Listen on a tcp port for commands?

Third party integrations
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After struggling so long with this mobotix webhook, I found a workaround that should work for the most of mobotix owners. The main idea is, that the Mobotix camera writes an image to a FTP Server and to make Home Assistant recognizes the new file. It works fine and when someone presses the doorbell button, Home Assistant reacts only 2 seconds later to it.

Screenshot_20231214_134431_Home Assistant
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Alternative way to make Home Assistant notice, that somebody rang the Mobotix doorbell (Using an FTP Server)

  1. Install the Home Assistant FTP Add-On and add a ftp user in the configuration tab of the Add-On (make sure, config is set to true if you want to send a picture of the doorbell event, if you are not at home aka outside from your network):
- username: camera
  password: YOURSECRET
  allow_chmod: true
  allow_download: false
  allow_upload: true
  allow_dirlist: true
  addons: false
  backup: false
  config: true
  media: true
  share: true
  ssl: false

Now start the FTP Server on your HA machine. (I tested with Filezilla, if clients are able to connect.)

  1. Call up the Mobotix “Admin Menu” by opening it via the Mobotix IP in your Browser and hit the Admin Menu button. Then go to FTP-Profile Settings and set up a profile like this:

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Attention: by using the path “config/www/” you will expose this file to the internet without needs of any credentials. If you don’t want that, use the path “share/”.
You need to expose the file via config/www/ only, if you want to get the camera picture shown in notifications outside from your network.

  1. Test for the correct settings by letting the mobotix camera send the current picture to the HA FTP Add-On:

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You can also check the Log File of the HA FTP Add-On. This should look like this:

Thu Dec 14 13:58:56 2023 [pid 2] CONNECT: Client "192.168.178.48"
Thu Dec 14 13:58:56 2023 [pid 1] [camera] OK LOGIN: Client "192.168.178.48"
Thu Dec 14 13:58:56 2023 [pid 3] [camera] OK UPLOAD: Client "192.168.178.48", "/config/www/lastdoorbell.jpg", 108875 bytes, 3387.60Kbyte/sec
  1. Now leave the Mobotix Admin Menu and go to the Mobotix Setup Menu and call up this menu:

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Here you can add the new action, if the button is pressed:

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  1. Don’t forget to save the new settings permanent via the Admin Menu!

  2. Add the following lines to the configuration.yaml:

homeassistant:
  allowlist_external_dirs: 
    - /config/
folder_watcher:
  - folder: /config
    patterns:
      - '*lastdoorbell.jpg'

This allows to fire an event when the file is changed aka somebody rang the door. This we can use now for automations or to press a helper switch…

Automation can look like this:

alias: Doorbell Notification
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: event
    event_type: folder_watcher
    event_data:
      event_type: modified
condition: []
action:
  - service: notify.YOURDEVICE
    data:
      message: Somebody is at the door {{ now().strftime("%H:%M") }}
      data:
        image: https://YOURDOMAIN.com/local/lastdoorbell.jpg
  - delay:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 0
      seconds: 5
      milliseconds: 0
mode: single

I added 5 seconds delay, otherwise i got the notification 4 times. No clue, why… But the delay fixed this.
Pleas keep in mind, that you need some dyndns to use this setting (https://YOURDOMAIN.com/local/lastdoorbell.jpg). I recommend a cloudflare proxy if you got your own domain.

I hope this can help others, who just couldn’t get the mobotix notification to function via webhook.

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