Thinking of doing the same, Are all your zigbee/zwave devices on your C7 and brought into HA with the Maker API app? how reliable is this and do you run the automations through the C7 or HA?
Thanks
Hi,
Thanks for the exhaustive example.
I guess my hopes of having one hub that rules them all is difficult.
I liked the thought of it though.
Have fired up HA on my QNAP in VM and looking into it...
Thanks.
Apologize for the late reply. Im not here alot lately.
It's pretty damn reliable. As far as simple on/off commands and automations built in HA triggering HE devices is probably a 99% success rate. When I do have problems it's usually not related to either platform and more so on my network. I have a router with a hardwired extender to multiple poe switches to an outdoor WAP to another Hubitat C7 about 500' down the driveway controlling all the gate stuff.
Honestly I don't even think about it, that's a good thing.
Yea, HE does all the zigbee/Z-Wave via the maker API integration. All the wifi and BT stuff (Govee/Wiz/Kasa/SwitchBot) I've moved over to HA as it's just easier, prettier and more intuitive.
To anyone who wants a NICE, non patchwork, non workaround, non 3rd party dashboard and has been struggling to put something together HomeAssistant is the way. I've gone from ActionTiles, Smartly, HD+, the silly CSS layover BS and at least 3 other 3rd party apps before finally getting frustrated enough to switch. Thank God I did because it's like a breath of fresh air over.
Hubitat has no desire to fulfill these simple dashboard requests. I've cried and moaned many many times and all you're going to get for answers here are "the native app works fine" or "what do you even need dashboards for?" or "This 3rd party app (that looks like an alpha build of Android Cupcake) is great," I spent hours and hours and hours you live in dashboard only to have them be terrible.
I spent months just trying to get a camera tile going. I finally got one going in actiontiles and then it stopped working and they basically said it's not their fault, it's your browser. And then everybody scrambled for yet again another workaround. Forget that nonsense.
Try to import some Ring camera feeds and have an automation triggered by motion. Let me know how long that takes. Took maybe three button pushes for home assistant to populate all my cameras and then a couple bun pushes for an automation.
I would be satisfied with static snapshots with a periodic refresh rate. I'm intrigued by HA, but tring to keep things simple. By and large, I am pretty satisfied with Hubitat despite some minor annoyances.
I've tried multiple cameras (Amcrest, Reolink) and have the same issue after setting up a tile in a Hubitat dashboard. If I do not specify a refresh period on the tile settings, the image presented when opening the dashboard looks fine. If I do setup a refresh period, the image goes black after the initial refresh and stays that way unless I reload the dashboard.
Could this be something for which there is a parameter somewhere?
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I should have also stated the obvious - if you don't specify a refresh for the camera feed, it will not refresh until you reload the dashboard.
Maybe you have this same problem.
I have the refresh set to 2 to 3 second intervals. Seems to be sufficient.
I wrote a driver in Hubitat for the Reolink IP camera using their API. But the camera feed doesn't work with Dashboards. Basically, you need a video player to stream, not a web browser. Also I couldn't build a url with an html command to launch a video player. . . Maybe it works on Apple. or you can also embed a video player in your webpage. Back in the Flash days it would have worked. At any rate, I use my Reolink driver to turn notifications on and off, and then the camera sends me an email anytime an image triggers an alert. There's a lot more the API can do and I could tap into, but I found this to be the most useful hook for what I needed. Happy to post
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I like that auto refresh the image every x seconds for a stream ! The video stream doesn't work in web but I remember the image preview bit on the API, it sounds like a refresh userscript on a static image preview is a solid workaround.
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Devices like HE don't have enough horsepower to really get the best out of cameras.
If you have RTSP based cameras (pretty much a necessity these days for always on capability) then options include Blue Iris (paid/windows), motioneye (free/linux), frigate (free/linux) etc. These will also provide mjpeg streams that you can send to your HE dashbooard.
Also with frigate (soon to be my software of choice when my google coral turns up) there is accelerated object detection when you have a coral tpu attached.
Another option for those of you who are utilizing the Apple ecosystem and Homekit. I created a docker container on my NAS for a Scrypted server and added my Reolink cameras in Scrypted. I then added the cameras directly to homekit which adds them as homekit secure video. You can then use Homekit as your dashboard for all your cameras for both snapshot refresh as well as live video feed including audio if the camera supports audio. I have them setup to record on motion and it records to my iCloud space. It's by far the easiest and most reliable camera setup I've done for my home cameras to date. It's also not very expensive. The downside is video is recorded to cloud instead of local.
