How to get HomeKit cameras working?

Configuration
1

I have 4 “EufyCam 2” cameras in my house and setup to work with HomeKit. I can see the feeds in the iOS “Home” App.

In the 0.110 release notes I saw support for HomeKit cameras is now added. How do I get this to work?

Admittedly I’m a bit confused about the difference between the HomeKit bridge vs HomeKit controller integrations but have them both running. When I configured them in HA dashboard I see no cameras avail. What am I missing?

2

Hi the difference is the following:

  • homekit bridge lets you share from Home Assistant devices to your Homekit environment
    Example: you have a product which can be controlled from home assistant but is not homekit compatible: you can configure HA so that it will expose it towards Homekit.
    Homekit will “see” Home assistant as Bridge/hub containing several items (sensors, cameras, lights etc)
  • homekit controller lets you connect homekit enabled device to your Home Assistant
    Example: you buy a homekit enabled product but don’t have homekit hub/don’t want to use an iPad or AppleTV. In this case you can connect to that product via Home assistant

For my (limited)experiences all the products that hare homekit compatible also have one way or another to connect to HA, even without using the controller component. (i.e. Tradfri lights and Netatmo have both).
Likely the integration shipped with HA has more features.

I assume you would like to “see” the camera in both homekit and HA right?
I don’t think there is a way for Homekit to “share” to HA so I think you might try to look for a working integration in HA for that camera.
If an integration does not exists yet you can try setting up a generic camera:

You will need two basic info to set it up:

  • still_image_url : this is the url on which you should be able to access a single frame of the camera (used to display cards and previews)
  • stream_source : this is the url used to stream the actual video.

They both depend a lot by your camera, a 10 second search for “eufycam 2 stream URL” brought this result:

you will need some url like:

rtsp://cameraIP:port/live

or something more complex like

rtsp://cameraIP:port/live?user=admin?password=hello?stream=main

I hope this helps!

3

Thanks for all the info. Very helpful! Regarding this:

In the 0.110 release notes (0.110: Speed! OpenZWave beta, HomeKit Cameras, ONVIF, Calendars - Home Assistant), it said:

Ready for this? Home Assistant Core 0.110 now has camera support for HomeKit!

I took this to mean HA can see cameras that are connected to HomeKit. So this isn’t true?

4

I do think it’s the other way around, at least this is how I understood so far.
I’d give it a try to configure the Eufycam2 directly with Home Assistant using the camera template.

5

0.110 introduced the ability for any camera added in HA to also be added to HomeKit. It’s not the other way around. If you want to add cameras that are currently in HomeKit into HA, the you need to look into the HomeKit Controller integration in HA. The Homebridge integration is for sending domains and entities from HA to HomeKit.

Confusing, I know. But basically Homebridge puts things into HomeKit and HomeKit Controller puts things into HA.

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6

A little bit OT perhaps but: is the pairing of a device to Homekit controller exclusive?
Or would it be possible to have the same device paired to both HA through Homekit controller and Homekit itself?

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HomeKit devices can only be paired to one controller at a time. If you want them in the Apple Home app and HA, you would first unpair them from the Apple Home app, then setup and pair them in the HomeKit controller integration in HA, then use the HomeKit bridge integration to put them back into the Apple Home app. That is the case for devices that do not have another method of control like an account login or API.

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8

Here’s some notes for the next one who find this post while trying to figure out why his camera doesn’t show up in his home.app.

You need to setup homebridge as “accessory”. Then choose your camera. and validate.
This is confusing, but you’ll get 2 homebridges integration, one for your camera setup as an accessory, and one setup as a bridge for everything that does not requires to be its own accessory. (if not add a homebridge again and you’ll get to that point).

You then get 2 notifications with QR code for pairing with your ios device and you’re set.

Now I’m strugling with the live feed in ios, but it’s another topic.

4 Likes
9

You sir are a true hero!
Also, how can I set up two HA integration?

10

@tiagomaricate I found this to be helpful.

11

Were you ever able to get the live feed working in homekit? I am running into the same issue.

12

“Scrypted” is better for camera’s in Homekit, but vote for this WTH so hopefully they make what is needed A new feature in HAss (this is the only thing i have found that HAss under performs on).

13

I didn’t, and eventually kept the things as it is.
I have the 60sec snapshots in ios and if I need to, I go to the HA app for the live feed.

14

I’m wondering if you add camera that has iCloud recording feature via HomeKit controller - whether recording will still work.
I don’t think so, and in this case it’s better to add camera via native HomeKit app and than use some third party plugin for Home Assistance integration.

15

A little off topic, but I purchased a Starling Home Hub assuming I could add it to Home Assistant via Homekit Controller to get around the terrible Nest integration (API rate limits, newest doorbell support, floodlight controls) and be able to view the feeds in Home Assistant. Is that not possible? Currently it looks like I only get snapshots for the camera entity. I emailed Starling Home to ask for some insight and they had this to say:

Hi cayce7,

Thanks for reaching out! While we don’t officially support Home Assistant, we do have customers using our hub with HA + HomeKit Controller, so we can give you some general pointers.

We understand that HomeKit Controller only supports certain types of devices, and that in particular the support for cameras is very limited (snapshots but no live video). This seems to match what you’re experiencing. We’re not sure if there are any workarounds for this – there is no technical reason why HomeKit Controller shouldn’t be able to bring HomeKit cameras into HA – so we would suggest reaching out to the Home Assistant / HomeKit Controller community and asking about this. (There isn’t really anything specific to Starling Home Hub here – it’s no different to any other HomeKit camera – so if other HomeKit cameras work, so should Nest cameras via Starling Home Hub – but also vice versa.)

The best approach for Home Assistant integration would be for someone in the HA community to develop an add-on that talks to our Starling Developer Connect API. We don’t have the knowledge or resource to spearhead this internally, however, if there is someone within the community that is willing to lead this, we would be very happy to offer (free of charge) engineering and support time to get it done, as we are sure there is quite a lot of demand for this.

-Adrian

So my questions are:

I am fairly new to Home Assistant, so apologies if this has been asked already.

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