Help setting up Blue Iris integration in Home Assistant

[Mike A.]

Newb at Home Assistant. I've got it set up and working. Installed HACS. Got the BI integration installed in HACS. Shows under HACS integrations.

Where do I go from there? I don't seem to be able to do anything with it. I don't see the set up to configure it with BI server, et. al. as shown in some of the walk-throughs. I do see HACS under Configuration > Devices & Services, but not the BI integration.

 

[Justin Blackburn]

After you install it in hacs, restart home assistant. Then add it like you would any other integration. Hacs makes custom integrations show where you install native integrations. If this still isn’t clear, let me know and I’ll put up some screenshots.

 

[Mike A.]

Thanks. Yeah, I finally got it after a few reboots of the VM and reinstalling. I'm sure that it was there, don't know why it wouldn't show up with the other integrations initially.

I'm sure that I'll have other questions as I go along.

 

[Mike A.]

Couple of questions...

Why do the cams go idle after some time? That is, it no longer shows cams in the Dashboard, rather smaller gray boxes with Idle at the bottom.

Can I use the BI cams as motion devices when the cam triggers? It does offer the cams as motion devices. Set that up the same way to trigger a light that I had set up using another working motion sensor, but that didn't seem to work.

 

[Justin Blackburn]

I don’t use blue iris so I can’t say for sure, but that should be possible. Their is an onvif integration that uses pullpoint subscriptions from the cameras. I currently am using frigate and it’s pretty awesome.

 

[Mike A.]

Thanks. I'd think so too. I'll keep playing with it.

 

[Justin Blackburn]

The gray box with the idle may be a setting on the Lovelace card you set up. I’ll post a screenshot in a minute.

 

[Justin Blackburn]

 

[Mike A.]

Mine was set to Auto. Changed it to live but it still shows "Idle" at bottom of screen. It does seem to be showing the cam live.

Not sure what "Idle" means in this case. lol

 

[Justin Blackburn]

Toggle show state off just to the right a bit from where live was and idle will go away. You can also toggle off the name.

 

[Mike A.]

Thanks. Yes, I saw that. Still wonder what idle means but as long as it shows the cam, then I'm good.

Can't seem to get the cams to work as motion sensor to trigger a light. Thought that would be as simple as selecting it as the source but guess not. Have to looking into it more. I'm just getting started with it so have no clue at this point.

 

[Mike A.]

Thanks.

 

[CrazyAsYou]

I have what I think is a very good Blue Iris and Home Assistant setup but I guess it depends on what you want, in my case BI handles everything to-do with the cameras, recording, AI and feeds alerts via MQTT to HA which then sends me Telegram notifications and performs a whole host of things like turning on lights for set times based on time of day, camera, my location etc, I also have things like my front door/drive way cam alerts trigger Alex echos to say things like "someone is at the front door" - personally I don't like HA automation scripts so I use NodeRed addin to HA.

 

[Justin Blackburn]

I also use nodered but wouldn’t recommend it to someone just starting to dabble in home assistant. Play around a few week and figure some stuff out, then if you want another steep learning curve, install nodered. Once you figure out states and debug node, anything is possible. Nodered is worth it, but I felt lost for a while when I first installed it.

 

[CrazyAsYou]

I also use nodered but wouldn’t recommend it to someone just starting to dabble in home assistant. Play around a few week and figure some stuff out, then if you want another steep learning curve, install nodered. Once you figure out states and debug node, anything is possible. Nodered is worth it, but I felt lost for a while when I first installed it.

I found NodeRed much easier to use that HA for automations, I prefer something graphical with drag n drop vs YAML text files and reloading all the time.

 

[Justin Blackburn]

Blueprints and built in automations have came a long way from when I first started. They have really put a lot of work into simplifying automations over the last year. Like I said, I prefer nodered as well, but I just know I struggled for a while. Rather than struggling trying to learn both, learn one at a time was all I was trying to suggest.

 

[Vettester]

I have automations setup in multiple platforms (Hubitat, HomeKit, HA and NodeRed). It may sound a bit confusing, but I have found having different options actually makes things easier.

I used the BI integration for awhile and found it a bit quirky so I got rid of it and just setup alerts in BI to trigger automations via MQTT and HTTP.

 

[Mike A.]

I also use nodered but wouldn’t recommend it to someone just starting to dabble in home assistant. Play around a few week and figure some stuff out, then if you want another steep learning curve, install nodered. Once you figure out states and debug node, anything is possible. Nodered is worth it, but I felt lost for a while when I first installed it.

Yes, I've had NodeRed up and running for a little while before trying HA. I'd agree, it's a lot to take in at first and you're kind of on your own for much of it. Fortunately I had a specific thing that I was trying to do with some Hue lights and found a package that had pre-made functions and flows for that, so helped a lot to give me something practical to learn with vs a blank slate. Still don't know much of it but I can at least create something and see the effect (or not) and learn as I go along.

I found NodeRed much easier to use that HA for automations, I prefer something graphical with drag n drop vs YAML text files and reloading all the time.

I like the interface and the idea of visually linking nodes and all. That's very cool. What I found missing was a lot of the rest of the underlying integrations and an overall primary interface for control. The building blocks are there but seems that you kind of have to put them together yourself. Or so it appears to me without a lot of experience with it. Various things out there but not all pulled together as with HA. Which is why I'm now looking at that now.

One thing that I'm not clear on re HA and NodeRed - I see mentioned together quite a bit. Is there some direct relationship between the two? i.e., Can I use NodeRed to build code for HA or are they linked in some other way?

 

[Vettester]

One thing that I'm not clear on re HA and NodeRed - I see mentioned together quite a bit. Is there some direct relationship between the two? i.e., Can I use NodeRed to build code for HA or are they linked in some other way?

If you install the NodeRed integration within HA, it installs the HA pallette.

 

[Mike A.]

Ahhh... See now. Thanks.

So does this run an instance of NodeRed within HA in some way? Or does it depend on an external stand-alone NodeRed server running to deploy whatever you create? I'm assuming the latter. Can I then set up automations, etc., in HA using the flows created there in some more direct way than otherwise? Or is it just the interface within HA for convenience?