Forgive me if this has been answered, I’ve been all over Google and can’t seem to find anything, I may just be confused on what I am reading. I am needing a camera that links up to HA but also supports continuous recording. I have a situation in my house requiring continuous recording and don’t want to buy the night owls if something can integrate and fulfill my needs. I will NOT purchase the Wyze cams. They had a security flaw for a long time and I’m just not comfortable with them.
I use IP camera’s and Blue Iris. Blue Iris integrates into HA via HACS.
Beautiful, I just saw Blue Iris at Sam’s. Any details about them that you particularly like? Also, do they have their own local recording? Or would I need to figure out how to boost the storage on my rpi?
Edit: no I didn’t.
Not sure you saw Blue Iris at Sam’s. Blue Iris is a software download. You will download it and it will be your camera’s NVR. https://blueirissoftware.com/ You can have them save the recordings to an NAS.
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Yeah, I just came back to say I’m sure I goofed that one up. Lol. Which ip cams you use.
I just looked into Blue Iris. Definitely willing to shell out the 70. Will it work with Night Owl Wifi Cams? Or is there a difference in IP and WiFi cam? Thanks in advance.
Oooo… another question if anyone knows, can I somehow make my Ring or Blink Cams not rely on amazon services and just control them locally? Would I be able to use them for this if so?
I use 4K 8mp hardwired. It says POE but there is a dedicated power run and a dedicated ethernet run connector on the camera. I’m sure if I had a POE switch it would do power and data but I just have each individual to the cameras. Picture is pretty nice.
You cannot do Ring on Blue Iris (I’ve tried). I am not sure about Blink cameras or Night Owl. If they have RTSP or Onvif capabilities then you should be able to discover them on Blue Iris.
Oh, awesome, I was reading something about these capabilities on the nightowls. I’ll have to look into that. Do you have a good suggestion for wireless that will work? Unfortunately I’m still renting at the moment, since houses are so expensive now.
The one I linked did have WiFi abilities. I’ve also used Wansview cameras. You would still need to get power to the cameras.
Oh, noice, I missed that. My bad. THANK YOU! This is probably the route I will go then.
Does this look like a good deal to you? I decided since I used to do cable installations and repairs, I’m just gonna go for it and repair when I leave, I know they aren’t wireless, but I’m particularly interested in the fact that it comes with the NVR.
I guess my better question is, do I even need an NVR with Blue Iris? I was mainly considering it because if I’m understanding correctly, I wouldn’t need a poe switch as well, which I am having trouble finding one that isn’t just 4 port from a reputable brand. I’ve seen a lot of people recommend reolink, I also like the idea of avoiding jammers. If I can do 8 poe cams for way less, I’d definitely like to, this is pretty close in price to getting 8 of what you got, so I figured I’d ask your opinion.
I use foscam cameras. They work on wired or wireless and work with blue iris and home assistant.
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Bought 5 Reolink and a POE 8 port (to add more later), I’m gonna try them out with the trial for Blue Iris and see how it goes, if I like it, obviously going to buy it.
Questions:
Is there a reason to not get the latest version of Blue Iris and to get a different version instead? I saw a couple available I believe.
Is there a way to tell Home Assistant to record to an external HDD? I am going to be doing continuous recording an am going to need some space, I don’t only want to record to my PC/BI, I need back ups.
If I have continuous recording set in BI, will it still get Motion Alerts as well?
And if anyone out there comes across this, did I waste money buying the 4K vs the 5MP? I was reading that it may not be able to carry 4K over ONVIF?
not that I know of.
I don’t think HA should be used to make significant amounts of camera recordings. That is what BI is for.
But I have no idea if or how you could set up HA to record to an external hard drive. I’ve never used one with HA.
But you can set up BI to record to a NAS drive so that would solve the concern of recording lots of data to your PC. But be aware that your NAS drive (and network) needs to be fast and durable if you are going to be trying to record eight 4k streams continuously. Thats A LOT of data!
I don’t use continuous recordings of any cameras (for the above reasons) so I’ve never tried but I don’t see why not.
As far as I know they are two different settings.
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Coolness. Thank you. Yeah, I ordered an external SDD to save some room.
@mattfam0914 I have a question about BI and HA integration… does yours report motion alerts properly? The integrations native sensor doesn’t work at all. Just says it’s clear. I configured the cam to send an MQTT message on trigger and a binary sensor in HA to read it, and over half the time it doesn’t trigger. Manual trigger works great, Motion just doesn’t seem to trigger BI most of the time and I’m not trying with continuos set, simply motion. The other sensors in the integration don’t seem to work either, just stay stationary, I can see the stream great though! Figured I’d ask.
Hey @Pronown - Sorry for the late response. Was out on vacation. Yes I have the motion detection via MQTT. It does work pretty good but I really don’t have use for it. I’m sure you could have a push notification sent to your phone if motion while you were away or turn on the front yard lights when motion is detected from the outside camera. There is a lot of potential but also a lot of potential for false positives, especially during rain. Check out this youtube video. This should get you up and running (Free HomeAssistant Motion Sensor! | Send MQTT evnts from Blue Iris to HomeAssistant - YouTube).
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I appreciate you. I actually realized the person I followed the video for originally had no clue what they were doing. I found a video with the proper MQTT info for the alerts and immediately it started working. Fortune would have it that my application for these cameras is primarily indoor. It’s sad that it needs to be done, but meh. Lol. I hope you had a good vacay!