---
title: Microsoft Face
description: Instructions on how to integrate Microsoft Face integration into Home Assistant.
ha_category:
  - Image Processing
ha_release: 0.37
ha_domain: microsoft_face
---

The `microsoft_face` integration platform is the main integration for Microsoft
Azure Cognitive service
[Face](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/face/).
All data are stored in your own private instance in the Azure cloud.

## Setup

You need an API key, which is free, but requires an
[Azure registration](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/) using your
Microsoft ID. The free resource (*F0*) is limited to 20 requests per minute and
30k requests in a month. If you don't want to use the Azure cloud, you can also
get an API key by registering with
[cognitive-services](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/try/cognitive-services/).
Please note that all keys on cognitive services must be recreated every 90 days.

## Configuration

To enable the Microsoft Face component,
add the following to your `configuration.yaml` file:

```yaml
# Example configuration.yaml entry
microsoft_face:
  api_key: YOUR_API_KEY
  azure_region: eastus2
```

{% configuration %}
api_key:
  description: The API key for your Cognitive resource.
  required: true
  type: string
azure_region:
  description: The region where you instantiated your Microsoft Cognitive services endpoint.
  required: false
  type: string
timeout:
  description: Set timeout for the API connection.
  required: false
  type: time
  default: 10s
{% endconfiguration %}

### Person and Groups

For most services, you need to set up a group or a person.
This limits the processing and detection to elements provided by the group.
Home Assistant creates an entity for all groups and allows you to show the
state, person, and IDs directly on the frontend.

The following services are available for managing this feature and can be called
via the Frontend, a script, or the REST API.

- *microsoft_face.create_group*
- *microsoft_face.delete_group*

```yaml
service: microsoft_face.create_group
data:
  name: 'Family'
```

- *microsoft_face.create_person*
- *microsoft_face.delete_person*

```yaml
service: microsoft_face.create_person
data:
  group: family
  name: 'Hans Maier'
```

You need to add an image of a person. You can add multiple images for every
person to make the detection better. You can take a picture from a camera or
send a local image to your Azure resource.

- *microsoft_face.face_person*

```yaml
service: microsoft_face.face_person
data:
  group: family
  name: 'Hans Maier'
  camera_entity: camera.door
```

For the local image we need `curl`.
The `{personId}` is present in group entity as attribute.

```bash
$ curl -v -X POST "https://westus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/face/v1.0/persongroups/{GroupName}/persons/{personId}/persistedFaces" \
  -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/octet-stream" --data-binary "@/tmp/image.jpg"
```

After we're done with changes on a group,
we need train this group to teach the AI how to handle the new data.

- *microsoft_face.train_group*

```yaml
service: microsoft_face.train_group
data:
  group: family
```
