Matter of personal preference I suppose. I personally prefer wired solutions since no hassle with batteries, reception issues etc
If you already have security cameras up you can run motion detection on those to trigger something in HA.
I use Xeoma for my 6 security cameras. Xeoma supports various modules that you can chain together to make really advanced setups. It should be noted that Xeoma is not free, but pricing is decent.
Here I have motion recording setup for the entire camera to dump into my archive then I have a second motion module at the bottom that then attaches to two HTTP Request Sender modules. I have these modules setup to send events to a python webserver that takes the HTTP Requests and turns them into MQTT messages and posts them. Then I have HA listening for these messages and then acting on them. (the code for getting Xeoma web requests to MQTT messages can be found at: https://github.com/skylord123/xeoma-mqtt)
The motion setup is super nice as well. Since I am using two different motion modules on the same camera I donât affect the recording region. This way I can setup the motion event to only fire if motion is detect on the walkway up to my house or my front door:
Motion Region Example
Whole thing works great and can be used for various different things. Xeoma has a module that detects if it is daylight or nighttime. You could then rig up HTTP events to send when this happens so HA knows if it is actually dark or not outside your house. They even have a object detection module that you could use to see if someone parked in your driveway or not.
Anyways, this was just my way of doing things. I do get some false alerts from bugs at night but that is about it and can usually be fixed by modifying the motion module minimum object size and minimum motion duration. I use this setup with my Philips Hue bulb to light my front door when the sun is down and motion is detected.
Should be noted: I tried using PIR motion sensors. They work great at night outdoors but I needed something that could work at all hours. I donât only want to use this for my front light to turn on. I would love to setup a switch I can trigger if I am in the shop to let me know if someone is at the front door by ringing my phone at any hours (day/night time).
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I know it is long since the post but I am interested because I run a commercial Xeoma server. What do you mean with switch that you can trigger. Cant you setup a sms sender module to send you an sms to notify you. Just enable it when you are in shop
Yes, I could send myself an SMS if I wanted to (but that also costs money because I need to buy an SMS pack from a third party company).
The idea of my system is to integrate it with my home assistant so I can simply use a Google Home to say âNotify me if someone arrives at the front doorâ to turn it on/off. So that makes enabling/disabling the notification much easier. I then go a step further and have the light at the front door blink, sound a doorbell sound, and notify everyone that lives in the house over pushbullet that someone is at the front door. This is all free and some of the features will work even when internet connection is down (blinking lights and sounding the doorbell sound).
Having the ability to do custom triggers makes it so I can build out exactly what to respond to and how. Example: If someone is detected at the front door but the front door doesnât open up for 2 minutes since the motion was detected, then just log it with a picture of what happened and a timestamp for later review (similar to how a Ring doorbell would function).
@Skylord123
I am a zero programmer and new to HA but I am quite close to the Xeoma developers. Would if be possible for them to create a module that send mqtt messages easier than the http request module used today?
If Xeoma natively supported MqTT I could see their business growing because of home automation. Everyone wants to get things to talk together now days and MqTT is one of the best methods to get that to work. Itâs pretty much like having a chatroom with channels but for your home automation devices (they can send messages to each other, have multiple react to a single message, etc).
It honestly wouldnât be too difficult for them to add MqTT support. The one thing that I wish I could do it have an MqTT module that sends updates from Xeoma out through MqTT. I would love to have Home Assistant notify me if my storage on the Xeoma server gets too low, if one of the cameras loses connection, if motion is detected, if it is daytime/nighttime⌠All of these things would be huge pluses. Currently using the HTTP Request Sender and my own middle-man code to turn those requests into MqTT messages only supports motion events.
These are things that I would love Xeoma to publish over MqTT:
- When Xeoma comes online or goes offline
- Publishing a list of current online users
- Publishing how much CPU/Mem Xeoma is using
- Publishing HDD space (free and used per camera and total)
- Publishing when an update is available
- Publishing when a new archive video has been saved
- Publishing if camera is in Day/Night mode
- Publishing when a user fails to authenticate with their IP (so you can log bruteforcing attempts)
And things that would be awesome to have Xeoma listen for information on:
- Turning on/off a camera
- Turn on/off a switch from MqTT (Basically same that the HTTP Switcher does)
MqTT runs all the sensors in my house. It runs great on raspberry pi, arduino, esp8266, etc.
I have a tablet in my living room that I run my cameras on and I would love to program it to turn on/off the screen from home assistant. This way when motion is detected on a camera and either my wife or me is home and motion has been detected in the living room in last 5 minutes then turn on the tablet screen. I have got this working a little bit but the latency between Xeoma and Home Assistant with my fix is too high. If Xeoma supported MqTT natively then it would remove this problem for me.
Thanks for your detailed answer. I will forward it in a feature request to the developers
Hi!
I have mailed the developer team and they seems very interested. It is really a development of a more advanced module like the problem module
I copied your input in the mail, I hope you dont mind