Confused : HTTP Video Stream v/s RTSP stream and how to get it in HassIO

So as the topics says, initially i did not notice that the protocol would make a difference. I have HassIO 0.92.2 running on RPI3B. I had some old USB cameras lying around without much use, so I thought to connect or being able to see their live stream in the HassIO interface , could be handy as surveillance cams for entrance or backdoor.

Additional to the following cameras , I have one spare RPI3B running Raspbian Stretch.

  1. Logitech Orbit 2.0 PTZ USB Cam
  2. PS3 Eye Camera.

So I though of making the spare Rpi3B as a camera server to be able to send stream to HassIO.

Reading this article https://mentalgrain.com/rpi/install-motion-and-get-it-working-with-multiple-cameras/
I was able to setup “Motion” on Rpi3B with two cameras running on distinct ports. Now the queries

  1. With the guided setup from the above mentioned article , I was able to setup HTTP streams, not RTSP stream. I can view the live video feed of the cameras on any other network PC browser or VLC media player by pointing it to http://my_rpi3_motion_server:[port] where the port number is defined in the motion configuration.

So how can I get motion to send RTSP stream, tried fiddling with the settings and putting streamport as 0 and setting the below parameter.

netcam_url rtsp://my_rpi3_motion_server

However with this config, I cannot see any RTSP stream on VLC player on the other PC.

  1. Does HA only accepts RTSP stream and not HTTP stream, and what is the correct way to setup a simple card on the main HA home page to display the HTTP stream. Tried going thru the help docs for Stream, picture_entity_card and Generic IP camera, however was not able to connect the dots and understand the correct usage of all these components.

Would appreciate if the experts can chime in and suggest the correct way to achieve the needful.

Thanks.

Use this Setup for you motion camera’s

camera:
    - platform: mjpeg
      name: Garage Door
      mjpeg_url: http://192.168.1.137:8081
      username: !secret dooruser
      password: !secret doorpass
      authentication: basic
2 Likes

Thanks will try this and update.

So with this simple MJPEG stream I suppose I would not be able to use any motion detection functions, which require the more capable RTSP stream.

As I stumbled here and there, I understand that RTSP is a built in hardware capability dependent feature and some older USB webcams may not support it. RTSP address is also usually made known in the device documentation or could be found out by using internet suggeted values and some hit and trial.

Thanks.

Sorry I can’t help with the motion detection functions as I don’t have that setup