Getting a Unifi protect video link in a notification

Third party integrations Node-RED
,
1

I am building an alarm system in node-red with multiple cameras in Unifi Protect. When a camera detects a person, I want to have a notification on my phone (iOS) with a snapshot of the detection, and when I click on the notification I want to see the video of the recorded event which triggered the notification.

I have the notification working with the snapshot, but I am struggling to get a link to the video. The cameras are all set to record only on motion, not continually.

The Unifi Protect documentation seems to imply that I should be able to create a link to a media-source with the video in question. I believe such a link probably should look something like this:
media-source://unifiprotect/606e5cff028cea02870003e9:browse:6228bd440089b2138701174a:smart:recent:1

I derived the link above from what the Unifi Protect integration creates inside the Media tab in the HA GUI, and I’ve tried various combinations including links that look more like what the Unifi Protect documentation states such as {nvr_id}:event:{event_id}, all to no avail.

I am including the link as the msg.video variable in the node-red function node below which builds the json for the notification to my phone.

let nvr_id = "25c342debc987901fd51b73c30234c49"
let image_url = `/api/unifiprotect/thumbnail/${nvr_id}/${msg.event_id}`

msg.payload = 
{
  "data": 
  {
    "message": msg.deviceName,
    "data": 
    {
      "time-sensitive": 1,
      "image": image_url,
      "url": msg.video
    }
  }
}
return msg;

I have had inconsistent success using the method:
/api/unifiprotect/video/{nvr_id}/{camera_id}/{start}/{end}
I believe primarily because I cannot find a programmatic way to get the end time for the video (and possibly the start time is not always correct either). By “inconsistent”, I mean more than half of the time the link is a 404. (Actually, I’m surprised it’s not pretty much always a 404).

I have looked at the blueprint from AngellusMortis but I have not actually installed it (maybe I need to try that).

I also found this helpful post from clin248 to extract the nvr_id, event_id and other necessary information.

If anyone has further tips what to try please let me know!

1 Like
2

All of the unifiprotect API endpoints require authentication. You cannot access them outside of Home Assistant unless the URL is signed.

Home Assistant’s mobile app / HTML 5 notify platforms do this automatically.

3

Took me a while to realise that the start and end timestamps are from the events when the sensor starts detecting motion, and stops detecting motion.

Here is the function node that I am using now in node-red:

let nvr_id = "25c342debc987901fd51b73c30234c49"
let image_url = `/api/unifiprotect/thumbnail/${nvr_id}/${msg.event_id}`

let start_time = new Date(msg.video_start)
let end_time = new Date(msg.video_end)
let video_url = `/api/unifiprotect/video/${nvr_id}/${msg.entity_id}/${start_time.toISOString()}/${end_time.toISOString()}`
let click_url = "/dashboard-security/0"

let home_occupied = global.get("homeassistant.homeAssistant.states['input_boolean.home_occupied'].state");
if (home_occupied === "off") {
  msg.payload = 
  {
    "data": 
    {
      "message": msg.deviceName,
      "data": 
      {
        "time-sensitive": 1,
        "image": image_url,
        "video": video_url,
        "url": click_url
      }
    }
  }
  return msg;
}

And here is a snippet of the flow how I listen to the start and end events, join the outputs together to pass all the information to the function node and finally send a notification to my phone if my home is unoccupied:

Screenshot 2023-07-26 at 20.12.26
Screenshot 2023-07-26 at 20.12.262192×214 38.6 KB

Garage video camera (state node config):

Screenshot 2023-07-26 at 20.11.20
Screenshot 2023-07-26 at 20.11.201068×1328 69.7 KB

Person detected event start (change node config)

Screenshot 2023-07-26 at 20.09.22
Screenshot 2023-07-26 at 20.09.22990×1160 58.9 KB

Person detected event end (change node config)

Screenshot 2023-07-26 at 20.19.31
Screenshot 2023-07-26 at 20.19.311004×894 43 KB

Join node config

Screenshot 2023-07-26 at 20.09.47
Screenshot 2023-07-26 at 20.09.47988×1056 62.9 KB

The image_url in the notification is a tiny thumbnail which you can’t see anything, but if you long press the notification the video will start streaming quite quickly (within 1 second I would say is about average). Overall I’m pretty happy with the performance, even though I would still prefer to be able to click on the notification to take me to the actual video of the motion, going to my lovelace security-dashboard also works pretty well.

I also updated the UniFi Protect documentation here to explain how to retrieve all the relevant variables:

1 Like
4

Hello,
really impressive what you’ve done there.
I am new to HA and have no knowlage also with red-node.

i am trying to do something very simular to you.

i have to be notified if there is motion (when alam is set to away), and i wanted to send the screenshot to my whatsapp using green-api.
https://github.com/t0mer/green-api-custom-notifier

the green api i managed to set. but i dont know how to get the screenshot from unifi.

5

Are there any workarounds to access the thumbnails/videos so I can use them in an email? Or save them to a folder?

6

You might be able to use a AppDaemon or Pyscript if they let you import and access the main hass instance. But other than that, there are no real workarounds. core intentionally has made it so you cannot access the code to sign URLs outside of Python. There is no service or template filter to do it. They said giving users access to do it is considered a security risk. You have to create a notify service that signs the URL for you like the Mobile / HTML 5 Push notify services do.

1 Like