I’ve been messing with the ~$20 camera mentioned here (the TOP-201): https://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php/1812-Review-TOP-201-Super-Mini-720P-HD-IP-Cam-(The-Cheapest-IP-Cam-So-Far-!!)
I wanted to share some of the things I’ve learned about it.
It took me a while to find the url for still images, getting still images from the camera looks like this:
camera:
- platform: generic
still_image_url: http://192.168.1.10/webcapture.jpg?command=snap&channel=1
name: "Front Door Camera"
If you want to use rtsp to stream from the camera (using ffmpeg), you can use this url: rtsp://192.168.1.10/user=admin_password=tlJwpbo6_channel=1_stream=0.sdp
You can also telnet into the camera with username root and password xmhdipc. It’s a tiny linux computer running busybox, very cool!
You might want to add a rule to your firewall preventing it from accessing the internet. It did appear to be connecting to a service that provides dynamic dns, and it was a bit scary to see it trying to make connections to the internet.
This post was a great guide on sending “intruder alert” emails if someone enters your place while you’re away: https://partofthething.com/thoughts/?p=1037 There was one big gotcha… If you’re saving files, you need to save them to /home/hass or it won’t work and the logs won’t tell you there was a problem.