I've been considering Reolink cameras for a new home build but only downside was I couldn't find a driver here. I'd be fine without a video feed on the dashboard, but can you use basic rules with the driver you wrote? I'd probably only use things like lights on/off with motion detection on the camera, etc....
Got it, you want to use the Reolink camera as a virtual motion sensor device in the hubitat. I would like that and we could probably get that to work. the most frictionless path would be to use node.js on a raspberry pi to process a Reolink 'alert' with which node.js would then let Hubitat know that a motion event took place. intercepting a push notification from the Reolink would be quickest end to end response. But Ive never done any node.js
Personally, I use three different outdoor camera systems integrated on some level with Hubitat; SmartThings, Ring, and Reolink. Mostly they are set up so their notifications mirror Hubitat safety monitor as a second layer of security monitoring. So those proprietary apps will start to send me any motion alerts & picture because a Hubitat rule turns their notifications on when HSM goes Away. Then, when i come home and turn off the security system, hubitat also tells THEM to turn off notifications.
HOWEVER, I DO use IFTTT with Ring to turn on a light when motion is detected by my doorbell during night time hours. Ring/Hubitat have native integration with IFTTT and very easy to use. That works pretty well for me, and has maybe 2 sec delay at most. But of course with ring you pay a premium.
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I know I sound like a broken record over here and I promise I'm not a shill for HA. Half of that stuff you wrote above me about all those workarounds I don't even understand. Honestly I don't even know what you're talking about.
I'm dumb with this stuff and home assistant is running perfect for me. No BS refresh automation or anything like that. I have a LIVE feed on my dashboard that took a few clicks on a tablet. I didn't even have to add the camera, HA found it for me.
Open new dashboard > add new card > add entity (device)
Done. That's it. That's how easy it should be.
Edit: I want to state again that I'm not trying to bash Hubitat. I'm honestly saying this out of love and frustration. I've learned so much trying to figure out this platform that I'm sure it's helped me leap to HA. This platform has basically been stagnant while HA is putting out monthly updates that just put it out of the grasp of anything Hubitat can even come close to.
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That’s one advantage of an open source model, but there are disadvantages too.
Sorry about that. @iusc12 and @user7106 were hoping to get a trigger working, based on an object/motion showing up in the camera feed, to update something in Hubitat automatically. HomeAssistant dashboards look great - next level stuff. But I believe requires a human to watch and tell something has walked into the screen and cause a trigger, no? Thats a great solution for monitoring one or more image feeds to see whats going on. Agreed that Hubitat Dashboards are not ideal as a camera feed. What you have on Homeassistant would be a way better dashboard for my personal kiosk tbh.
Reolink cameras do have built in recognition of changes in picture and trigger a notice to a. Email b. Reolink App Notification or c. FTP local file recording. But it would be cool if Reolink would trigger a rule or change a Hubitat device state automatically after recognizing an object in motion. Like a motion sensor for intrusion detection. The best solutions for this sound like Camect or Scypted, NVRs that do this. I believe NVRs work by constantly monotoring the picture to check for changes. Ring cameras do the same but they use Amazons cloud.
However if we could detect the reolink notice and use that to update hubitat - hey there is motion, then we could trigger automations in Hubitat based on a 'motion' event.
The device driver I put together basically a packaged up version the same as @josh208 post. I'll share the package on that in a different post when i have the chance. It allows Hubitat to control Reolink notification preferences like an on/off switch, but it doesnt send motion detection events back to hubitat - they still come on the Reolink app on your phone. So i will get Reolink notifications if someone walks into my backyard when HSM is armed away, just not when I'm home trimming bushes.
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All my reolink's go through Camect to connect to Hubitat. You could also use Blue Iris.
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Much appreciated, I've been looking into Camect a bit since seeing folks on here using it. Hadn't heard of it before. The subscription service is a major downside for me, but looks like buying their top package is a lifetime deal, but $1k is a lot upfront. It feels like this is pretty much paying 1k to integrate Reolink cams into Hubitat...but maybe the Camect software is just that worth it? Any user scenario where you'd say Camect isn't a great fit for?
It used to be possible to buy just the box, since the AI processing is done locally. Their subscription service was optional when I bought my Camect; I don’t even remember what was in it, but I didn’t really need anything it offered.
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Still on their website. This is all you need. I guess the subscription is for some kind of remote access but there are other ways to do that.
