Integrating Blue Iris into Home Assistant

[nickdaria]

I’ll look into that, thanks!

[sleeepy2]

@nickdaria Thanks for the walk through, I had just installed BlueIris a few days ago and followed your settings worked great. Mostly like your walk through of the NGINX Proxy Manager Addon as I had already setup BlueIris but made some changes based on your setup.

I am trying the Generic camera to test the stream but it doesn’t seem to be working. I have the mjpeg setup and it works fine but not the generic.
This is my setup for the generic stream but doesn’t show the stream when clicking on it, just the constant circle.

- platform: generic
  still_image_url: https://mylink/image/FDoor
  stream_source: https://mylink/h264/FDoor
  name: Front Door TEST
  username: !secret blue_user
  password: !secret blue_pass
  authentication: basic

I have also tried these for the steam link

https://mylink/h264/FDoor/temp.h264
https://mylink/h264/FDoor/temp.ts
https://mylink/h264/FDoor/temp.m3u8

[dshokouhi]

are you sure its upper case FDoor or lowercase? Mine are all lowercase. may want to try http as well since you should be using the LAN IP

[finity]

@nickdaria

Do you mind sending the model of camera you use? I have been searching high and low for a cheaper camera with built in PIR motion detection.

I didn’t say they have PIR detection only that they were motion detecting cameras. I’m sure that they use the video to detect motion but even with that I don’t really have that many false positives.

the model numbers of my cameras are:

FI8910W
FI9821P
FI9821W
FI9900P V4
FI9821PB
R2 V5

I really like the cameras I have. For the price they are pretty good cameras.

@nickdaria

Also, I use BI as the middleman because it does a few image adjustments to the feed, as well as adds the watermark to the image.

I’m don’t think that I’ve ever noticed any differences between the direct camera feed and the images in BI. as far as the “watermark” I’m assuming you mean the date/time and camera name. My Foscams do that by themselves too.

@nickdaria

This prevents direct access to the cameras even from my own network since they are considerably insecure.

I solve the security issue by just blocking all the cameras direct access to the internet thru my router software. the cameras can’t get out and I can’t see them from the outside. But I can still see the feeds either thru HA or in BI. And since the cameras can’t “phone home” I have no issues with them being on my regular network.

@nickdaria

Also, this means Blue Iris is the only camera related device that needs a static IP on my network.

I’m not really sure how that counts as a benefit.

@nickdaria

It is extremely reliable and in the years I have used it it has never crashed.

Yeah, I agree that BI is pretty reliable and it works pretty good as an NVR. But I just don’t see any benefit at all in using BI as opposed to just the direct feed from the cameras. K.I.S.S. is always the best solution. And simple means minimizing the number of links in the chain where something can (or will…) go wrong.

And I have no need to do all of the related complicated setup of NGINX/SSL/proxies or any special configuration in BI itself.

[sleeepy2]

yeah it is FDoor. using https://mylink/mjpg/FDoor works fine for the platform: mjpeg but none of the options work for the stream.
which url did you use for the stream?
trying all 3 of the endings works in vlc.

[dshokouhi]

the one at the very top

Stream Component: Confirmed Cameras and Configurations

General Below is a list of confirmed cameras and configurations that work with the new Home Assistant Stream component. Please comment below with your configuration if you have had success and it does not already appear in this list. Finding your camera’s streams If your camera is not in the list below, you might be able to find the endpoints you need in the iSpy Camera Database for your make and model. The camera will need both a type of JPEG and either VLC or FFMPEG in the list. Clicking o…

[nickdaria]

You make good points, I think it’s just a difference in our configurations. I don’t like having the cameras themselves do the work. I want to be able to manage everything in one place, and I want Blue Iris to feed into HA.

Also, I need to do image adjustments through Blue Iris since they are much better than the simple brightness option my camera offers.

[nickdaria]

Just saw this. As a note, use LAN IP if you can do that HA can still resolve your cameras if the internet is out.

Anyways, the generic camera type is meant to take in an RTSP stream directly from a camera, so you would have to link up your cameras directly. I decided not to use this because while the stream component is nice, Blue Iris is just so much more powerful than the simple events the stream component is capable of. If you are looking for motion capture or recording capabilities, you should look into Blue Iris’s MQTT integration.

[danbutter]

So if you have a pic card on lovelace card using the generic platform can you watch the stream for more than 30 seconds or so?
Mine always disappear and I have to reload lovelace to see them again. This happens in the 10 second refresh as well as if you hit more info and it refreshes every second.

[kidhasmoxy]

Great level of depth in this post. A couple of things to consider:

1. you can use that checkbox in blue Iris called use x forwarded for header to avoid the issue where BI thinks everyone is the same IP. That allows it to read info that nginx passes on who it’s talking to. Let’s you tighten up security.

2. As you mentioned, you don’t need to have ha talk to BI via https and can go direct. If you do, you can set BI up to allow unauthenticated on local network only. Combined with the last change it will let you keep the form and token based login for internet if you are comfortable with LAN users getting view only access without logging in. Keep in mind the token wasn’t doing much from a security perspective. Just let you only have to send the password in the clear once if you were using http only.

