I'm fairly new to HE and am trying to get my head around it. There's so many ways to do things that I get overwhelmed. One of my next goals is to work getting a cohesive home security setup. Right now I'm using HSM with door and motion sensors. I'm using modes to determine what should happen when I'm home vs away. Eventually I'll add presence using the HE App. Until then I'm using BI Control with virtual switches to both change the HSM mode and Blue Iris profile manually from the dashboard. When HSM intrusion triggers it notifies my phone, turns on all the lights and eventually will sound a siren.
My BI profiles determine which camera's motion detection are active, whether they should record all the time or just on trigger, and if/when/which camera I get alerts and pictures sent to my phone. I'm working on getting a VPN setup so I can log into my network to see cameras etc.
Here's some things I'd like to work on :
I'd like to be able to trigger/maintain intrusion mode in HSM when a BI camera detects motion in Armed Away mode.
I'd like everything to go back to "all clear" state after timed inactivity on sensors and cameras. This would switch BI to where it was, such as Away profile, and for HSM to cancel intrusion alert. It would also cancel siren and ideally set the lights back to whatever scenes they were in before the alert. The lights part is lower priority as the lights are all on time schedules for day/night anyway.
A button or switch to manually set this "all clear' remotely in the dashboard with a switch.
I've got a BI Profile called "Intrusion" that activates recording on all cameras regardless of motion. I'd like HSM to trigger this when it detects intrusion in Away mode for example. So let's say someone breaks in my garage door (which currently isn't covered by a camera, but has door and motion sensors), all the cameras in the house start recording.
I can see ways to do several of these things individually and I have ideas for parts. But I figure others may already have done similar things and can share their experiences and what they found works. Hoping I can save some frustration for everyone by getting it done with as little spousal annoyance as possible while I figure it all out.
First as suggested above, do go to IPCAMTALK and read up. Especially the FAQ.
My .02$ highly consider recording all the time...24/7. Disk space is VERY cheap these days. And you can archive those recordings. I have 18 cameras that record 24/7 and keep an archive for over 30 days. In my first years of running the system when something did happen...it always seemed that I was missing something because motion didn't trigger a record or other. Recording all the time just solves those issues. Then still use triggers to find the events. Additionally consider the human sensing AI (Sentry). It's getting better everyday. That's a great way to get you a summary alert of what's going on and much better motion detection that's not going to trigger your camera's while you were away based on clouds/trees/shadows.
I've used the Maker API in HE to integrate with BI. I also trigger "events" in BI based on things in HE and use cameras in BI as motion sensors in HE. PTZ cameras are moved to presets based on HE events also. All has been working flawlessly since I've set it up in HE.
I personally do not synchronize modes between BI and HE. As for me I've found they are not 1 to 1. A great example is "Away" mode. Away in HE means away. Always. There is no "night away" and "day away". Where in HE I do things differently at night. I do however use HE to set the modes of BI rather than a schedule in BI as I'd rather just do my presence sensing in HE.
Good points. Right now my family is willing to tolerate cameras in common areas, but are not too keen on them recording all the time. I have the external cameras recording 24/7 and indoor ones only when away. I will rethink that though and see if we can come to a compromise.
Would you be willing to share more details on how you manage the linking between HE and BI? Also, what specific things do you find that you need to do at "night away" vs "day away? It may not be an issue with me because I'm not going to end up with anywhere near 18 cameras (for a while at least).
My understanding of the AI is that it has to send everything out to cloud servers, right? One of the things I bought the HE for was to keep everything local. So I'm not sure how comfortable I am with that yet. Hopefully BI will integrate it locally. If a $20 wyze cam can run rudimentary face detection I'd think a fairly powerful PC (especially with newer AI enhanced GPU's) could do better. I know the BI creator has promised more AI support in the future.
For now I'm using the zones etc to greatly reduce false alarms. It seems to work OK with some tinkering.
you just need your BI password where I clipped the shot after the PW=
The top line there triggers an "event" in BI. In that case when a door contact sensor is opened I trigger a record and move the PTZ there. After 3 min I move it back.
Agree 100% about AI being local...it's coming! I do a combo of local motion triggers and AI.
example of triggering a "virtual motion sensor" in HE from BI:
Actually that example is the "ON ALERT" example(ACTIVE). And yes on Reset I set the virtual motion sensor to "INACTIVE". Those active/inactive URLs come right from Maker API.
Forgive the beginner question, I am new to all this and never used Maker API.
When you say a "virtual motion sensor", does this mean you just always use "local endpoint" in your rules, or did you actually program a virtual device that you can select as a motion sensor in your rules? If it is the later, would you be able to walk through the steps of creating your virtual motion sensor and your configurations on the HE side? I already have BI set up to post the alerts on a URL that I can use as a trigger in HE by picking "local endpoint", but it wouldnt be DRY code to use this everywhere. I am also wondering how exactly it would work since a motion sensor usually has two states it switches between active and inactive while the motions alerts in BI just come out as a ping when the motion starts I think, it doesnt have a "no longer detecting motion" alert. Thanks for any help.
on the devices page you can create a virtual device. Create one with whatever name you want and use the "Virtual Motion" device driver as the device type. Then add that device into the Maker API app. You should then get it's own device ID in there. Then as above use that device ID URL as described. One post up I describe you use two url's one for active and one for inactive. BI terms on alert and reset.
