Indoor IP/WiFi Camera Recommendations

Veroland · Nov 14, 2020

Neuk_ said:
I figured it out by simple trial and error and then trial followed by a lot more error with more error and some trial Now to get the camera feed in, figure out remote access to the Home Assistant app on my iPhone and then I can do away with eWeLink.

You can use Home Assistant Cloud for a fee. Otherwise there is duckdns which works well.

Neuk_ · Nov 14, 2020

Veroland said:
You can use Home Assistant Cloud for a fee. Otherwise there is duckdns which works well.

I already have a dynamic DNS service for our HikVision CCTv so I will use that, I just can't remember the details of what I setup as it was over two years ago.

Veroland · Nov 14, 2020

Neuk_ said:
I already have a dynamic DNS service for our HikVision CCTv so I will use that, I just can't remember the details of what I setup as it was over two years ago.

It should be a simple process of port forwarding on your router, I assume you will need to use a diiferent port than for the HikVision. In HA you just add the http section in configuration.yaml with the port you configured on the router. You will need to copy the cert files to HA as well.

Code:

http:
  base_url: https://xxxxx.duckdns.org
  ssl_certificate: /ssl/fullchain.pem
  ssl_key: /ssl/privkey.pem
  server_port: 443

Edit: You can only have base_url in HA though, so all your device will use the external ip to access HA.
I add my duckdns domain to my PI hole server as a custom domain to get past that.

Neuk_ · Nov 14, 2020

Veroland said:
It should be a simple process of port forwarding on your router, I assume you will need to use a diiferent port than for the HikVision. In HA you just add the http section in configuration.yaml with the port you configured on the router. You will need to copy the cert files to HA as well.

Code:

http: base_url: https://xxxxx.duckdns.org ssl_certificate: /ssl/fullchain.pem ssl_key: /ssl/privkey.pem server_port: 443

Edit: You can only have base_url in HA though, so all your device will use the external ip to access HA.
I add my duckdns domain to my PI hole server as a custom domain to get past that.

Thanks

Neuk_ · Nov 14, 2020

I am having issues adding the second Sonoff camera, I keep getting this config error...

Code:

Invalid config for [camera.mjpeg]: [input] is an invalid option for [camera.mjpeg]. Check: camera.mjpeg->input. (See ?, line ?).
Invalid config for [camera.mjpeg]: [input] is an invalid option for [camera.mjpeg]. Check: camera.mjpeg->input. (See ?, line ?).

I am using this in the config file and

Code:

camera:
  - platform: mjpeg
    name: "ben_bedroom_camera"
    input: rtsp://rtsp:[email protected]:554/av_stream/ch0

camera 2:
  - platform: mjpeg
    name: "lounge_camera"
    input: rtsp://rtsp:[email protected]:554/av_stream/ch0

The first camera works, the second doesn't, I get the config error and an Entity not available error.

MongooseMan · Nov 14, 2020

Neuk_ said:
I am having issues adding the second Sonoff camera, I keep getting this config error...

Code:

Invalid config for [camera.mjpeg]: [input] is an invalid option for [camera.mjpeg]. Check: camera.mjpeg->input. (See ?, line ?). Invalid config for [camera.mjpeg]: [input] is an invalid option for [camera.mjpeg]. Check: camera.mjpeg->input. (See ?, line ?).

I am using this in the config file and

Code:

camera: - platform: mjpeg name: "ben_bedroom_camera" input: rtsp://rtsp:[email protected]:554/av_stream/ch0 camera 2: - platform: mjpeg name: "lounge_camera" input: rtsp://rtsp:[email protected]:554/av_stream/ch0

The first camera works, the second doesn't, I get the config error and an Entity not available error.

Try remove the line with "camera 2",and see if that works.

Veroland · Nov 14, 2020

Neuk_ said:
I am having issues adding the second Sonoff camera, I keep getting this config error...

Code:

Invalid config for [camera.mjpeg]: [input] is an invalid option for [camera.mjpeg]. Check: camera.mjpeg->input. (See ?, line ?). Invalid config for [camera.mjpeg]: [input] is an invalid option for [camera.mjpeg]. Check: camera.mjpeg->input. (See ?, line ?).

I am using this in the config file and

Code:

camera: - platform: mjpeg name: "ben_bedroom_camera" input: rtsp://rtsp:[email protected]:554/av_stream/ch0 camera 2: - platform: mjpeg name: "lounge_camera" input: rtsp://rtsp:[email protected]:554/av_stream/ch0

The first camera works, the second doesn't, I get the config error and an Entity not available error.

I think it should be like this:

Code:

camera:
  - platform: mjpeg
    name: "ben_bedroom_camera"
    input: rtsp://rtsp:[email protected]:554/av_stream/ch0
  - platform: mjpeg
    name: "lounge_camera"
    input: rtsp://rtsp:[email protected]:554/av_stream/ch0

Neuk_ · Nov 14, 2020

MongooseMan said:
Try remove the line with "camera 2",and see if that works.

Same errors unfortunately, either I missed a step somewhere or my syntax is incorrect but I don't get any syntax errors using Visual Studio Code.

Neuk_ · Nov 14, 2020

Veroland said:

I think it should be like this:

Code:

camera:
  - platform: mjpeg
    name: "ben_bedroom_camera"
    input: rtsp://rtsp:[email protected]:554/av_stream/ch0
  - platform: mjpeg
    name: "lounge_camera"
    input: rtsp://rtsp:[email protected]:554/av_stream/ch0

Same errors unfortunately.

