Cast Blue Iris To TV Using Google Home

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Sorry if this is too ISY-994 centered but I originally posted it in their forum.

I do not know why I haven’t known about HA until recently and only found it when I started searching for a way to say “Hey Google, show me the front door camera” and have the home automation system automatically cast it to the main TV and power everything up if off. Works well with Blue Iris (might work with other software for cameras or even natively with IP cameras themselves, I did not try). Below is the network resource that I use for it.

You need HA (I have it running on a windows PC but plan to move it to a Pi 3 soon). ISY with the network module (obviously). Or you could use IFTTT to talk directly to HA if you don’t have a ISY-994i. You’d have to open up HA to the outside. Blue Iris camera DVR software. (If you have cameras and don’t have this you should, it’s amazing and integrates well with the ISY) A device that will cast to a TV from HA and a Google Home or Amazon Echo.

You have to add the cast to device and the cameras to HA. The cast to device should be found automatically by HA.

in the configuration.yaml add for each camera in Blue Iris that you’d like to cast. Groups work too if you have them set up in Blue Iris.

#Front Door Camera

camera:

    - platform: mjpeg

      mjpeg_url:  http://address of Blue Iris Server:port/mjpg/cam1(Blue Iris shortname for camera)

      name: Front_Door_Camera

      username: Blue Iris Username

      password: pw for Blue Iris

      authentication: basic (must have secure for LAN only turned off in Blue Iris I think)

Once you have all that setup you can make the following network resource in the ISY and call it from the Google Home or Amazon echo. I prefer the Google Home because I can use IFTTT and make the command “show me the front door”. With Echo I have to say “trigger show me the front door” or "turn on show me the front door. You get the picture.

Network Resource that tells HA to cast the camera video:

http post Host = ip of the HA server Port = 8123 (unless you modify it in HA) Path = /api/services/media_player/play_media?api_password=xxx (if you set one up in HA)

Raw text Body = {“entity_id”:“media_player.shield”, “media_content_id”:“http://ip address of Blue Iris:port of Blue Iris/mjpg/cam1(whatever you set up in HA)/video.mjpg”,“media_content_type”:“image/jpg”}

“shield” above is whatever HA sees your cast to device as.

Add it to a program that you can call from IFTTT or directly to the ISY from Google Home or Echo. For IFTTT use Google Assistant Trigger or Amazon Alexa and Webhooks as the action to the program in the ISY. Have fun!

Next, I plan to use an Arduino Nano with an ESP8122 to detect the door bell and send to the ISY and then cast that camera when activated.

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I was trying to do exactly this. The way I got it to work was to use Google home to issue a command to Google Assistant in ifttt, ifttt sends the command through webhooks to the Android app Join, made by the guy who makes Tasker. So I use Tasker with join to receive the message, then Tasker issues the command to the Android app tinycam pro(has Tasker integration) to tell tinycam pro to Chromecast my security cameras. It takes about 6 seconds from the time I say the command before the feed is shown.

I’ve tried to get that 6 seconds to be a little quicker but I don’t have my front door camera yet so I had just been playing around getting it to work with the nursery cam so my wife can watch the baby no matter which room she’s in.

I’d love to know of any other methods.

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You can have IFTTT call straight to HA but you have to open up HA to the internet but without Blue Iris there may be another step to convert the video. You could bypass the Android that way. I use Tasker and Join as well, just not for this. There are probably ways of making HA secure over the internet but I chose to have the ISY do it so it stays internal other than the Google Home or Alexa voice command.

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I use a direct call from IFTTT to HA to do it. Google Home/Google Assistant triggers an IFTTT event, and IFTTT sends this to my HA server to play the camera stream on my Chromecast, which is registered as a media player in HA:
https://mydynddns.net:8123/api/services/media_player/play_media?api_password=myAPIpassword
Body: {“entity_id”:“media_player.mychromecast”, “media_content_id”:“http://BI_Server_internal_IP_Address:port/mjpg/camname/video.mjpg”,“media_content_type”:“image/jpg”}

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@itm1960 I have tried this but does not work. Do you have to put the blue iris user name and password in?

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No I’ve disabled BI login for LAN access

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Hi
If i enter this in the dev services i get a Invalid JSON
but if i take out the media_content_type the Invalid JSON goes away.
But still does not work.(I put in my own details).

Any help

Edit: ok i managed to get the media_content_type in and the Google TV changed to the little cast logo but that was all so half way there…

Edit: Got it working the dev services was telling me to use VIDEO as the media_content_type but soon as i change it to image/jpg it worked

Thank you and sorry to mess you around… @itm1960

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Glad you got it working :0)

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Anyone using an Arlo camera to cast to a chromecast, now that Arlo works with google assistant? I get a compliant response from google assistant but just says “HA cast camera” on my TV?

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@ngknick Arlo works with HA. Use aarlo component and the aarlo custom lovelace card