I found a solution that works with the Reolink Argus Eco model, I don’t see why it can’t work with other similar models, but I only own that one.
I am certainly no expert, but thanks to the “neolink” project and a bit of trial and error, I finally have home assistant integration that works like “normal cameras” that are not battery powered.
I basically downloaded and enabled neolink on the debian machine that hosts my home assistant installation. Neolink takes care of “comunication” with the camera via reolink’s udp protocol and returns an rtsp stream that is compatible with home assistant.
There are of course limitations.
I do not have access to camera information such as remaining battery or events triggered by motion or loud noises, but I can see the camera via home assistant without uploading anything to the reolink cloud.
I configured cron to start neolink after the system reboot.
Once everything works just configure the integration like this:
In my case of course, home assistant instance is on ip 192.168.42.42, while the camera was configured via neolink on 192.168.42.45 with the name “gioco”.
Remember (but it is clearly written in the noelink configuration file) that instead of the camera address you must specify the camera ID for battery-powered cameras.
I have no idea how “efficient” this utilization is, how long the battery can last when the solar panel is not producing, but as far as the server is concerned, I see the utilization of a single core at 2.5\2.8 percent top for neolink.
I hope this will be helpful to others in my same situation.