Hi — from the Imou Open Platform team. Hope you’re doing all right, and that HACS Imou Life Official is still easy to live with. If it is, enjoy the quiet.
We’ve been getting the same question a lot lately. Home Assistant had been fine, then the cloud comes back with OP1013. The ask is almost always the same: which API hit the limit, and can you reset the quota or add more?
We went back through those reports. OP1013 is the open platform telling Home Assistant that this App ID’s total cloud API calls are over the allowance. The message names the total. It carries no method name. A logbook line such as “Status became unavailable” means that device is offline, or no longer on the account. It is not getDeviceStatus, live view, or some other single API hitting a cap of its own.
What follows is what those installs had in common, mostly on HACS Imou Life Official (imou_life), which is where the polling interval and the HD/SD option live.
Integration: HACS Imou Life Official
Configure reference: guides/configuration.md
Open Platform (international): Cloud Video And AIoT Services - Imou Open Platform
If you’re on the built-in Core imou integration instead, you won’t find an interval slider. It refreshes in the background about every two minutes, and it spends the same App ID. Stick to one integration per account. Comparison: which Imou integration to install.
What we kept seeing
Imou Life turns status polling on unless you switch it off. Every pass reads device state from the cloud: online, storage, and the other fields behind the sensors on the device page. A short interval spends the allowance quickly. Leave a camera entity open on a dashboard or in a script, and cloud live view and snapshots add more for as long as that view stays up. While the stream or the snapshot is actually in use, HD spends it faster than SD.
The two settings we end up pointing at:
- Polling interval (seconds)
- Video resolution: HD or SD
On current HACS builds, open Settings → Devices & services → Imou Life → Configure. Interval and resolution are on Polling and cameras. Which devices actually get refreshed is the next page, Choose devices to poll.
| Control | What to know |
|---|---|
| Enable status polling | Default on. Off: entity state can go stale. Setup and reload still fetch the device list once. |
| Polling interval | Allowed 30–900 seconds. Current builds default to 300. 30 is the minimum the field accepts, and it is the value that spends the allowance fastest. |
| Video resolution | HD or SD, applied to the live camera entity |
| Choose devices to poll | Devices you leave unchecked stay in Home Assistant and are not refreshed |
If your Options dialog is still a single page with an http / https video-protocol choice, that build is old. Update it in HACS, then set the interval again. Live view on current builds is https only.
We counted refreshes from the interval alone. Each refresh is still more than one API call, and live view is extra:
| Interval | Refreshes / device / day | Over 30 days |
|---|---|---|
| 30 s | 2,880 | 86,400 |
| 120 s | 720 | 21,600 |
| 300 s (current default) | 288 | 8,640 |
| 900 s (maximum) | 96 | 2,880 |
The monthly allowance further down is 30,000 calls. At 30 seconds, one device is already 86,400 refreshes over 30 days, before the several cloud reads inside each refresh. That passes 30,000 on its own. Moving 30 s → 300 s cuts that piece to a tenth, 8,640 refreshes. Several reads per refresh, another device on the same App ID, or a live view left open sit on top of those 8,640, so the default interval can cross 30,000 as well.
Turn Enable status polling off, or clear the devices you don’t actually automate under Choose devices to poll, and that polling piece goes away. Live view in this integration is a cloud stream over https. Playing it spends the same App ID quota. If Record on alarm is switched on for a camera, each clip is taken from that cloud stream and spends live-view quota as well.
How many calls you get
People also ask what the ceiling is. Three rules, all on the App ID total.
- Every App ID includes 30,000 cloud API calls per month at no charge. Calls past that are billed usage.
- One class of account has an extra daily ceiling: the account has only the complimentary 1M bandwidth, no other traffic, bandwidth, or access-count package, and the balance is ≤ 0. That account is limited to 10,000 total calls per day.
- Other paid accounts are not under a total-count ceiling. Rule 1 still applies: past 30,000 in the month, calls are billed.
OP1013 reads the same whether you crossed the daily ceiling in rule 2 or the monthly 30,000. My Resources for this App ID, for the current month, is how you tell them apart:
It comes back once a month
The 30,000 free calls refresh automatically each month. You don’t need a ticket for that reset.
- Hit OP1013 part-way through the month, and a new 30,000 does not show up the same day. Those calls come back at the next monthly refresh.
- On accounts in rule 2, the 10,000 figure is a per-day ceiling. It sits apart from the monthly refresh.
- Reloading the integration, restarting Home Assistant, or deleting and re-adding the config entry does not fill either counter ahead of that schedule.
On a current HACS build, running out shows up in the Home Assistant UI:
When the Open Platform monthly call limit is used up, a repair appears under Settings → System → Repairs. Add quota or wait for the monthly reset, then reload the integration.
A failed status refresh keeps the last state, and switches stay usable. A device that is actually offline, or no longer on the account, stays unavailable. That case is separate from this repair.
Calls above the monthly 30,000 are billed. If you need the allowance raised, email [email protected] with the App ID (not the App secret) and a My Resources screenshot.
What we’d change first
- One integration on the account: HACS Imou Life or Core
imou. - Configure → Choose devices to poll — only devices an automation actually reads.
- Configure → Polling and cameras — 300 seconds unless a specific sensor needs to be fresher. 900 seconds if the dashboard can tolerate slower state. Turn Enable status polling off when event push already covers the alarms you care about. With IoT device messages included, thing-model switches and sensors update from the push instead of the polling interval.
- When the monthly calls are used up, open Settings → System → Repairs. The repair says to add quota or wait for the monthly reset, then reload the integration. Reloading before the allowance is back does not clear OP1013.
If you want us to split it by API
OP1013 will keep reporting only the total. A reply we can match to the counter looks like this:
- HACS Imou Life version
- A screenshot of Polling and cameras (or the older Options dialog): interval, status polling on or off, HD or SD
- A screenshot of the device page
- How many devices are selected under Choose devices to poll
- Whether a live camera view stays open on a dashboard
- Download diagnostics from the integration’s three-dot menu