Neuk_ · Nov 14, 2020

Neuk_ said:
I am having issues adding the second Sonoff camera, I keep getting this config error...

Code:

Invalid config for [camera.mjpeg]: [input] is an invalid option for [camera.mjpeg]. Check: camera.mjpeg->input. (See ?, line ?). Invalid config for [camera.mjpeg]: [input] is an invalid option for [camera.mjpeg]. Check: camera.mjpeg->input. (See ?, line ?).

I am using this in the config file and

Code:

camera: - platform: mjpeg name: "ben_bedroom_camera" input: rtsp://rtsp:[email protected]:554/av_stream/ch0 camera 2: - platform: mjpeg name: "lounge_camera" input: rtsp://rtsp:[email protected]:554/av_stream/ch0

The first camera works, the second doesn't, I get the config error and an Entity not available error.

I changed the platform to ffmpeg and the camera's both work now, the second's PT controls don't so that is next to get sorted out.

Veroland · Nov 14, 2020

Neuk_ said:
Same errors unfortunately.

This is my mjpeg camera setup, it's a pi cam running a app called mjpeg streamer.

Code:

camera:
  - platform: mjpeg
    name: PI Cam
    still_image_url: http://192.168.0.200:8081/?action=snapshot
    mjpeg_url: http://192.168.0.200:8081/?action=stream

However, I think for rstp you can not use the mjpeg platform.

You should be able to get it working using the generic platform:

Code:

camera:
  - platform: generic
    name: Streaming Enabled
    still_image_url: http://194.218.96.92/jpg/image.jpg
    stream_source: rtsp://194.218.96.92:554

Also, check you heave streaming enabled in your config by adding:

Code:

stream:

Veroland · Nov 14, 2020

Neuk_ said:
I changed the platform to ffmpeg and the camera's both work now, the second's PT controls don't so that is next to get sorted out.

Ah cool. Good luck.

AxField · Nov 14, 2020

Here you go for mjpeg:

camera:
- platform: mjpeg
mjpeg_url: rtsp://rtsp:[email protected]:554/av_stream/ch0
name: cam1
- platform: mjpeg
mjpeg_url: rtsp://rtsp:[email protected]:554/av_stream/ch0
name: cam2

You have to give each camera a unique name and point to the correct url that serves up mjpeg streams

Neuk_ · Nov 14, 2020

gbyleveldt said:
Here you go for mjpeg:

camera:
- platform: mjpeg
mjpeg_url: rtsp://rtsp:[email protected]:554/av_stream/ch0
name: cam1
- platform: mjpeg
mjpeg_url: rtsp://rtsp:[email protected]:554/av_stream/ch0
name: cam2

You have to give each camera a unique name and point to the correct url that serves up mjpeg streams

Thanks

This worked for mjpeg but I am still stumped as to why one of the cameras PT controls don't work.

AxField · Nov 14, 2020

Hmmmm, you have me there. I’ve never messed with PTZ cameras on HA. Maybe post the code snippet of how you are sending the messages back to the cameras? There might be a syntax issue. Yaml isn‘t as great as some people think lol

furpile · Nov 14, 2020

Neuk_ said:
Thanks This worked for mjpeg but I am still stumped as to why one of the cameras PT controls don't work.

Did you duplicate all the commands with unique names for each camera?

Neuk_ · Nov 14, 2020

gbyleveldt said:
Hmmmm, you have me there. I’ve never messed with PTZ cameras on HA. Maybe post the code snippet of how you are sending the messages back to the cameras? There might be a syntax issue. Yaml isn‘t as great as some people think lol

furpile said:
Did you duplicate all the commands with unique names for each camera?

I figured it out, I had the wrong device number

On to sorting the Paradox alarm integration, the entities still say unavailable but I think the ParadoxIP150 MQTT Adapter is connected as I can't log in to the IP150 via URL as there is already a user logged in.

AxField · Nov 15, 2020

Neuk_ said:
I figured it out, I had the wrong device number On to sorting the Paradox alarm integration, the entities still say unavailable but I think the ParadoxIP150 MQTT Adapter is connected as I can't log in to the IP150 via URL as there is already a user logged in.

Wonderful! What’s the PTZ latency like now? Is it at least usable?

Neuk_ · Nov 15, 2020

gbyleveldt said:
Wonderful! What’s the PTZ latency like now? Is it at least usable?

It is not great at all, the eWeLink app is a lot quicker for both the video feed and PT controls, the best video feed is still via our HikVision NVR though but the PT controls don't work as I am using RTSP to feed video to the NVR from the Sonoff cameras.

AxField · Nov 15, 2020

Neuk_ said:
It is not great at all, the eWeLink app is a lot quicker for both the video feed and PT controls, the best video feed is still via our HikVision NVR though but the PT controls don't work as I am using RTSP to feed video to the NVR from the Sonoff cameras.

Ok, which lovelace card are you using to display the streams? You should use the Picture Entity card, the Picture Elements card is buggy and has high latency. Here's sample code I used for the Picture Entity card.

type: picture-entity
entity: camera.cam1
camera_image: camera.cam1
camera_view: live
show_name: false
show_state: false

In my case, there's literally less than a second of latency and this is running through BI - not even directly to the camera.

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