Simcam - Open SDK | AI Facial recognition | No false alert | 1080P | Starlight vision | Wifi | No Monthly Fee | Local storage | 2-way audio - Possible Component?

Finally, a camera with onboard record, facial recognition, object tracking, all LOCAL (no cloud service required and no monthly fees).

SimCam KickStarter

It seems they have an open SDK, and RTSP feed - the manufacturer says they’ve been getting a lot of Home Assistant integration requests during their KickStarter.

I don’t want to just feed the video into Home Assistant then use the Home Assistant motion tracker - I’d like the camera to alert Home Assistant when a person is detected, and who has arrived home with facial tracking, and only if motion detected in my specified zone.

  1. What kind of integration should I expect will work out of the box?
  2. Is anybody else considering this camera and when/should I expect a component?
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Confirmation from SimCam manufacturer that their API will be open! :slight_smile:

I received the cam this weekend. Did anyone use the SDK yet?

I haven’t yet but have found some documentation. I’m so excited to find another Home Assistant user who purchased SimCam. I currently have a very long list of bugs and feature requests to supply them - I guess they released a Minimum Viable Product.

Have you managed to obtain an rtsp stream from the camera?

I got my simcam yesterday. However I know absolutely nothing about the programming side of things. I also have an August deadbolt and a doorbird doorbell camera. I am patiently waiting for the home assistant geniuses to integrate simcam so I can have the door unlock based on who it sees.

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Please please please do not setup facial recognition using a standard 2d camera for access control. Mainstream facerec is designed for surveillance and gallery identification. Any facerec access control with a standard 2d cctv camera will be able to be spoofed using a photo of the subject, it is not what it is designed for. Also, don’t believe any vendor that states bs such as no false positives. Just go and have a look at the NIST facial recognition tests. In particular, go look at NIST FIVE which is designed and aimed at facerec with real time video (what you are discussing). Even the best algorithm in the world has false positives, and again, is no good for access control. There is a reason why egates either have an infrared sensor, or have border staff nearby to verify, because even the majority of airport egates can be bypassed with a photo. Source of knowledge, I’ve worked in this industry for a leading vendor for 15 years.

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Alternatively/additionally to @tcork you could have the facial recognition push an actionable notification to your phone (EG - “Have you just arrived home? - UNLOCK or IGNORE”). Essentially two step verification in between face recognised and door unlocked.

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Absolutely, as an absolute minimum, I would be using face in this scenario as a secondary authentication factor. Certainly not the primary, and certainly not solely.

Thanks for the help. Learned some crucial stuff I wasn’t aware of.

Where can I discover if anyone is working on Simcam integration with Home Assistant? I tried asking on the HA subreddit a while ago and was downvote and called a “shill”.

I Also bought the SimCam. I’ll be looking into integrating it in HA after I moved my setup from RPi to a NUC.

I see they have IFTTT integration also. How are people getting on with this camera?

I’ve been severly disappointed with SimCam. Faulty cameras, sub-par support, flaky software.

I had hoped they’d sort out their issues with rollouts (being beta, I didn’t expect it to be perfect from the start). But so far very unimpressed.

Sounds like they rushed it to market

Yeah, must say, compared to Wyze’s forum and support, SimCam has nothing. But in terms of the SDK and API they look far ahead.

Care to elaborate?

I’ve ordered a simcam and the simcam ango, any updates on the integration? did you get it to work?

All four of my SimCams have hardware & software issues. Once Is sort those out I’ll be trying to integrate.

SimCam did recently release RTSP streaming so it should theoretically be easy to get the video feed in Home Assistant. I doubt there will be any control over the gimbals/cameras though. :frowning:

I’ve been trying to get this simcam to work with HA but with no luck. Since they moved to a new app SimHome, they released an updated api that also includes the Ango Doorbell.
I’m actualy quite happy with the thing. Xept for it not comming with a charger :smiley:
Did anyone here made simhome work with home assistant?
Cheers
H

Interested by the answers to these question.
Indeed I am interested to buy a SIMCAM 1S camera which seems to be the rare camera to make face recognition (with netatmo). Not sure from what I read that someone has succeeded. But what about using HA <> IFTTT <> SIMCAM

It looks like there’s a decent document and simple API setup.
I’m not a coder, but am interested in this.

So far my SimCam Alloy S1 has been pretty reliable in testing it for the last month or so. Next step is to install it in it’s final location outside.


https://platform.simcam.cn/