Please add support for Reolink IP Camera’s
The real issue is that Reolink cameras don’t really play well with anything other than their app and cloud.
Nah, I bought two Reolink IP cameras and had them running in shinobi with no issues at all.
2 Likes
If the camera model supports RTSP then you can just use that stream. If not then you can either use the RTSP stream from the Reolink NVR OR look into Neolink which intercepts Reolink’s Baichuan protocol and gives you an RTSP stream that you can use to integrate it into HA.
2 Likes
Hi, I have a few questions from your experience if you have time?
I’m considering getting a few cheap Reolink E1 cameras for use at home.
I’ve been having trouble finding much details on Neolink, further than their github page.
Does Neolink work well?
Can you control cameras automatically, like using motion detection/follow?
Is it worth just spending the (double+) extra for the more E1 Zoom or more expensive models than use Neolink?
Neolink works great.
I have 8x B800 cameras connected to the Reolink NVR. The NVR does output an RTSP stream of the low res substream.
Neolink gives me an RTSP stream of the 4k stream from the cameras as well as the substream.
Motion detection is pretty useless. The wind will set it off. So I use the Frigate add-on to do object detection for things like People, Dogs and Cars/Trucks.
As for “is it worth it”? It depends on your needs. I debated between the 5mp and the 4k cameras and ultimately wanted the best image quality possible because if there was a serious event I wanted the best chance to capture it in the most detail.
Can you share a little bit about your config? I have some trouble to keep frigate and neolink running. I have neolink running within portainer on the same device HA (and frigate) is running on. When not using frigate I get a perfect image from the cameras through neolink. However as soon as I start to access this image in frigate neolink crashes shortly and I get errors from frigate as there is no more image. So to me this combination with frigate and neolink does not seem to work. I was wondering what you did to keep it running stable.
I can’t say my setup has been working flawlessly lately. I’ve noticed a few issues, just haven’t gotten around to fixing them yet.
Frigate with neolink is working fine using the subStream from neolink for detection and clips. If I try to use the 4k stream from neolink with frigate for clips, it doesn’t actually save any clips it’s just black screen. But I can view the 4k stream just fine in something like TinyCam Pro. So I’m sure the issue is with my Frigate setup somehow.
Now after doing a firmware update on the NVR and cameras, with neolink running, I can’t access the Reolink app on my phone. I just get a “can’t connect” error when trying to select a camera or the NVR itself. If I shut down my neolink container, they instantly start working again. I can still access it through the web portal using the NVR’s IP address and a monitor hooked up to the NVR shows it’s still working, it’s only the android app that seems to be affected. My theory is the app and neolink connect in the same way and it only allows 1 connection at a time. I’m not sure if there will be a workaround for this or not.
The reason I put neolink in the middle is because when I had frigate connected directly to the subStream of the NVR, the camera stream would jump back and forth between multiple cameras. So for example I’d look at the side door camera and it would show that stream for 1s, then the garage stream for 1s, pool stream for 1s, etc… etc…
I’m contemplating this setup. I removed the Reolink NVR and plugged the cameras directly into a PoE network switch, but I’m running into various problems streaming via Neolink in a docker container.
Did you ever make any progress on this?
Never entirely.
Running Neolink I can easily get both the HD and SD streams into something like Zonemaster, Shinobi and Blue Iris. The substream also works great in Frigate. But the HD stream, being h265, never worked in Frigate and will not display in HA. So I just gave up and let the Reolink NVR do 24/7 recording on the HD stream and I use an RTMP connection through the NVR into Frigate for object detection. The only downside is that the image in the notification that comes to my phone is from the substream not the HD stream. I live with it.
As for neolink in docker, there’s been known issues there since they first launched it. I just created an LXC container in proxmox and run it right from debian. Not sure if anything similar can be done through UNRAID.
1 Like
Hmm thanks. I figured most of the problems are coming from the h265 stream and the bandwidth issues. I connected the NVR and it auto-detects all the cameras – seamless. I notice that the streams are a little slower than having the cameras directly connected to the NVR, but as much as I hate to admit it, the Reolink NVR is the smoothest solution.
Eventually I’ll build something like your setup.
Hey! How did you manage to get the Neolink RTSP stream into Frigate via HA. The local ip address provided by neolink (rtsp://127.0.0.1:8554) cannot be seen by HA within the VM that I’m running. Any recommendations will be free appreciated!
You would use the actual IP address of the Neolink server not 127.0.0.1
The Frigate addon is essentially running in it’s own docker container, so using 127.0.0.1 is telling it that it’s running in the same container as Frigate. So you’d need to use 192.168.XX.XXX:8554 as an example.
Hey, so I tried the address you are mentioning within Frigate (rtsp://192.168.56.1:8554/Camera/subStream) which I got from the Ethernet adapter VirtualBox Host-Only Network from Command Prompt. This link works on VLC on the same computer.
Frigate still gave the same error where it is unable to read frames from ffmpeg process and gives a greenscreen for the output.
you can check the Frigate logs and also the neolink logs to confirm it’s reaching the stream.
You may need to adjust your ffmpeg input_args, that’s typically what the green screen is. But that’s beyond my abilities to help with.
Is neolink docker running independent server. I am using home assistant OS is it possible to add docker of neolink to it
I managed to setup the neolink and see the stream via vlc with default url 127.0.0.1 but when used the same ip in home assistant camera integration it doesn’t work. I just added to configuration file . I also changed to ip to where the neolink is running. All network is same still I am unable to see thr stream in HA
@teddyx I am facing the same situation, running HA OS. Can you please describe your setup and how you got neolink installed and working?
Also, you could try using the UID of the camera instead of its IP Address.