Blue Iris Integration Tutorial

The stream works- it is the still image that refreshes every few minutes that does not work. I see that there is a “still_image_url” parameter I could set for this component, however I don’t think I want to use this since I’d still want the image to refresh every few minutes or so.

Try the below once for one of the cameras. I found some things are picky on the order you put the details.

camera_image: camera.front_camera
entity: camera.front_camera
show_info: true
tap_action: dialog
title: Front Walkway Camera
type: picture-entity

Thanks @TaperCrimp!
This made my transition from MotionEye to BlueIris very easy.
I’m going to include a link to this post in a video soon.
Thanks again for a nice concise and very helpful post!

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Thanks! Considering the number of people that cite your videos, I’d consider that an honor :).

Is there a way to send a snapshot of a camera via automation to a mobile device? Something like an email or direct notification…

Not directly from Blue Iris. It can be done with Home Assistant though. It needs to be updated, but I’d put together a guide on doing this with the iOS app or from Pushover.

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Anyone had any success with Blue Iris 5 integration? It seems like these URLs now require additional login with BI5 (even with credentials provided in the link or via the camera yaml).

Go to Settings → Web Server → Advanced. You’ll likely need to uncheck “Use secure session keys and login page”.

Yep, you rock. Thanks.

Glad to help. I also just updated the guide.

@DrZzs why did you decide to switch to Blue Iris? How does it compare to motioneye for your uses? I’ve loved your camera videos lately and am looking to set up a surveillance system, and was surprised to see that you had switched.

I can’t speak to @DrZzs, but I’ve used Blue Iris for years. It’s really difficult to beat all of the functionality you get for the price. As far as I can tell, it’s also develop by one guy that is extremely active in the BI forums, e.g. someone will point out a bug and it’s fixed in the next release. It only runs on Windows but the web interface is pretty solid too, so you can run it headless if necessary. I’ve got it running on my desktop which is on 24/7.

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Make sure To try this new custom component:

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I switched just because I had added so many cameras to MotionEye that it was bogging down my i3 NUC. With all the camera streams running it was affecting Home Assistant performance because they were running on the same machine. Blue Iris runs on Windows so I have it running on my i7 PC w/ 1080ti graphics card. It uses less than 20% of the CPU on that machine, and now my Nuc is back to running just HA and the other add-ons.
Blue Iris does have A LOT more features than Motion Eye. I haven’t even scratched the surface of what it can do. If you have a lot of cameras and a strong Windows PC that is always on, then I would recommend Blue Iris. If you just have a few cameras and your HA machine is decently powerful then you’d be fine to just use MotionEye.
That’s my 2 cents :slight_smile:

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Or any machine that can run a vm. I’m running Blue Iris in a virtual Win10 installation on unRaid.

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true. You could do it in a VM also. Just make sure the machine you’re running it on is fairly strong w/ CPU/GPU. My i3 Nuc wasn’t up to the task.

Ha, we have almost the same setup. I’ve got 5-6 Hikvision PoE cameras streaming to BI in HD. Alerts are synced to Google Drive and a dedicated HDD stores about 2 weeks of footage. I’ve flipped back and forth between triggered and continuous recording. Triggered is nice because I can sync the full clips to Google Drive, but continuous has the advantage of seeing everything regardless of the alerts. Too large for Google Drive though.

Part of me wants to duplicate the cameras so I can do both, but that’d be a pain to manage. I’ll have to get around to submitting that as a FR at some point.

Is there a way to call PTZ presets from HA? I’d like to be able to adjust my PTZ camera from within HA without logging into BI or the BI web interface.

FYI - I’ve also reached out to support from BI to see if they can call PTZ presets through MQTT.

Hi all,

I’m trying to figure out if it’s possible to trigger a recording action to a BlueIris Camera from another device… for example: If a switch/sensor is turned of then HASSIO would trigger MQTT msg to BlueIris to start recording. Is it possible ?

I’ve never done it thru BI but I use command line switches to move my camera’s between two preset points. Turning the switch on moves the camera to one preset and turning it off moves it to another preset.