Reduce Reolink RLC-520A Motion Sensor latency

1

Hello,

I have set up a Reolink RLC-520A in home assistant (2023.4.2) with the core reolink integration. I have an automation set up to capture images when motion is detected. The issue is that the motion entirty in HA seems to have a very long latency i.e. it’s state changes to “On” around 30 seconds after motion is detected and “Off” around 30 seconds after the motion ends. The result is that all the images that are captured are from after the motion event.

I believe the camera supports ONVIF push notifications so I would expect the the entity to change states much more quickly.

Where do I begin debugging this? Posted the automation below in case I have made any obvious errors:

alias: Notifications for Motion Detection
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - binary_sensor.cam_motion
    to: "on"
    for:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 0
      seconds: 0
action:
  - variables:
      filename: cam_{{ now().strftime("%Y%m%d-%H%M%S") }}.jpg
  - service: camera.snapshot
    target:
      entity_id: camera.cam_snapshots
    data:
      filename: /media/cams/{{ filename }}
  - service: notify.mobile_app_phone
    data:
      data:
        image: /media/local/cams/{{ filename }}
        ttl: 0
        priority: high
        channel: Alert
        importance: high
        vibrationPattern: 100, 1000, 100, 1000, 100, 1000, 100, 1000, 100, 1000
        clickAction: entityId:camera.cam_sub
        tag: motion
      title: motion detected
      message: Motion detected at {{ now().strftime("%Y%m%d-%H%M%S") }}
  - repeat:
      while:
        - condition: state
          entity_id: binary_sensor.cam_motion
          state: "on"
          enabled: true
      sequence:
        - variables:
            filename: cam_{{ now().strftime("%Y%m%d-%H%M%S") }}.jpg
        - service: camera.snapshot
          target:
            entity_id: camera.cam_snapshots
          data:
            filename: /media/cams/{{ filename }}
        - service: notify.email
          data:
            message: Motion detected
            data:
              images:
                - /media/cams/{{ filename }}
              html: |
                <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
                 "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
                   <html lang="en" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
                     <head>
                       <meta charset="UTF-8">
                       <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
                       <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
                       <title>Motion detected</title>
                       <style type="text/css">
                         h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {
                         font-family:Arial,sans-serif;
                         }
                       </style>
                     </head>
                     <body><img style="width: 100%; max-width: 640px;"  alt="Image from camera" src="cid:{{ filename }}" /></body>
                   </html>
        - delay:
            hours: 0
            minutes: 0
            seconds: 10
            milliseconds: 0
mode: single

Thanks!

2

I have two RLC-523WA’s and been testing their ONVIF events for a personal project, and in my experience, they just aren’t very reliable. Sometimes they work fine, other times they are sent too late or not at all.

I also have a WiFi doorbell which works much better (and also push the type of motion detected, like “Person” or “Visitor”, whereas the 523’s only push a generic “Motion” event).

For the 523’s, FTP and e-mail notifications are more reliable, so I’m using yet another personal project to catch those so they can be used in HA.

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