Easily connect your Foscam cameras to Home Assistant and Synology for Notifications

I have finally gotten all the Foscam cameras set up and streaming perfectly to my Roku devices throughout the house.  Now I want to show you how I have all the cameras set up in Home Assistant.  I am using Floorplan primarily to consume the information but with some easy additions from the Synology NVR, I am able to add in 4 cameras to my Home Assistant configuration.  

camera:
	– platform: synology
	url: https://<synologyIP>:5001
	username: !secret synology_username
	password: !secret synology_password
	timeout: 15
	verify_ssl: False

With the cameras added to my Smart Home, I am able to leverage them as Motion Sensors and set up great automations that trigger on motion or garage door openings (via Garadget) and will push iOS notifications with an image snapshot directly to everyone’s iPhones.  Once you have the framework in place, you just have to dream up the scenarios and implement them.

   

binary_sensor:
	– platform: rest
	name: “CAMERA1 Motion Sensor“
	resource: !secret camera1_url
	device_class: motion
	scan_interval: 5
	value_template: >-
	{%- if “<motionDetectAlarm>2</motionDetectAlarm>” in value -%}
	{{ true }}
	{%- else -%}
	{{ false }}
	{%- endif -%}

In the video, we also touch upon the DIY motion Sensor I have built in the office.  You can read about that here:
http://vcloudinfo.com/2017/11/yet-another-inexpensive-motion-sensor.html

It’s a really easy project using a NodeMCU, ZERO soldering and some Legos! 😉

This is part 2 in a series so be sure to read about how I added all the cameras to my Roku, in the link below:
http://vcloudinfo.com/2019/03/how-to-setup-ip-cameras-on-your-roku-tv.html

Once you are all caught up, check out the video below!

Happy Automating!

–Carlo