Realtime camera streaming without any delay - WebRTC

Home Assistant custom component for viewing IP-cameras RTSP stream in real time using WebRTC technology.

Why WebRTC:

  • works in any modern browser, even on mobiles
  • the only browser technology with minimal camera stream delays (0.5 seconds and below)
  • works well with unstable channel
  • does not use transcoding and does not load the CPU
  • support camera stream with sound
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Great, gonna test later if it succeed with synology… I use them to stream to google hub devices

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I have installed your AddOn and added a Camera in the Configuration like this:

streams:
  - name: TESTCAM
    url: 'rtsp://192.168.1.100:7447/aPx18nAGG1Ff1oBn'

I don’t seem to be getting any errors, but I also can’t find this Camera anywhere in the device list.
If the Camera works with your Add-on what should I expect to see in Home Assistant?

There are no any devices, entities or lovelace card. Cameras work only in addon Web UI. You can add it to sidebar for fast access.

Found it, thanks.

Ahh, it doesn’t expose cameras? So we can’t use it for HA to use stream: ?

WebRTC - it’s browser technology for real time communication. The only task is to view the stream in a browser in real time. For other tasks - use Hass default integrations.

Ok, thnw for feedback

Isn’t it possible to make this a camera component in HA directly?

Only custom lovelace card. But I’m not JS guru.

Hi, I tried it with a hikvision camera as follows. Works well:

  - name: hikvision
    url: >-
      rtsp://username:[email protected]:554/Streaming/Channels/101

It works really well, now we just need someone to make a lovelace card for it!

For now, would it be possible to imbed using an iFrame as described here?

For now you may just pin addon in sidebar.

No way to get the url of the RTSP feed to imbed it in an iframe? The problem for me is that I keep my cameras on kiosk tablets around the house with a lot of other useful information. I won’t end up using it if I have to open the sidebar unfortunately.

Hi, how to install this add-on? I can’t find any instruction how to?

Thank you, works perfectly. Can you tell me if I can get feed from camera in the lovelace card or I have to use plugin web?

Hello, installed this addon on another HomeAssistant instant and getting Bad Gateway error. Screen shot attached. Can you guys help?

Thank you!
I’ve tested this with my hikvision camera’s and the delay is much much lower than my current solution (using the synology integration as i’m using my Synology NAS as the NVR for the hikvision camera’s).

I didn’t really understand the explanations on how I can access the camera feed when I’m not at home.
Does it require making my camera’s accessible from the internet? (The synology integration doesn’t require that)?

@quizzical it depends how you already has external access to Home Assistant

I’m not 100% I did that correctly but my method for accessig Home Assistant externally is:
I have a Synology NAS that has a built Synology provided DNS service (and also integrated with let’s encrypt). SO that gives me an external address like “https://john.i234.me” it allows for subdomains so I installed NGINX Proxy Manager (so not “NGINX Home Assistant SSL proxy” which most use). And set-up a reverse proxy there that redirects https://ha.john.i234.me to my home assistant (I also used the NGINX built in feature for let’s encrypt).
I hope that’s OK :sweat_smile:
In that context, how do I get the camera’s to work externally using your great solution? I’d rather not expose those camera’s directly to the internet.

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VPN is one method. If you are running the supervised install the wireguard addon is super simple to setup and use.