VStarcam Camera: Tech Support says NO Home Assistant, ever

Hi,

Funny story…

  • I am new to Home Assistant. It works fine; actually better than expected.
  • Camera: A few years ago, I bought a VStarcam C29S camera for checking if my garage door is closed. Their EYE4 app is “good enough” to do that (after you fight blood sweat and tears to get it on your IoT network…)

One of the first things I tried to integrate with HA is this VStarcam cheapo camera and after days I gave up and sent a request to their tech team to help out.

Here is their response:

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Hi,

It doesn’t support home assistant. Please use the EYE4 app.


Sincerely,

VStarcam Technical Support

Shenzhen VStarcam Technology Co., Ltd.

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So, there you have it: from the source. I hope this helps anyone who searches this forum for cameras to integrate into HA for low level monitoring tasks and saves them a bit of time or a few $$$.

PS: I have a cheap secondhand VStarcam C29S camera for sale. Great working condition. Serious offers only :slight_smile:

Don’t give up so easily. They may not support Home Assistant but Home Assistant very likely does support them.

According to this: Complete Vstarcam IP Camera Setup Guide - ONVIF, RTSP and Tutorial Included there are many still image and streaming URLs you could use with the generic camera integration.

e.g. Just replace the user, password and ip address.

Still image URL

http://user:[email protected]:10554/cgi/snapshot.cgi?action=getdata&channel.0.capture=true&channel.0.resolution=1

RTSP URL:

rtsp://user:[email protected]:10554/tcp/av0_0

MJPEG URL

http://user:[email protected]:81/videostream.cgi?rate=0&user=user&pwd=password

EDIT: also according to this review it supports ONVIF, so you could also use this integration:

The advantage of using the ONVIF integration over the Generic one is that you may be able to use the pan/tilt controls.

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Thank you very much for your quick reply! I had already consulted the “home assistant” links you’ve provided… but the magic started happening when combining the info for the Vstarcam setup guid and the review.

I have partial success (generic cam integration/slow loading/not live feed/still image capture works fine).

I will update here with progress: I am sure tweaking the settings might improve it and/or get the ONVIF integration to work as well.

Thanks for the help.