Camera.play_stream service? Can I use it to cast/play my doorbell to a chromecast device?

I’ve been reading that the I “should” be able to cast/play a stream of my video doorbell camera (AmCrest AD410) to my Nvidia Shield (with chromecast). So I decided to try and call it through the services tab in Developer Tools using the following:

service: camera.play_stream
data:
  media_player: media_player.shield_basement
  entity_id: camera.doorbell_411_main

However, as you might have guessed, it’s not working? I don’t see any errors on the logs file.

So…Is it possible? What am I doing wrong?

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Just as a follow-up, I never was able to make this work but thanks to the timing of release 2022.3, the new play media feature solved this dilemma and streams the doorbell camera perfectly to my chromecast TV.

How did you make it work?

Well it’s simple if you have equipment. First you have to have tv preferably with chromecast integration built in. Than you have to find a way to prevent your tv from going into deep sleep. The rest is more or less easy. You can do automation ie. when someone rings a bell turn on tv and cast picture of happy puppy on the bell or you can cast on tv every time door bell detects movement.

I have a Nest doorbell and for some reason, it shows like an incompatible device when I try to use the play media action, but I’ve seen people in YouTube streaming it and I can also see it from HA

I don’t have experience with nest door bell. I have hikvision door bell connected with poe switch. How did you integrated nest door bell with home assistant? Does this integration support mqtt?

I just used the official nest integration. I think it’s all driven buy a Google API as I have to pay 5$ to be able to use it.

I was thinking to sell and buy a different doorbell, but your post gave me hope…

well if you can see video stream from your bell in home assistant, if it can detect motion and take pictures or clips you might do it. But you also must have tv suitable for it. I found that mi tv with build in chromecast integration works great. On the other hand my samsung tv is giving me a headache.

I have Chromecast and LG TV, but HA doesn’t allow me to pick the doorbell camera as a source.

I guess I’ll try and ask in a separate post.

Thanks for your help!

Just a sec.
I don’t understand you. When you go to media you don’t have a camera as media source?

The feed is about 20 seconds behind when you do this though.

nope, not at all

so then it is useless? I guess I’ll have to find a better camera that integrates better, but I’m surprised and afraid that I didn’t find anything online about issues or similar with HA

That is weird. I don’t know what the problem is, but if you can make it work go with poe intercom. I have hikvision, yeah it’s Chinese, but its working in ha without cloud.

I’ll check it out, thanks for the suggestion!!

Useless if you want live video.
You can get live video to play in a card you put on your dashboard and then cast the dashboard to a Chromecast. The video will be live but takes about 15 seconds to load.
I wanted to see live video if someone walked onto my porch or drove up the driveway. I wound up going a different direction with a spare PC hooked to my TV.
I have IP Camera viewer on that pc hooked up to the TV with 2 different HDMI ports. Basically using the TV as 2 monitors. I have each camera pulled up full time on each “monitor”. Home assistant switches to the relevant input when either someone walks up on the porch or a car pulls into the driveway.
Dont understand why we cant cast live video. Especially when you can cast live video if you cast a dashboard. Puzzling to me…

Ok so it’s not just me being stupid… What really freaks me out is how this isn’t documented or at least commented around!

I guess I’ll have to find a different approach and that’s it