Vivotek camera, entity with motion detection

Is there any way to get an entity with motion detection from Vivotek cameras?

There is…At a high level, this is what I do:

  1. Create a webhook string - Go into HA and create a webhook string and store it away somewhere that you can retrieve it later. This will be used by the camera when it detects motion.
  2. Configure the camera to send an HTTP URL upon motion detection - Using a web browser (Vivotek prefers a Microsoft based browser), login into the camera and set up the motion and zone(s) and then setup up for a motion event. Set the event’s action to send to a server. Setup this server to send an http URL. The URL to be sent is one that will be sent to HA and will use the webhook you saved earlier.
  3. Setup a timer in HA which will be used to timeout the motion sensor. When the timer is not running, its state will be idle.
  4. Entity motion sensor - Setup a template binary sensor to monitor the state of the timer. This will be your motion sensor entity. Configure it for a device class of motion. Configure the template such that when the timer is 'idle", this template motion sensor will have state of false. When the timer is running, this template motion sensor will have state true.
  5. Setup an webhook automation that looks for the webhook being received from the camera. The action of this automation will be to start the timer mentioned above.

There are other ways to do this, but this is what I ended up with.

1 Like