Amcrest video doorbell AD110 initial impressions

Hardware
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I worked around the problem with my AD110 not issuing any motion alerts to the SmartHome app, despite “Call Notification” being enabled in the app.

After dumping the internal config I discovered that the Alarm[0].Enable setting which is used for PIR motion alerts remained “false”. Weird.

Anyway, reset it to true via the API and PIR motion alarms are working fine now .

NOTE: VideoMotion events that Home Assistant Amcrest integration subscribes to are pixel change motion events which are always enabled and are not triggered by PIR alarms. It also explains why HA can get many more motion alerts than the SmartHome app.

255

I have had two of these (one RMA) both suffer the same problems. They only operate well in temperatures between 40F-90F. Anything outside of that range and they go offline eventually, until rebooted.

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Guys a question,

I am using now the generic picture entity to get picture snapshot when someone is at the door. But i need to see Clips in HA instead of only a picture. How can i do that?

I have blueiris, acrest2mqtt and Amcrest integration working in HA.

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Hey I have the newer 2K model. Have you figured out any way to reduce RTSP lag?
I experience around 6-10 second lag and when trying to figure out who’s at your door it’s a bit awkward.
My Nest Hello had an instant view on our Google Home hub and that’s through the cloud, so it’s hard to justify that it “works better”.
I just really hate paying monthly for person detection with the Nest doorbell…

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Keith, this RTSP lag is not a problem specific to the AD110 or AD410 - it’s a “feature” of HA’s STREAM that will cause a lag on any camera to various degrees. HA is transcoding RTSP into HLS and buffers it for universal web browser playback. If the camera can have its keyframe adjusted then its possible to reduce the lag somewhat, but not entirely.

Some have suggested using MJPEG , which is basically a series of snapshots played back at 1 image per second or so. That will be close to real time. See: Solutions for camera feed delays? Alternative camera platform options?

Probably a better solution that I have been meaning to try is using this WebRTC custom component. see: Realtime camera streaming without any delay - WebRTC

If you try it, report back on how well it works.

1 Like
259

Have you not tried just using HA’s CAMERA RECORD service?

Be sure to specify a lookback value to “rewind” the video some. That’s due to the aforementioned lag.

Addendum:

@himdola - Since you are using Blue Iris, have you tried using the BI integration for accessing recordings?

260

Thanks for the info.
I’ll dig in.

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So a report on WebRTC… It’s promising…
It’s faster for sure, but it is a bit more buggy.

It seems to take a lot of resources compared to HLS.
When I loaded it up on my Fire tablet (newest model) it really struggled.
The video window kept restarting and reloading every second or so.

I also tried to cast it, as it says it supports, but the stream never showed up on my Google Home Hub.
In fairness, when I had the Amcrest integration installed for some reason I couldn’t get that to work either, while a Wyze V2 that spits out RTSP to Home Assistant showed up instantaneously when I hit the call service button.
I really want the feed to show up on that device when somebody presses the doorbell.

Seems like these Amcrest doorbells are so close to fitting the bill for the ideal HA Doorbell but there’s just all these little issues that make it less than ideal.
I’m fighting the urge not to switch back to my Nest Hello… I don’t want to pay monthly for cloud garbage lol.

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Yes i have blueiris but it records all motions and no matter when someone have pressed to the ring button. I just want to lookback some of 10 seconds before someone have pressed the ring button.

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I recommend using Frigate if you want really reliable object detection. Using the RTSP feed from the Amcrest doorbell, I feed it directly into Frigate with the rest of my cams. I get clips upon detection not just button press. Just a thought.

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Thanks for the tip. For just human detection, the AI in the new AD410 leverages Dahua SmartPlan/IVS Intrusion Detection mode for ingress and “appear” into a defined polygon zone. It works quite well. I have turned off general motion detection completely. The only problem I have with it is it also detects anyone walking out the front door. I think this can be tweaked further to remove the “appear” setting, but I haven’t been home this week to make adjustments via either the API or other software. SmartHome app is very limited.

265

I just got this up and running. I go from the camera to frigate to HA.
The latter part is very fast but the camera to HA is still a bit laggy.
I couldn’t get amcrest detection zones to line up perfectly with Frigate’s so I actually just switched to Frigate’s person detection so that I get the right snapshot on the person camera it spits out.
I send that to myself in a notification.

Still can’t cast the frigate stream of the amcrest doorbell to my Google Home Hub, but I can of my Wyze cam instantly.
I couldn’t cast the amcrest integration camera or the WebRTC to the Google Home Hub.
Gotta be a codec issue.

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FYI, I made a Hassio addon which is just a wrapper around the original docker image:

I’m sharing it here as I’d like to get some test results since one user faced issues on Raspbian that I can’t reproduce (I’m on a NUC).

3 Likes
267

I am on a x86 processor as well, but I will gladly use it.

I’m a little torn about whether I’m keeping the doorbell.
There’s a delay between pressing the button and the doorbell itself playing a chime outside to let you know you pressed it.
I reset it and the delay lessened but it’s still a little annoying for anybody that comes by I imagine.

1 Like
268

Not sure if you have an AD410 (I do) but there’s hardly a delay with me, the “ding dong” almost instantly pops up.

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Hi Rob,

I’ve already commented on your Github page, and am cross-posting here for others to see…

Your wrapper of DChesterson’s amcrest2mqtt as an add-on is working perfectly on my RasPi4 HASS. It’s not Raspbian, but it is a standard HASS OS 64bit build.

I was hoping I could use amcrest2mqtt to support not just my AD410 for doorbell/human detection, but also for several Dahua cameras using tripwire for Intrusion detection. (The standard Amcrest video motion sensor is useless to me).

I don’t see an obvious way this add-on can support multiple instances for each camera.

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From the readme on github

Out of Scope

Multiple Devices

The app will not support multiple devices. You can run multiple instances of the app if you need to expose events for multiple devies.

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Thanks, I was aware of that limitation. What I don’t know is how an add-on can be run as “multiple instances” which is the workaround for multiple devices.

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I have AD410 and i didn’t understand how to setup in HA

I use frigate, so i guess is better to use frigate.

But rtsp doesn’t works for me, because i use

rtsp://myemail:[email protected]/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=1

no way, ask me password, but i insert username that i use in the app amcrest smart home, and the same password, why ask me vlc password like isn’t correct ?

273

During the initial setup of the AD410, it requests a device password. This is probably not the same password you used for the SmartHome app. Also, the device userid is “admin” by default and definitely not your email ID.