Lorex NVR Integration 2024

Third party integrations
1

Hi All,
I have installed Lorex IP Cameras and I need help in integrating it with my home assistant.
Tried Dahua 3rd party integration it worked until July and after that it stopped working.

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2

Can you link to the integration you were using for clarity’s sake?

I have Lorex cameras integrated using the generic camera integration using an RTSP URL.

What model IP Cameras or Lorex NVR do you have?

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3

Model:
Lorex Fusion 4K 16-Channel 8PoE Wired NVR System
I will try RSTP and see if that works mate

4

Here’s the format that works for mine:

rtsp://user:[email protected]:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=3&subtype=1

Where channel # is the camera number on the NVR and the IP is the NVR IP address

5

Thanks Mate

6

I’m new here guys. Any tutorial to get this done?

7

For newbies like me, go to you HA > Settings > Device & Services > Add Integration > Generic Camera

Fill out the information as follows:
Stream Source URL: rtsp://user:[email protected]:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=3&subtype=0
RSTP transport protocol: HTTP
Authentication: Basic

subtype=0 to get the best quality.

3 Likes
8

I’ve done this for a bit but I find the stream loads slow and is quite behind. Subtype 0 is definitely better.

I messed with go2rtc and web to rsp (so many like names it gets confusing). It seemed to show 4 different protocols to process the stream and some were much snappier than others. WebRTC is supposed to be the best but I didn’t fully wrap my ahead around the process before my home assistant crashed and I had to spend a day recovering it.

I’m going to reinstall go2rtc and try again. I messed with frigate only because I think the front end card is the best but I don’t need the NVR capabilities of it and it’s a bit of work to setup with MQTT etc.

In a perfect world there would be Lorex integration or addon that accessed the NVR like the Lorex app or Desktop Cloud app.

9

Has anyone got this to work? I have the Lorex 8848-z NVR. I keep getting a timeout error. Never loads.
Suggestions?

Thanks

10

Ok, I managed to get my Lorex cameras images from my NVR using the Generic Camera Integration. Its not clear above how this should be configured, and took me a bit of trial and error. The RTSP string is a little misleading in the above discussion. The IP Address should be that of your NVR not the camera, and with the present version of the integration you don’t need to have the user name and password in the string so for me the string for the RTSP look like this:

RTSP://NVR IP ADDRESS:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0

The channel number is the camera device ID in the NVR.

Click the transport protocol as HTTP and Authentication as basic

Next in the config it has a place for the user name, which should be a user that is configured in the NVR to have access to all the camera channels. And that users password. I left the Frame Rate at 2 and click off the Verify SSL certificate and clicked Submit. It comes up with a dialog box with the live image in it and a check box to verify that it looks OK. Next hit submit again. That’s pretty much it.

I have found that this isn’t a very stable integration. Seems if you open the image and make it full screen in the dashboard it will more often than not crash HAOS, which restarts the services.

  • its very annoying. Also rather that display the local time as it does in the NVR video feed its using UTC time on the card in the dashboard and I can’t see a way to set this to my local time. Not that its all that big a deal.

I have a LG WebOS TV that has a browser built in and I have set the HA Dashboard as its home page to display the 4 cameras I have outside. So I can be in my Livingroom watching TV and check my cameras from there if I like. I need to set this up as a picture in picture window somehow. I am just learning how to use all the features of the TV not the least is the HA integrations.

I hope this helps some other Novices with Lorex NVRs. I have had my NVR for several years as a means of monitoring my property and dogs out in the yard or kennel while inside since I work from home.

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12

Were you able to get this to work? I’m trying to integrate my Lorex cameras that are on a Lorex NVR but it keeps timing out. I follow the steps above but nothing works.

Here are my inputs:
Stream Source URL: rtsp://admin:[Password]@192.168.[NVR IP]:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0

  • [Password] is replaced with my confirmed NVR password
  • [NVR IP] is replaced with my confirmed NVR IP address final numbers.
  • Channel=1 is confirmed correct as I have cams on channels 1,3, and 7.
    RTSP Transport Protocol: HTTP
    Username: Blank since it is in my stream source URL
    Password: Blank since it is in my stream source URL
    Frame Rate: 2 hz
    SSL Certificate: Unchecked

This processes, switches to the “confirmation” page where it shows the stream image but instead it is just the loading circle and ultimately times out with the error message “Error starting stream, see logs for details (Stream never started)”.

I connected my NVR to a monitor to confirm all of my above settings. I’m at a loss of what to do next. I also confirmed that the above follows the Lorex suggested settings shown here:
https://help.lorex.com/support/solutions/articles/72000640829-ip-cameras-using-real-time-streaming-protocol-rtsp-with-your-dvr-nvr

13

You can test your URL with VLC Media Player app. If you don’t see the stream in that app you have a problem with your URL format (or possibly your password has characters the URL doesn’t like).

That way you can verify outside of Home Assistant.

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14

Wow thanks for the quick reply. Great idea on testing on VLC. I put in the network stream URL as follows into VLC:
rtsp://admin:[Password]@192.168.[NVR IP]:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0

This loaded my channel 1 camera stream without issue. I changed the channel number to 3, and then 7 as well to verify those worked properly.

Not sure what is causing this issue. I looked up my camera refresh rate and it was 15 hz so I tried that. I also tried checking the SSL certificate but no luck.

My only other thoughts now are messing with the RTSP transport protocol (change to TCP, UDP, UDP Multicast) or change verification to digest instead of basic?

I’m running Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 4 model B if that helps at all. It is directly tied into my home network via ethernet. Lorex NVR is tied into the same network via ethernet as well.

15

My Lorex NVR works with these instructions just fine, but I’m on a Mini PC with plenty of horsepower. Sorry I can’t help any further.

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16

Have you tried just clicking “everything looks good” and then submit without verifying the preview? I just edited the config of a working camera, and the preview never came up, but the camera works fine.

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17

Holy smokes that worked! I selected the “everything looks good” button and then submitted without the preview showing. Now it’s showing on my dashboard! Thanks!

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