For context: I’m a relatively experienced techie, and have managed to easily install and have up and running hass.io in a virtual machine.
On starting up it immediately detected my Chromecasts and Google Homes. A great start. I can send messages to them and it will speak them out.
My next proof of concept goal was to add an IP camera. I head to the same place (integrations) and try to add one. Lots of entries for various things (even a PS4!) but nothing for a camera. I still don’t know why that is, I would have hoped a camera would be a popular thing to add.
Q1: What is an integration (in the UI) and how does it differ from a component?
But okay. Google a bit and find some components that might help, including one called “generic” (there is also “camera” but I can’t see any sample config for that so don’t know where to start with it). Generic has to be added via config. I look for the relevant place in the hass.io application but this config isn’t anywhere to be seen. But! There’s an addon, so I install that and there you have a config editor.
I add my camera and save the config. Do I have to reload? I’m assuming so, so I click back out and to settings where I see four reload buttons. Core sounds like the most common denominator one so I click it, wondering why anyone would want a choice on what to reload (why not everything? Is it really that expensive to reload config?)
Q2: What level of reload should I use and when?
Nothing. I notice a Check Config button and press it and it complains that my camera is missing a still_image_url key. I check the docs and it quite clearly says that it’s required so I’m the fool here. Except my camera doesn’t have anything like that. When I add it anything else I just give a rtsp address, so the requirement doesn’t make sense to me. How do I add my camera?
Google some more and I see lots of solutions from adding videocards, to ffmpeg components, to a stream service. Oh and motioneye (which I thought was another Linux software project). I will also at some point have to add a picture glance card apparently. I did try clicking on “configure UI” but got a scary message warning that if I continued on that path I’d lose some convenience features. No thanks, not yet anyway.
All seemingly very arbitrary and possibly a distraction from me just simply wanting to add an IP camera with a known rtsp url.
Q3: What’s the best (practice wise) way of adding a simple rtsp camera to hass.io? Eventually I want to be able to view cameras and solicit snapshots.
This isn’t a post about the quality of hass.io. I know the problem is with me not understanding something, or just not grokking the model of the software. So my real question is this: where can I learn, step by step, what hass.io is about? I’ve tried the docs and they seem to be more a reference for people who already know what they want.
TL;DR Q4: Is there a tutorial or cookbook or something that takes one through configuring and getting hass.io to do things? Maybe even documentation around the model the software uses? I can usually figure these things out but after a day of tinkering hass.io still has me stumped.
Bonus question Q5: Is Hass.io even for me? I’m happy to learn and iterate config etc, and I’m using a linux VM to host so should I actually be using Home Assistant as a way to get closer to what I’m doing? Is Hass.io getting in the way of that?