Hi everyone,
I’ve been working on a way to add locally trained, camera-specific AI detection to Home Assistant camera events, without requiring continuous AI analysis of the live camera stream.
My current Home Assistant setup uses Ring. Ring performs its normal motion detection and creates a recording, Home Assistant receives the event, and Cam-Wise then retrieves that recording and analyses it locally on a Windows PC.
The part I’m particularly interested in is what happens after the normal camera motion event.
Instead of every motion event simply meaning “there was movement”, I’d like to be able to determine whether something that actually matters in that particular camera view is present and eventually use that information for better alerts and Home Assistant automations.
That’s what I’ve been building Cam-Wise for.
Teaching the AI what matters in your camera view
Rather than relying only on predefined classes such as person, car or animal, Cam-Wise lets you review examples from your own camera.
Those examples form a local dataset from which you can train a personal detection model for that specific camera environment.
For example, depending on the camera, you might want to distinguish something relevant to your own situation rather than simply knowing that a car or a person was detected.
As you collect more examples, you can train new versions of the model and improve it over time.
The basic flow is:
Camera detects something → recording is created → Cam-Wise analyses it locally → relevant examples can be reviewed → personal model improves
Camera footage, review images, datasets, training and personal models remain on the computer running Cam-Wise by default. The AI analysis and model training are performed locally.
How Home Assistant currently fits in
I want to be clear about the current state of the integration because this is still an early beta.
The Home Assistant route has currently been tested with Ring only.
The flow is:
Ring motion detection → Ring recording → Home Assistant event → Cam-Wise → local AI analysis
So Cam-Wise isn’t currently a generic “select any camera entity in Home Assistant and it works” integration.
It also doesn’t replace the camera’s motion detection or continuously analyse its live stream. It uses the recording that the camera/provider has already created.
Expanding this to other Home Assistant camera setups is actually one of the reasons I’m posting here.
Other recording sources
Cam-Wise can currently receive recordings in two other ways as well.
Reolink microSD
With supported Reolink cameras, the camera performs its own motion detection and saves the resulting recording to its microSD card. Cam-Wise can retrieve those existing recordings and process them locally.
Local / NAS folder
Cam-Wise can also watch a local or network folder. If a camera, NVR or other software places its event recordings there, Cam-Wise can pick them up for processing.
This may also provide a relatively simple route for camera brands that don’t yet have a direct Cam-Wise integration.
This is where I could use some Home Assistant knowledge
Cam-Wise has now reached its first public Windows beta. It works with my own setup, but that’s obviously only a very small hardware sample.
I’m looking for people interested in trying it with:
- Ring + Home Assistant
- different Reolink cameras with microSD recording
- cameras or NVRs that write event recordings to a local/NAS folder
But I’m also interested in something that doesn’t require installing Cam-Wise at all:
How are people here currently handling event recordings from other camera brands in Home Assistant?
For example, if you’re using UniFi, Tapo, Hikvision, Dahua, Synology, Reolink NVR or something completely different: when your camera detects an event, is there a recording that Home Assistant (or another local system) can access afterwards?
And if so, how are you currently accessing or storing that recording?
That would be very useful in determining which Home Assistant camera routes make the most sense to support next.
If you want to test it
If you do have one of the currently supported setups and want to try the beta, even a very basic report would help:
Camera / model:
Setup: Ring + HA / Reolink SD / NAS-folder
Did setup work: yes/no
Did recordings reach Cam-Wise: yes/no
Did they appear correctly for review: yes/no
Anything unexpected: error/message/behaviour
Failed setups are just as useful to me at this stage as successful ones.
More information about how Cam-Wise works, including a visual overview of the application, is available at:
The current Windows beta can also be downloaded there.
This is testing software and shouldn’t be relied upon as a security or alarm system. I’m particularly interested in compatibility problems, confusing setup steps and camera/Home Assistant combinations I haven’t anticipated.
Cam-Wise has a Free version for single-camera use, which is enough for the testing above. A €2.99/month Plus option for functionality such as multi-camera use is planned to help cover the online/back-office services. Payments aren’t enabled during the current beta.
I’m happy to answer questions about the Home Assistant flow, local processing or training as well.