hubitat.

5

how ?
I don't see an action related to capturing image on RM.

6

one simple solution might be to write a simple driver to get image from a camera

is there a http get command which I can call with a direct URL to jpg image of the camera ?
then I can write the response to a byte[] and maybe send to my pushover account ?

7

I triggered my camera system, as mentioned by @thebearmay, by sending an http string to my camera system. My use case was to grab a snapshot when there was motion on my front porch and to grab a snapshot and a video clip when someone rang my doorbell. My cameras were on a local PC running iSpy software and iSpy provided local http commands (HTTP Access) to perform functions with the cameras. I wrote the application in Groovy originally when I had SmartThings (using a sendHubCommand) and I ported it when I came over to Hubitat. I made an enhancement request and a couple of weeks later @bravenel added the capability to Rule Machine to send an http. I converted my use case over to RM and got rid of my app.

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@Eric.C.Miller
so your integration requires iSpy which can receive http command from RM and trigger the camera ?

I'm thinking of writing a simple app which will get the image from my camera and send it to my phone using Pushover.
Pushover can get image from URL
but I don't want to send my camera's URL with authentication credentials to Pushover API.
is there any way to store a temporary image somewhere (on Hubitat ?) and supply Pushover URL to that temporary image ?
or else, I can maybe save the image as byte[] data and then provide Pushover that byte[]

9

That will depend on your camera. Some have that capability. If not, you will probably need any intermediate system to accept the http command and execute an operation on the camera.

10

no, I'm not saying that.

my camera provides the jpg image via a direct URL.
but can I get the image and store on Hubitat to serve outside ?

11

So a couple of issues:

  1. Storing the image on HE, no supported way that I am aware of - could store the URL to it as a attribute in a driver or as part of an app’s state.
  2. Serving the image outside, not at the current time unless you are on VPN or using the new Remote Access subscription
12

I've just written a simple nodejs app on my PI server.
when it receives an http get from Hubitat, it sends Pushover message with image attached.

it works as I need.

I just wish I had a way to do it without using external server.

In fact I believe it could be done.
Because Pushover accepts sending attachment and this attachment can be a data payload

Can we post an attachment using Hubitat's httppost function ?

maybe I can form the file as a payload and send to pushover without storing ?

13

I may have missed it, but I don’t think you ever mentioned which IP camera you’re using.

What actions is your IP camera capable of taking when it receives an HTTP request?

As others have confirmed, rule machine can send an HTTP GET or POST.

14

Blue iris is pretty awesome. Potentually could be used to achieve this?

15

I've already done that. And by using my nodejs code on a PI server, I am able to use any camera which can provide jpeg image URL.

Now, I am looking for a solution without PI server.

What I am thinking is ;

  1. get the image from URL and save it in a byte value
  2. send pushover notification with attachment payload from the byte value in 1

should I ask this in developer section of the forum ?

16

Glad you figured out how to do what you want. When it comes to ip cameras many users here use Blue Iris as the camera management software, this requires an always on windows computer running the Blue Iris software. Typically the video is either stored on the same windows computer or a NAS.

I realized this is not the question you were asking, but Blue Iris works really well with hubitat. For example these are some of the automations for my ip cameras with hubitat:

  1. Motion in the cameras field of view turns on certain lights
  2. Motion in the cameras field of view is integrated with Hubitat Safety Monitor, depending on the HSM state, I will get a notification on my phone at which point I can watch the video feed from the camera on my phone.
  3. Doorbell ringing results in the wall mounted tablet displaying the camera feed for the appropriate door.
  4. Sensitivity of camera motion sensing is adjusted when it is snowing, raining, or very windy.
17

Blue iris might be a good all-in-one solution.
But that's not what I need. I want to get notification on my phone with images. (like the old days of ST)
For me at the moment, paying for Blue Iris would be an unnecessary cost.
anyway , with PI server I achieved what I want.
Now just looking for a better way which would also get rid of the PI server in middle.
I think I'm getting there slowly.

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