3. You can use the generic camera and stream component directly with Blue Iris to get the benefit while maintaining network separation. This does NOT require HA to directly access cameras. Make sure ffmpeg is configured properly on the server and your config. If so, camera stream source is http://bi-server:81/h264/CAM-SHORT-NAME/temp.m3u8

[nickdaria]

I have been able to leave the streams running 24/7 on my kitchen tablet. No issues.

[danbutter]

Lots of pieces to this puzzle, but thanks for replying to let me know it works for someone.

What type of system are you running Home Assistant on?

I’m running the generic linux install of hassio on an old laptop and it seems pretty snappy compared with the rasp pi 3 I started on, but that doesn’t mean much for video I guess.

[sleeepy2]

@nickdaria
When using Nginx Proxy Manager do you still use DuckDns Addon?
For the the base_url do you still put https://my-domain.duckdns.org:8123

I have the DuckdDns addon also and I keep getting invalid logins from my network and I am wondering if this is what is causing it.

[nickdaria]

If you want, you can fully migrate to a URL like ha.yourdomain.duckdns.org. Just make sure NGINX and DuckDNS are enabled, so NGINX can handle the domain cert, and the DuckDNS addon will keep the certs updated in HA for your addons and such.

[AJ132 (Andrew Jones)]

Nickdaria.

Thank you for taking the time to document this process. I have been having non-stop issues with Stunnel and have been trying to figure out how to use the NGINX Proxy Manger instead, but was never able to get it to work. Your step-by-step processed worked great and I am now able to connect to my BI server remotely without any issues. Thanks again for sharing.

The next thing I would like to get working is to use Tensorflow AI Addon to help filter out false motion triggers. I have read this can work, but have not found any detailed documentation on how to set this up to work with the BlueIris feed. I am currently paying $5/month for the sentry smart alerts AI, but would prefer to setup my own internal solution. If anyone has additional information on how to get the TensorFlow Addon working with BI I would appreciate the info or link.

Thanks again.

Andrew J

[sleeepy2]

Tensor Flow setup can be found here. I haven’t had time to try it out yet, myself.

Improving Blue Iris with Home Assistant, TensorFlow, and Pushover [SIMPLIFIED!]

UPDATES June 10, 2019: I’ve updated the guide to use a simpler flow with Amazon Rekognition over here. Summary I’ve used Blue Iris for quite a while and have multiple PoE cameras outside of the home. The functionality of BI is amazing, especially for the price. However, it doesn’t have a native method of detecting people, just motion. I don’t want my phone blowing up with motion alerts when it’s the kids outside or a tree blowing in the wind. The end result was combining Home Assistant, Tenso…

[carltonb (Carlton Brooks)]

Sorry for the message after almost 6 months.
I just installed blueiris on a nuc in Windows 10. The only thing on it.
My hassio setup is on an unRAID VM Server (on a separate machine then the nuc). Also using NABU CASA.

How might I use your functionality in my environment.

Thanks
carltonb

[c.dawg]

I have followed this tutorial carefully, in hopes of correcting an existing issue, but, alas, I am still having the problem. When opening the android app for example … if it is left open, and I come back to it, my home assistant instance will briefly loose connection, and when the connection comes back, my previews of my cameras show up as grey boxes with a missing link logo. I usually just refresh the screen, and it fixes the problem, however, the new Android app doesn’t have a refresh option. I have lived with this for quite some time, but I am becoming more and more annoyed and I am not certain what the problem is. Anyone else with a similar issue?

[danbutter]

I think we all have this issue. I always have with any type of camera.
See this thread for a little bit more:

How do I refresh?!

l have many cameras set up in HA but after l bring the app into view from the background the camera images do not show/refresh. I cannot find a way to refresh the app and end up closing and reopening it. Is there a refresh facility in the app? Thanks, Matt

I have no clue on how to troubleshoot the issue, but I’d like to see it fixed so if anyone knows how we can help let us know!

[c.dawg]

I am not able to get Home Assistant (Lovelace front-end) to load my Blue Iris streams.

- platform: generic
  name: Front Door Stream
  username: !secret blueiris_username
  password: !secret blueiris_password
  authentication: basic
  still_image_url: "http://***.***.*.***:**/image/front_door"
  stream_source: "http://***.***.*.***:**/h264/front_door/temp.m3u8"

The stream opens locally on the Blue Iris host machine, and Home Assistant appears to be refreshing the still images, but, clicking the image in my front-end just results in a spinning wheel, and never loads the stream. I have double, and triple checked the links, and the username & password, and all is correct. The system is set up using this tutorial. I am on Hass.io, v. 0.105.5, and show no errors in the log related to this. For what it’s worth, the mjpeg set-up as indicated in the original post works fine, just not the stream version. I am wondering if the correct link should be something like: http://my.domain.duckdns/h264/front_door/temp.m3u8. Any advice?