For some reasons I need to have one of my ip-camera's switched off when some person is at home. The idea is having my HA system running an event do arrange that upon arriving or leaving the house. What is the best way to have the ip-cam going off-line in this case? The cam are PoE (HDW5442T-ZE) and I also have a dahua nvr running for recording. The idea is to have the signal of the iphone detected and have that as trigger for updating an virtual device starting or stopping an event. The most simple way of doing this is having a power-plug installed between a PoE injector. But in this case the camera is sharing a PoE switch with other camera and AP (wifi access point). So there should be an other solution? Any ideas or user case? My HA is HomSeer 4 Pro.
Best way to shut down an ip camera when at home
- Thread starter mr_ipcam
- Start date
meaty
n3wb
- Dec 14, 2017
- 2
- 1
I use a Lutron Caseta Hub with Pd-3pcl plug-in lamp dimmer module Have two POE switches controlling 8 cameras. I can shut off either POE switch with my phone and have them paired with Pico remotes discretely mounted at both front and rear doors The plug-in lamp module needs to be set to non-dimming mode. In my case, all of my cameras are outside and I need the ability to kill the video at a moment's notice. You never know when you might need to violate someone's civil liberties and don't want that recorded. This would also work on the individual camera if you separate its power source and use the Lutron hub to put the camera on a schedule or use the Geofencing feature tied to a phone. Been using the Lutron Cesata hub for about 5 years for lighting and the camera kill scheme for about 2 years. Works great with no issues yet.
A hardware-free solution would be to use the camera's HTTP API and send the command that sets image contrast to zero. This would black out the image. And it avoids the reconnect delay that would occur with turning off/on POE power.
So if your Home Automation has support for cURL commands or something similar that can send a URL, then try it out.
Here's an example of what I mean:
Black out camera image, contrast set to 0%:
Restore image, contrast set to 50%:
For extra credit you could send the command that places a text message on the camera feed. Use this to post a text string that states the image has been temporarily disabled.
- Thomas
So if your Home Automation has support for cURL commands or something similar that can send a URL, then try it out.
Here's an example of what I mean:
Black out camera image, contrast set to 0%:
Code:
http://LOCALIP.ADDRESS.GOES.HERE/cgi-bin/configManager.cgi?action=setConfig&VideoColor[0][1].Contrast=0Restore image, contrast set to 50%:
Code:
http://LOCALIP.ADDRESS.GOES.HERE/cgi-bin/configManager.cgi?action=setConfig&VideoColor[0][1].Contrast=50For extra credit you could send the command that places a text message on the camera feed. Use this to post a text string that states the image has been temporarily disabled.
- Thomas
@ThomasCamFan Nice idea. Will give it a try. Need to figure out how to get the user/password in the code. And find the API documentation 
In the following example the camera IP is 192.168.1.200, username is admin, and pw is mySecrete
Code:
http://admin:mySecrete@192.168.1.200/cgi-bin/configManager.cgi?action=setConfig&VideoColor[0][1].Contrast=00- Thomas
Thanks. I did discover a nice video where someone explained how it works. So now I only have to find the API, but saw that with action=getConfig& ... much info can be collected already. And changing the channelTitle already worked fine
API doc is available in this thread:
latest Version of DAHUA HTTP API FOR IPC Documentation ??
Hi everybody, is there any newer Version of the "DAHUA HTTP API FOR IPC" aviable? The latest Documentation i know is Version 1.67 from the 16.09.2015.
- Thomas
Just remembered that I have a Camect hub device that does what you want to do. Not likely of any use to you but you might find the feature descriptions below interesting reading:
