I’m attempting to use the Blue Iris HACS integration but having issues. I’ve installed the integration, configured it ( can see the newly created devices and entities. Using the picture card I can get an image/video of each of my cams. I’ve configured blue iris MQTT connection and alerts for motion. I can view the MQTT messages via MQTT Explorer. But for some reason, I cannot get HA to recognize the the motion events. I’ve had the integration for days now and i have 0 motion events in HA. I dont know how to determine if the issue is with HA or blue iris.
The motion events dont work with the integration natively, they have to be set up through the MQTT capability first. Im currently trying to figure out the same thing, but there is more configuration to be done thru MQTT before the motion events will work
I don’t know about that HACS integration for BI & if there still any manually configured items required but in my case i didn’t use the hacs integration & i manually created a bunch of binary_sensors via the mqtt integration as follows…
In my setup my configuration.yaml has a line like…
mqtt: !include mqtt.yaml
and my mqtt.yaml has
binary_sensor:
## blueiris sensors for camera motion
- name: "FrontPorch Camera Motion"
unique_id: blueiris_front_porch_motion
state_topic: BlueIris/front_porch_hd/motion
payload_on: "yes"
payload_off: "no"
device_class: motion
The state_topic & payload values come from the alerts you have already setup in BI to post to mqtt.
So thats the thing. I’ve looked at the github for the integration and following those instructions I’m still unable to get the motion detected within the integration. I understand I need toc cofnigure MQTT in blue iris and the alerts, I’ve done that. I see the MQTT broadcasts so I know that much is working. According to the doc, thats all that should be necessary.
I have seen others mention generating your own sensors to read the MQTT messages. I will probablyu have to do that, I was just hoping to get it working as the document states it should work.
Thats exactly what I have. I read that MQTT is case sensitive so I made sure even cases were done exactly the same. I will say, my 3 reolink cameras trigger as MOTION_A and my reolink doorbell currently triggers as EXTERNAL and yes, thats the output of the &TYPE macro. But none of the 4 cameras even twitch in HA history. I had thought that the type would matter as far as the integration to “link” the TYPE to the “state” but I dont dont know what the expected TYPEs should be for the integration.
So if you look at your MQTT broker you should see something like the following. If you do that is good. It means that BI is reporting to MQTT. The case does matter.
Now, in HA look at the BI integration configuration and make sure that all of the cameras are selected for things like the motion sensors etc. This tells the BI to monitor MQTT for the triggers. I think it pulls the MQTT information directly from BI. I can’t remember setting it up, but I set it up last year some time.
The Blue Iris integration in HA shows all the sensors selected in configure. I did just switch to logging debug mode, hopefully that will give further detail. Does the logging write directly to the system log or its own file?
Also, i noticed the name of the motion sensor is “binary_sensor.homesecurity_driveway_motion”. Would the name be a potential issue? I didnt modify any of them when first generated but wonder if it shouldn’t say “homesecurity”.
I’m assuming you are working with the doorbell. The case on the drive way is wrong, trigger is upper case and type is capitalized. The key’s should all be lower case like on your doorbell.
In regards to the entity names leave them as they are created. You can rename them later as needed and they will still work but there is a bug in the BI integration that keeps resetting them to default names and removing them from the rooms. Its a pain and I don’t know if the new dev has time to fix it.
Well aint that embarrassing. I totally payed attention to the topic but completely ignored the payload. Much appreciated. I’ve got the doorbell working (its still on my desk) but I’ll check on the installed cams later.
