We aren’t too fond of cameras around here and there’s almost always someone home so it’s not really a necessity for us. Having said that, we’ve had a few cams for a while now and most important is the doorbell.
I’m certain for 95% of you I don’t have to explain why I want the Amazon/Ring bell gone.
I run HA and have deployed Frigate separately to start messing with IP cams.
Here is my question? I understand that you can take the feed from the Reolink bell/cams and import it into Frigate from which I will send it over to my home assistant. For those of you who already do this, how offline is it? Did you need to set up any kind of reolink account to adjust settings or do the initial login? Does the camera try to call home occasionally? Is it fully offline?
I learned my lesson with Amazon. I want to control this doorbell myself and I’d to avoid video, audio, or logs exiting my network without me knowing.
How has the Reolink - Frigate - Home Assistant trio panned out for you?
I’ve got a wireless button with a wall-plugged speaker inside. It’s all I need, as we have cameras feeding a motion-server.
I’d really want to get push notifications when the doorbell is rung, as we’re not always where the bell is. And sometimes we’d like to disconnect it because the baby is sleeping and the dogs go off at the sound of the bell.
I haven’t found any zigbee-replacement. I’m thinking to just put a zigbee-button and solve the chile through HA.
Seamless with ha, reolink and frigate. Reolink itself works with ha natively but I like it with frigate better. It is all offline. No online set up or accounts at all.
I haven’t used Frigate specifically, but Reolink overall has been exactly what I wanted. Works out of the box no config, no signup, no login, completely local with the mobile reolink app. I never connected it to home assistant or anything, I either use a VPN into my home network or just stick to using it locally.
I did have an occasional bug with the UI/connection. The iOS app gave me some trouble, but I use android and its been plug and play with all the main features I would want.
You can simplify the process by just using the reolink doorbell directly with HA. Reolink is an integration in HA. Works completely local and I have all my cameras in a clan with no internet access. You don’t need any app to setup the camera either.
If you really want to use frigate there is that option too.
I know you meant vlan, but I love the idea of a loyal tightly knit band of cameras and doorbells.
Does it connect to your WiFi, is that how you get the IP of the camera?
The Reolink cameras have a straight IP output source, so you should need any accounts or anything like that (verify with the specific model type of course). You then point Frigate to the camera as an input source feed.
The HA Add-On then just uses Frigate as a media source. It creates a few entities you can use for automations which can be seen here.
I used to have the amcrest doorbell but switched to reolink after two amcrest died back to back after only a year each. You need to do the initial setup using the reolink app like opening rtsp/onvif ports, but then you can feed it to frigate and disable internet access. I have this exact setup and it works well. They only thing I haven’t got working yet is two way audio. If you don’t mind reolink online, then you can use their app and integration for two way audio.
Two-way audio is what I’m currently struggling with. I’ve got a Wyze Doorbell v1 that will be loaded with Thingino to replace my Ring doorbell. Hopefully I can get it figured out.
I’ve tried three or four times, and always ended up dropping it. Never could get it to work with my exact config. I have a relatively complex network setup with vlans, firewall rules, and devices, so I imagine I’m more of an edge case though.
Can you link the reolink doorbell to a few Echo’s to play door chime sounds/announcements?
You could string up an automation for this. Reolink integration requires internet connectivity but exposes the doorbell to home assistant for follow on notifications if you like.
@njordomir haven’t used reolink but have been running frigate on low power server with coral tpu and I’m totally impressed. Very stable, very energy efficient, sends a notification when a person or car arrives reliably and can tune out the neighbours driveway with a mask. Great software and fairly intuitive. Give it a go.
TL;DR: They’re a damn good choice, and I don’t know how offline they can be.
I use Proxmox, Reolink 810s, and I have AgentDVR logged into the cameras via https (443) to get info, and ONVIF (8000) for the stream. It takes a little tweaking via the camera app or web GUI if you want the onboard AI to omit large or small objects for screenshots or notifications, which I have controlled by HA. I use the AgentDVR and Reolink integrations. Here are the features I’ve got:
- AgentDVR logged in to the cameras’ admin account (definitely no Reolink account)
- Reolink cam rolling footage based on motion, on onboard MicroSD
- AgentDVR 24/7 footage saving directly to a mounted high-capacity HDD
- Reolink cam, with detection, sends a screenshot with a configured naming format via FTP directly to Home Assistant’s www folder (but this and notifications can be handled by either piece of the setup)
- Home Assistant monitors the folder with folder_watcher and an automation prepares to send my phone a notification (Fdroid - not Google) once the image has ‘closed’)
- I’ve saved my automation script in which HA does the screenshots instead of the Reolink cam. I’ve kept the clickAction to the Reolink app in there because it’s very complicated
- My cameras are connected to my home WiFi but they can also connect to an NVR or a PC for a completely isolated link (you’ll need a PoE injector, I use this for up to 4 cameras).
If you use the Reolink app, then it will use the Reolink servers via several domains. I haven’t checked traffic on the cameras yet. It can be fully offline but I choose not to for a better remote experience using the app.
I set them up a long time ago, scanning a QR code on the camera using the Reolink app. I don’t know if it can be handled another way.
I have a few Reolink POE cameras(and poe doorbell) with an old mini pc running frigate, all on a battery backup so if the power goes for a bit the cameras and recording don’t. I also have a coral tpu installed in the mini pc.
All of my cameras are blocked at the firewall from leaving the network and they function fully, 100% local. When i plugged in the poe cable the cameras grabbed an ip address and you can interact with them through that.
As others have said there is also a home assistant integration for reolink that let’s you import and control the cameras from within home assistant as well as a frigate integration. I prefer having frigate on it’s own box so when i need to reboot home assistant my cameras are still recording.
Once it’s all set up you can have live video feed for each camera accessible within home assistant, on your dashboard if you like, as well as access to clips and continuous recordings depending on frigate configuration and storage capacity.
