This past week has been a rush of learning. I had all the components but not the knowledge or time until this weekend.
For the last 3 days, I had to find a way to be notified if someone was approaching my house at specific times. Only tools at my disposal were Blue Iris, Home Assistant with some Z-wave devices, TCL Roku smart TV and Dahua cameras. The best rush combo I could come up with was horrible, but did work
First, had to learn in Blue Iris schedules & profiles in 2 hours and then configure Blue Iris. Next, upon motion of 6 specific cameras (all pointing towards the front of the house), to send a smartphone MMS text messages with pictures. Needless to say, lots of false triggers (cars in the distance, neighbors here and there, cats running about) from 9pm-6am but I REALLY did want to make sure I knew if someone came close to my house. I knew I would sleep through some of the smartphone notification sounds, so added a fool proof method of notification. As with all 6 cameras sending MMS messages, all 6 also sent MQTT to Home Assistant. I had to quickly figure out how to make my first true automation. When HA recieved a MQTT topic "motion" from any of those 6 cameras, it would turn on my smart tv and swap to Blue Iris source (which I ran a HDMI cable from my Blue Iris server to TV). Had to figure out really fast how to show only the outside group cameras and maximize the display for those cameras to see whenever an triggered alert happened. Also, to top if off.... a 2nd automation turned on a JASCO Z-wave portable wall switch which...of all things, I had my hair clipper connected to while laying on my wooden nightstand. Needless to say, when any alert happened, I woke up.
This weekend, I worked on my DSC alarm panel with the Envisalink module. Slapped a Bosch Tri-Tech OB850 outdoor PIR on my lamp post, pointing it at my driveway and front door. Only sits 6' above ground but will have to do for temp purposes. I have 2 more outdoor PIR's to put wherever I want for future. But needed to learn rather quickly how to do the HA/DSC/Blue Iris/Roku TV/Camera integration on a single weekend
I managed to get the PIR on HA to be integrated, did some walk around tests for the PIR sensitivity & HA workings, and now I can probably sleep a tad more. Turned off 4 of the 6 camera MMS alerts as gotta test the whole thing out for a couple days, so that's less noise clutter at 3am. I have no audible wake me up emergency alarm jsut yet, so the PIR tells HA about motion, HA turns on my hair clipper which has a aweful rumbling on wood sound that will wake anyone. So far, only 1 PIR alert in the last 6 hours due to neighbor walking by. Still have the Roku TV turn on in case of any camera alerts. I am hopefuly to have 0 or 1 alert through the morning hours instead of 5-6 I had relying on camera motion alerts. Next up to learn... Deepstack AI and object identification which will alleviate even more false camera alerts.

For the last 3 days, I had to find a way to be notified if someone was approaching my house at specific times. Only tools at my disposal were Blue Iris, Home Assistant with some Z-wave devices, TCL Roku smart TV and Dahua cameras. The best rush combo I could come up with was horrible, but did work

First, had to learn in Blue Iris schedules & profiles in 2 hours and then configure Blue Iris. Next, upon motion of 6 specific cameras (all pointing towards the front of the house), to send a smartphone MMS text messages with pictures. Needless to say, lots of false triggers (cars in the distance, neighbors here and there, cats running about) from 9pm-6am but I REALLY did want to make sure I knew if someone came close to my house. I knew I would sleep through some of the smartphone notification sounds, so added a fool proof method of notification. As with all 6 cameras sending MMS messages, all 6 also sent MQTT to Home Assistant. I had to quickly figure out how to make my first true automation. When HA recieved a MQTT topic "motion" from any of those 6 cameras, it would turn on my smart tv and swap to Blue Iris source (which I ran a HDMI cable from my Blue Iris server to TV). Had to figure out really fast how to show only the outside group cameras and maximize the display for those cameras to see whenever an triggered alert happened. Also, to top if off.... a 2nd automation turned on a JASCO Z-wave portable wall switch which...of all things, I had my hair clipper connected to while laying on my wooden nightstand. Needless to say, when any alert happened, I woke up.
This weekend, I worked on my DSC alarm panel with the Envisalink module. Slapped a Bosch Tri-Tech OB850 outdoor PIR on my lamp post, pointing it at my driveway and front door. Only sits 6' above ground but will have to do for temp purposes. I have 2 more outdoor PIR's to put wherever I want for future. But needed to learn rather quickly how to do the HA/DSC/Blue Iris/Roku TV/Camera integration on a single weekend

