How to bring any custom camera to work with HA?

Feature Requests
1

Dear all,
I am newbie but want to make my own camera (e.g. built-in camera of my laptop or any prototype camera) or any UWB radar sensors working with HA.
I understood that I can make my camera for video streaming using RTSP, and then integrate it into HA.
Using MQTT connection is not so good, due to very low framerate.
My questions:

  1. Is there any other solutions?
  2. Currently, I run HA in Raspi 4.
    Can I compile any C++ application using gcc within HA OS?
    Can I use any USB-camera connecting to Raspi in HA?
  3. Do you have any template C++ source code for developing my camera for HA?

Thanks in advance.

2

Look at the various camera integrations available

Usb and many other generic camera types already available as integrations

3

yes, I know it and have a successful integration of some cameras.
But here, I want to develop a complete new camera for HA using c++ or python, and want to know how HA can recognized my camera. I believe there is a special interface which are necessary for any camera module on HA.

Am I right here? Thanks

4

if you can create a rtsp or webrtc based streaming camera, you can easily integrate it into home assistant as a generic camera

5

@anon63427907
yes, you are right.
However, I really do know if RTSP is suitable for some special cases of camera, e.g. neuromorphic cameras, which send data only if any motion in the environments is happened.
But for other sensors like radars etc, we also need helps of someone for knowing how to develope a “generic module” for this sensor, like generic camera…

6

Sorry, I missed your first question.
There are 2 sides of this problem;
1- you can have one add-on to generate the stream (rtsp or xyz) and sensor values, this add-on can publish the sensor values over mqtt to home assistant. rtsp URL can also be published to home assistant and users can create their own generic camera.
2- you can write an integration to communicate with add-on. this integration can create the camera and sensor entities.