Blue Iris and Home Assistant Automation Integration

General
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Hey everyone, I wanted to share my experience with integrating Blue Iris and Home Assistant for motion detection alerts. It’s been a fun journey, and I thought I’d document my setup and some of the challenges I encountered along the way.

I have a front door camera set up with Blue Iris, and I wanted to create an automation that would notify me whenever motion is detected. The goal was to have the system capture a still image from the camera and send it to my phone via SMS or push notification. I also wanted the system to work seamlessly whether I’m at home or away.

Here’s how I set it up:

  1. Blue Iris Configuration: I started by configuring Blue Iris to detect motion on my front door camera. Blue Iris has a robust motion detection feature, and I found that tweaking the sensitivity settings gave me the best results. I also set it up to send an MQTT message to Home Assistant whenever motion is detected.

  2. Home Assistant Automation: In Home Assistant, I created an automation that listens for the MQTT message from Blue Iris. When the message is received, the automation triggers an HTTP command to Blue Iris to capture the current still image from the camera. This image is then sent to me via the Home Assistant app if I’m at home or via SMS if I’m away.

  3. Challenges and Solutions: One issue I ran into was a delay between the motion detection and the image capture. It turned out that Blue Iris sends the MQTT message after the motion has been detected, which sometimes means the person (like the UPS delivery guy) has already moved on by the time I receive the alert. To solve this, I adjusted the settings in Blue Iris to capture the image as soon as motion is detected. I also found that using IFTTT to send the image directly from Blue Iris to my phone provided a more immediate alert.

  4. Final Setup: My final setup involves Blue Iris detecting motion, capturing the image instantly, and sending it directly to my phone via SMS. This ensures that I always get the most up-to-date alert, regardless of whether I’m at home or not.

I’d love to hear how others have integrated Blue Iris with Home Assistant or other smart home systems. Have you found any unique solutions or encountered any interesting challenges? Let’s share our experiences and learn from each other!