Reolink cameras, Home Hub (not pro) and HA

Hardware
1

Hi,

I’m very close to buying a reolink Home Hub. I need it because two of my camera can’t directly connect to my HA but can do it trough the hub. Here is my current reolink hardware :

-2 Argus track battery cameras

-1 outdoor e1 pro

-1 wifi doorbell

While the reolink team has been very useful with the questions directly related to their hardware, I still have some questions directly about HA. Ith this setup would I be able to :

-use the detection sensor of the cameras in HA in automation

-to see the cameras feeds in the reolink app, bonus if I can do it in HA

-be able to managed if the cameras are recording, with the right detection setting, depending on the alarm status (alarmo in HA), without the reolink system overwriting HA settings

Thanks

2

I went with the HomeHub and have no regrets. It allowed me to incorporate all battery operated cams into HA. I started off with the idea I’d control everything via my Synology server and continually ran into road blocks.

The HomeHub solves all previous issues with the HA integration

3

Thanks for your awnser ! In fact my main concern is the fact that the internal settings of the camaeras I set up when I use them with the reollink could mess up with HA. Is that the case ?

Also doy ou still have access to the camera feed on the app even if their connected to HA ?

4

I generally use the Reolink app to control the settings on the cams, but it doesn’t matter. If you adjust them via Reolink’s app or HA. The integration is fluid in both directions.

The feed can viewed simultaneous on the Reolink app and HA.

5

So that means I can tell to the cameras from HA to detect motion and record only when alarmo is armed ? I just want to be sure, because, if can’t do that sort of things it’s pointless for me to buy the hub.

And from what you’re telling me, when I tweak the settings in HA, the cameras and the app will follow and the opposite too ?

Thanks again.

6

Yes sir. Completely controllable both ways. This Argus PT Ultra is a battery operated cam

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7

Ho boy, that’s great ! What entity or sensor would you use to enable the motion detection when needeed and disable it when not needeed ? You gave a lot of awnsers, especially with this two screenshots.

8

The sensors are added individually as binary. This allows you to create Automations based off those sensors. For example, if I detect motion from my driveway cam, it sends a notification to my LG televisions

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  • Animal
  • Fluent
  • Motion
  • Person
  • Vehicle
9

Do you have the possibility to disable the motion detection ? Because I don’t want to be spammed or trigger my alarm when I’m in my garden in the summer :smiley:. Also being able to disable the motion detection would save some battery.

10

Yes, but I’d suggest just setting a schedule for motion detection in that area.

11

Ho ok. And this schedule is set in the integration or via an automation ?

12

Either one, your choice

13

Ho, cool. You gave me more awnsers than I could find anywhere on the internet in 2 days haha. Thanks a lot, I’ll come back here if some other questions come to my mind.

14

No problem, I wouldn’t promote if I didn’t think it was well worth it. I’d be happy to field additional question…

15

Hi again @LiQuid_cOOled ! I got the home hub. Everything is connected and showing as you told me. Nevertheless, as I only have battery cameras, I have a problem : as soon as I enable the PIR detector to actually detect intrusion during the defined period (22 to 6 in the night), the batteries will go down very fast, even though I don’t connect to the camera to see the video and that no detection is made. I didn’t have this problem when the camera wasn’t connected to HA. I looked around, and I didn’t find any fix (tried everything I found online). Anyt idea ? Thanks.

Maybe, also @starkillerOG has an idea ?

16

What is the sensitivity of the PIR sensor?
How often is it beeing triggerd?

17

Hi @starkillerOG,

Thanks for the very quick awnser ! The PIR sensitivity i at its maximum, before I used the homehub and homeassitant. It’s never triggered as there are no detection made, noone can be detected. I’m starting to believe it’s a problem on the homehub side : I desactivated the reolink integration one hour ago and the draining seems to continue. I’ll keep an eye on it to see if it’s the case.

18

Hey hi again @starkillerOG !

So I did some testing last night. And I think the problem comes from the reolink integration. Not your work, but something I must be missing in the parameters.

Here is my setup :

-Two battery cameras and one wired wifi : 2 Argus Track and one E1 outdoor PRO

-One Home Hub

-HA, up to date, on a virtual machine on a NUC. Everything works fine on HA, apart the camera problem.

-The wired cameras doesn’t have a problem and is ON only during holidays. The two battery cameras are looking for human motion between 22 and 7 in the night.

The problem : during the day, when the cameras aren’t in a scheduled monitoring everything is fine. Even with the PIR sensor activated. Each of the two battery camera have their scheduled monitoring. I have attached an HA log when the cameras are with PIR ON and in monitoring mode. So I think the problem comes from when the cameras are on a scheduled monitoring. I don’t have this problem without the integration active. Also attached the configuration of one of my two wifi cameras, the configuration is the same for the two. Maybe there are some sort of conflict because the cameras were already set up before I got my home hub ? Maybe I should desactivate most of the entities ? Also I saw a lot of connection to the camera (trough the sleeping/awake sensor) when I was in the disfunctional configuration (during scheduled monitoring). It was sometimes every ten seconds, sometimes every minute or so. I have no automation linked to the cameras or reolink integration. I tried everything from the troubleshooting guide you posted on the official integration page for elevated battery draining, it didn’t change anything.

I tested the following situations and everything works great during this tests :

PIR+monitoring without reolink integration : no problem

No PIR no monitoring but integration active : no problem

PIR active but no monitoring, with integration running : no problem

This is why I’m saying that this is probably the monitoring causing problems.

I’m so sorry for the very lengthy message, but I think the more details you got, the more you could solve my problem.

By the way I’m the same guy you replied to on the reolink subreddit 48 hours ago.

Thank you very much.

Link to logs.txt file : 136.8 KB file on MEGA

Link to the diagnostic file :

I used Mega because I don’t how could have done diffrently on this website. Tell me if you want me to do things differently.

The camera configuration :

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capture 1
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19

@People411 I took a look at your debug file, I do see it woke just after a update from HomeAssistant, indicating there might be a command that is waking up your camera.

Please do the following: go to settings->devices&services->Reolink. Then under both the home hub device, disable all entities.
Then under the 2 argus track cameras disable all entities except for the sleep status sensor.

Then see if the battery is still draining or not and if the sleep status sensor is still turning on or not. (15 minutes schould be enough).
If it is then not draining anymore. start enabeling about half of the entities and check again. Each time it does not start draining, enable another half of the disabled entities. If it does start draining, disable the last enabled entties again and check again.
In this way, figure out which entitie is causing the issue.

You can also check these troubleshooting steps: Reolink - Home Assistant