As of yesterday…I was able to install HA and utilize the ReoLink integration with my existing NVR setup.
I see lots of potential in HA as there are many functions to automate my setup. However, I was disappointed to find out that the current integration does not include a way to influence the Alarm schedules and/or enable/disable individual cameras. I saw one post that was similar, but it included code that doesn’t make sense to me yet in my Day 2 of HA.
The Use Cases that I’m trying to automate are along the lines of:
When I’m AWAY from home, all cameras should be on for all 24 hours.
When I’m HOME, some cameras (like the side door) should be off during the day and on at night. Other cameras (like the front door) should be on 24/7.
It would be nice to either have a button to say “I’m in AWAY mode until further notice”, or even to schedule this at various times in the day.
Also, if I am in the backyard (grilling, etc.) it would be nice not to get a notification every minute from the REOLINK push notifications. It would be nice to say “Turn off Notifications for an hour then turn them back on”.
There are others, but those are the most pressing scenarios at the moment.
Both of these would require control over the schedule, with the second one possible able to just turn off notifications as a whole followed by a wait for several hours, followed by turning them back on.
I don’t think I have all the pieces to do what I want, and I don’t think I’m smart enough to piece this together with the Reolink API and HA myself.
Does anyone have any suggestions about how HA could help with this? Or does anyone have an alternative NVR that would allow me to pull this off with a different HA integration?
@BrianGGG indeed the scheduals can not be invluanced, but they are not needed.
For each of the features there is a switch wich allows you to turn the feature on or off, so I would recommand configuring the schedual to be always on and then use the switch in HomeAssistant to control the feature, you can easily use a automation in homeassistant to recreate the schedual by switching the feature on/off using time triggers or by using a schedule helper entity.
For instance you can use the switch.record to turn on/off the recording and use a automation to turn this on/off according to a schedule helper entity with some additional conditions for when you want something else like when your home or not based on device_tracker entities.
Same thing holds for notifications: there is a push switch entity that controls if you receive notifications or not.
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Thanks very much @starkillerOG. I see the possibilities now.
I worry about just toggling security cameras on/off because this could cause a problem for me if a script does not run to completion.
I have not yet experimented with the Schedule helper. I think I’m going to try that next. I’m also going to possibly run an “integrity job” where the cameras go on at a certain time in the evening regardless of their current state. I can also add an email confirmation that cameras are active again so that there can be a clue for me in case I stop seeing the emails.
Thanks again for the help, I appreciate your ReoLink integration every day!
