Hi.
First time on the forum and I hope this is the right place for a question.
I am struggling with getting my head around camera integration for smart homes. I am interested in combining Reolink Cameras (811A or 1212A) based on POE setup without NVR (hence, IP cameras) into a smarthome hub. The only hub I can see working (unless I go down the Home Assistant way) is Hubitat as there seem to be some interest on the forum. However, I do not know if any of this is still working?
What I would like to achieve is to set notifications and sirens on/off based on routines/modes (for instance sirens and notifications of Reolink cameras will be on during night mode/away mode, but not when home). Similarly, I would like the night mode to turn on certain lights in the garden and turn of the pump to the swimming pool.
However, the integration of Cameras into a smarthub seems impossible. Cameras I have looked at would be Eufy and Reolink.
Can anyone confirm that this is still possible? I know there is an API for Reolink, but it appears that the Hubitat device is more community driven...
The only thing you could integrate is the pic via the http feed. This would be done in a dashboard with a 1 second refresh rate. To use motion, notifications, or other attributes of the cameras you would need either Camect (what I use) or Blue Iris.
Hubitat is largely company driven but has a good set of community apps and drivers.
Hmm... That's a lot of work. Wasn't aware you could do that with the reolink. Should still be doable. That said I still prefer Camect. You really can't beat it especially their AI., For instance, if my system between 12:00am and 6:am detects anything but a dog in the back yard, the sprinklers will turn on and I get a notification of what was in the yard (skunk, deer, person, etc) If I have to go out I have a button to disable the rule while I'm out there.
I guess what I'm saying is sometimes it's better in the long run to bite the bullet and get a proper setup. That said, Blue iris is free for 2 cameras.
Hi, Thanks for the link on Camect. I wasn't aware of that box.
Reolink does have some AI in it. I was intending to use QVR Pro with QNAP for recording and further recognition. However, there is this element of being able to combine everything in a smart home.
I press AWAY/NIGHT MODE = all external camera's sirens and notifications gets turned on. All lights turn off. All locks on.
I press HOME = all external cameras' sirens and notifications are muted. AC turned on. Lights on depending on time of day etc...
Seems like there is a huge miss in home automation for making cameras smart. Nest cameras are not my pick...I would just be able to control IP cameras and Z-wave, zigbee with one button...
Another possible approach:
apparently Home Assistant has a separate Reolink (depends on which model you are interested in) integration. You could get that working, and send the results to Hubitat.
Hi, thanks. I have looked at this and started with HA. However, I would like to keep things simple. I am turning 50. I have been tinkering my whole life with scripts, flashing ROMs and making things work . I find more pleasure in spending time with things "working out of the box" instead of making things work. It is fun, but it takes too much time sometimes...I thought "
smart homes" where indeed smarter and I get a sense that it is still a lot of tinkering...
Your not going to get what you want with Hubitat only.
You need HA to make this happen, please believe I've been trying to make this happen for a while with numerous different dashboards and css overlays.
I can't code anything. I know how to save a file with a name and drag and drop on a PC. I was able to get home assistant running on a Pi. And then use the Hubitat / home assistant integration to allow home assistant to control everything on the Hubitat hub. Basically home assistant is just a front end. Almost everything in HA is done via the GUI. The HA team have been making a real effort to transition to GUI for everything. Every month a new integration or app or add-on is available via GUI instead of yaml. I haven't even attempted any yaml and I'm pretty far along
I use Amcrest cameras and there is a native integration in HA. There's one for Reolink as well and you'll be able to use motion as a trigger for anything else you could think of.
I love my C7. I have two of them and they are the backbone and workhorse of my system controlling all my Z-Wave and Zigbee devices. It's incredibly reliable and I don't even have to worry about it. That being said they aren't even in the same room as HA when it comes to dashboards. It also seems that they have no desire to put development effort towards it at this time. Completely understandable as it's a small company with limited resources however I think it's a poor decision.
You won't regret it, I promise. Here's a few of my dashboards. They're incredibly easy to setup with zero coding so far (You can still code absolutely everything in yaml if you desire, there's a toggle to switch back and forth on every window).
Dashboards are also interactive with a single tap being more info (or something else if you want) and long press doing something different. Very responsive as well, I'm running them on low spec Kindle fire tablets that have a hard time surfing the web.
Edit: I forgot to mention that you also get the opportunity to integrate all those oddball devices that habitat doesn't support. If you can buy it there's a chance that you can make it work in HA.
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?
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?
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
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.
