home-assistant.io/source/_components/camera.markdown

layout	title	description	date	sidebar	comments	sharing	footer
page	Camera	Instructions on how to integrate cameras within Home Assistant.	2015-11-09 08:36	true	false	true	true

The camera component allows you to use IP cameras with Home Assistant. With a little additional work you could use USB cameras as well.

{% linkable_title Services %}

Once loaded, the camera platform will expose services that can be called to perform various actions.

Available services: turn_on, turn_off, enable_motion_detection, disable_motion_detection, and snapshot.

{% linkable_title Service turn_on %}

Turn on camera. Not all camera models support this service, please consult individual camera page.

Service data attribute	Optional	Description
entity_id	yes	Name(s) of entities to turn on, e.g., camera.living_room_camera.

{% linkable_title Service turn_off %}

Turn off camera. Not all camera models support this service, please consult individual camera page.

Service data attribute	Optional	Description
entity_id	yes	Name(s) of entities to turn off, e.g., camera.living_room_camera.

{% linkable_title Service enable_motion_detection %}

Enable the motion detection in a camera.

Service data attribute	Optional	Description
entity_id	yes	Name(s) of entities to enable motion detection, e.g., camera.living_room_camera.

{% linkable_title Service disable_motion_detection %}

Disable the motion detection in a camera.

Service data attribute	Optional	Description
entity_id	yes	Name(s) of entities to disable motion detection, e.g., camera.living_room_camera.

{% linkable_title Service snapshot %}

Take a snapshot from a camera.

Service data attribute	Optional	Description
entity_id	no	Name(s) of entities to create a snapshot from, e.g., camera.living_room_camera.
filename	no	Template of a file name. Variable is entity_id, e.g., {% raw %}/tmp/snapshot_{{ entity_id }}{% endraw %}.

The path part of filename must be an entry in the whitelist_external_dirs in your homeassistant: section of your configuration.yaml file.

For example, the following action in an automation would take a snapshot from "yourcamera" and save it to /tmp with a timestamped filename.

{% raw %}

action:
  service: camera.snapshot
  data:
    entity_id: camera.yourcamera
    filename: '/tmp/yourcamera_{{ now().strftime("%Y%m%d-%H%M%S") }}.jpg'

{% endraw %}

{% linkable_title Test if it works %}

A simple way to test if you have set up your camera platform correctly, is to use Services from the Developer Tools. Choose your service from the dropdown menu Service, enter something like the sample below into the Service Data field, and hit CALL SERVICE.

{
  "entity_id": "camera.living_room_camera"
}