Trail / outdoor video with Home Assistant recommendations?

Hardware
1

Hello!

I have a garden in the UK with some largish wildlife in it (deer, foxes, hedgehogs, etc). I’m looking for suggestions for device that I can use to detect them, ideally so I can eventually add identification, notification, monitoring, etc though Home Assistant. My current requirements are:

No cables - WiFi (2.4Ghz or 5Ghz) with storage and battery, ideally optional USB-C solar panel
Outdoor
Night vision - infrared, no mandatory floodlighting
No required subscriptions / apps

Motion detection is probably necessary to have a wire-free device.

I’ve got a couple of devices already, but neither works with Home Assistant. One is Campark TC02 which is a trail camera. Image quality is great, but can only be access via bluetooth from the proprietary app at short range. The other is a Reolink Argus Eco which is more of a security camera. It’s cheaper and connects via WiFi, but again only via the proprietary app and not with Home Assistant.

I could keep buying trying stuff, but that would be slow and wasteful. No manufacturers seem to give clear specifications either. So I thought I’d ask what makes & models to use (or avoid!) ?

2

I am looking with same requirements. Seems to be quite hard to find hardware supporting wifi client mode without proprietary apps.

Any progress already with your research?

3

I know this is an old post, but I’ve just stumbled across it as a search for some kind of Home Assistant compatible wildlife / trail camera…
Would love to know what solution you’ve found. Thanks

4

going to bump this thread. in search of the exact same thing.

5

I use the R7 with the RF 100-400mm for outdoor sports and it’s worked really well. Fast focus, great tracking, and it’s light enough to carry around all day.

7

I’ve used Insta360 cameras alongside my DSLR for a few soccer matches, and they’re awesome for capturing action from unique angles, especially mounted behind the goal or on a fence. The 360 video cameras footage lets me pick the best angle later, which helps a ton when the play moves fast and unpredictably. They’re lightweight too, so no hassle carrying them with my main gear.

8

Don’t know if you’re still looking, but I’ve just got one of these for a Pi project using Frigate for animal detection, and it does let you feed a RTSP stream to HA. I haven’t built the project yet though… so see how that goes.
They make a wifi and a PoE version.
https://www.aqara-shop.co.uk/product/aqara-camera-hub-g5-pro-wi-fi-32gb

Colour night vision as well - it’s quite impressive.

9

Are you lost? :slight_smile:

I don’t think a Canon R7 is quite the integration OP is looking for.

10

I’ve built a Tactacam Reveal integration for Home Assistant that works pretty well. It’s unofficial (it uses the same API as Reveal’s website), but it’s been solid for me. If there’s interest I could clean it up and publish it on HACS.

It basically replaces the Reveal app:

  • Archives every photo and video locally, with a gallery in Home Assistant
  • Sorts photos into folders by what’s in them (deer, turkey, dog & human…)
  • Sends phone alerts with the photo, only for what you care about: per-camera rules, ignore squirrels, and one alert per burst instead of 15
  • Battery, signal and last-sighting entities, so you can build your own automations

To cut false positives, each photo goes through Google’s free SpeciesNet wildlife model on a computer on your network, and only the unclear ones go to a cloud AI as a fallback. For me about 85% get settled locally. Cloud-only works too if you don’t want to run the local part.