Use BI by itself or pair it with HA / Pushover

[chiperdean]

I have been a forum member since 2020 when I bought a bullet camera from @EMPIRETECANDY but never had the time nor ability to run cabling throughout my house. I am now having that cable ran to a POE+ switch in my office and have been working with @wittaj and @EMPIRETECANDY to order more camera's (5 - EmpireTech IPC-T54IR-ZE-S3 )and have purchased and installed BI (Blue IRis) on my home server. I plan on adding AI (still reviewing vids and posts on Deepstack and CodeProject) but I have come across many more posts that have me questioning the way I will be using BI to notify me and to access it remotely.

When I started on my quest for Security monitoring at my house, I figured I would be using BI and would receive the alerts and be able to go into it via my phone if needed. I still have much to learn about the product. I keep seeing posts on HA (Home Assistant) and Pushover notifications and have been trying to read them as well. I guess my question is going to be, do most people use BI by itself or is it common to pair it with HA and Pushover? If this is the case, is HA being used more as it can also control turning on lights and such or is it just an easier interface to deal with notification and alerting? (I have not used HA at this time but have used BI for testing alerts and the BI Mobile App). As far as alerting, is there anything to gain by using HA or Pushover (Easier to use, configure, doesn't require VPN, doesn't require VPN)? Yeah, as you can tell I am new and am reading the posts I find, just having an issue finding the post where people are stating they use HA and Push with BI because of xx reasons compared to what BI offers.

I appreciate any comments. I don't know if this belongs in this section, if not please let me know and I will delete it and put it elsewhere.

Thanks,

Chiperdean

 

[wittaj]

You can use the Pushover app without Home Assistant.

The reason most of us use Pushover is because with the BI app, the only way you get push with photos is if you port forward (not recommended) or have a VPN open back to your home whenever away.

And the UI3 is a better interface than the BI app. Many would say that you only need the BI app if you have two-way talk capable cameras and want to use those.

I have several two-way talk cameras and it is more like walkie talkie and other than testing it, I have never used it in a real life situation.

 

[chiperdean]

Thanks for the information @wittaj

I don't think I will be using it much for two way (other than the doorbell I plan to put in (still undecided on which one that will be). I will look closer at the Pushover app as far as notifications go (I did see a post here for it that outlined the configurations with BI). I am using Port Forwarding (to test the BI app and new install) at this time but plan on looking at setting up a VPN on my router to use when we fire up the BI app. I didn't see a config in the app where it would initiate a VPN when opening so I will just have to connect to VPN manually and then open BI to monitor my streams after I get a notification. Thanks again!

 

[hikky_b]

If you are simply wanting convenient alerts from your cams / blue iris, I see no need to use pushover / home assistant.

I would definitely get better access set up rather than port forwarding. VPN is one option, setting up a reverse proxy is another (such as nginx or BP2008's own flavour, GitHub - bp2008/WebProxy: An HTTP(S) reverse proxy server with web-based configuration.), he is also the creator of the blue iris UI3 web interface). You then do not have to mess around turning on your VPN any time you want to look at your cams.

If you are wanting to utilise your cams as additional sensors to perform other actions, such as switching lights, TTS speaker announcements, ALPR dashboard etc then I would take a look at home assistant.

 

[chiperdean]

Thank you for the information @hikky_b

I wasn't looking to perform the other actions you listed so I will probably not go after HA. I will look into the reverse proxy, thank you for that!