[Guide] Amcrest ASH21 with Homekit

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Writing this guide as I had quite a bit of buyer’s remorse when I learnt that the amcrest ASH-21 wouldn’t work with the amcrest integration that I have been using for my other cameras. Instead for a couple of bucks more, the IP2M841 would have been a better deal.

This camera has no http interface, and would only give an RTSP feed following amcrest’s documentation to configure it for blueiris.

Having given up before, a recent urgent use-case got me trying to figure out a solution again.

Here’s how to got it to work with HA and also for Homekit
Note that if you configure HomeKit to use this camera entity only from the UI, the Home app will fail to open the stream. Therefore for it to work you need to follow through (2).

(1) Create the generic camera entry
configuration.yaml

camera:
  - platform: generic
    stream_source: "rtsp://admin:[email protected]:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0&authbasic=64"
    name: "LivingRoom"

(2) Create the manual HomeKit entry - in my case I have HomeKit.yaml

  - name: Livingroomcam
    port: 21081
    mode: accessory
    filter:
      include_entities:
        - camera.livingroom
    entity_config:
      camera.livingroom:
        name: Living Room
        video_codec: copy
        support_audio: True
        stream_source: "-re -rtsp_transport tcp -i rtsp://admin:[email protected]:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0&authbasic=64"
        max_fps: 30
        max_width: 1920
        max_height: 1080
1 Like
2

Thanks for the guide! As a follow-up, have you had any more trouble with the ASH21? I’m looking into the ASH41.

3

Yes, mine just failed entirely one day.
It’s not a great camera and I’ve replaced it with the much better IP2M-841B. This one has has the traditional html web GUI and works with the amcrest integration that provides a motion sensor.

4

Yeah I was hesitant to pick the ASH41-B over the IP4M-1041B, as they seem to have the same features, but good thing I checked here.

The IP4M ones seem to be an “older” system, which is more open and works better for HA. (Including NAS storage etc.)

The ASH ones seem to use a different app altogether, and as @chrislimk mentioned, no html web GUI and very frugal HA compatibility.

Still, I’m gonna risk it and get the IP4M one, see how it works.