Camera Surveillance Home Assistant: Monitor Your Home in Live
Looking to integrate your surveillance cameras into Home Assistant for a unified dashboard? This guide covers exactly that. Whether your cameras are IP, ONVIF, or even basic webcams, Home Assistant centralizes everything and lets you create smart automations: motion-triggered recording, notifications, automatic lights when movement is detected…
Why Integrate Cameras into Home Assistant?
Total centralization. Every camera feed appears in the same interface as your lights, heating, and sensors. No more juggling between multiple apps to check on your home.
Advanced automations. A camera is not just a surveillance tool. It becomes a motion sensor you can use to trigger actions: turn on garden lights at 11pm if someone walks by, send a photo via Telegram if movement is detected while you’re away, record a 10-second clip every time a door opens…
Local storage. Unlike cloud solutions like Ring or Nest, your videos stay at home. No subscription, no third-party servers. IP video surveillance gives you full control over your data.
Wide compatibility. Home Assistant supports hundreds of models: Reolink, Amcrest, Hikvision, Dahua, Foscam, TP-Link Tapo, Eufy, Ring (via third-party integration), and many more. Even older ONVIF cameras work.
What Do You Need to Get Started?
Camera Surveillance Home Assistant: Compatible Hardware
To choose the right surveillance cameras for Home Assistant, here are the key criteria:
- ONVIF protocol — the easiest standard to integrate. Most modern IP cameras support it.
- 1080p minimum resolution — to recognize faces and read license plates
- Infrared night vision — essential for nighttime surveillance
- Wi-Fi or Ethernet — Ethernet is recommended for stream stability
Some popular models on Amazon with the wayang-21 tag: Reolink RLC-410, Amcrest ProHD, TP-Link Tapo C310.
Option 1: ONVIF IP Camera (recommended)
ONVIF cameras configure in a few clicks in Home Assistant via the built-in ONVIF integration. Add the IP address, username, and password — the feed appears immediately.
Option 2: Camera via RTSP Protocol
Some older or budget cameras don’t support ONVIF but offer an RTSP stream. A small configuration in Home Assistant is enough to integrate them.
Option 3: USB Webcam
For testing or temporary surveillance, a simple USB webcam plugged into the Home Assistant server works too. Less discreet, but immediate.
Installation and Configuration in Home Assistant
The most common method uses the built-in ONVIF integration:
- Go to Settings → Devices and Services
- Click Add Integration and search for ONVIF
- Enter your camera’s IP address (e.g.:
192.168.1.100) - Fill in the username and password
- Home Assistant automatically detects the main stream
If your camera doesn’t support ONVIF, check the list of available integrations: Generic Camera works with any RTSP stream. Your camera documentation usually indicates the stream URL (format often rtsp://user:pass@ip:554/stream).
Viewing the Video Feed
Once the camera is added, you can display it on your Home Assistant dashboard with a Camera card:
- Camera card — shows live feed (warning: resource-heavy if left open permanently)
- Picture card — shows a snapshot refreshed every X seconds (lighter)
For smooth streaming without overloading your server, configure a secondary stream at lower resolution for Home Assistant (720p or 480p), and keep the 1080p stream for local recording.
Useful Automations with Your Cameras
Here are concrete examples to go beyond simple viewing:
Motion detection with notification: When the camera detects motion between 11pm and 6am, send a photo via Telegram and turn on the outside light for 2 minutes. The Frigate NVR addon for Home Assistant enables much smarter motion detection through machine learning, distinguishing people, vehicles, and animals.
Event-based recording: Use Frigate or MotionEye to record 10-second clips before and after each detection. Clips are stored locally on your NAS or external drive.
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Storage and Recording Retention
The crucial question: where do your videos go? Two main approaches:
- Local storage (recommended): a Synology NAS, a USB drive connected to the Home Assistant server, or an SD card on a Raspberry Pi. Plan ahead: 4 cameras in 1080p 24/7 = about 1 TB per week.
- Cloud (avoid if possible): some services like Ring or Nest record to the cloud. Convenient, but costly and less private.
If you use Frigate NVR with an external SSD for storage, you get a professional surveillance system for a few hundred euros.
Going Further
Home Assistant and cameras can go very far. The HACF forum is full of tutorials for integrating specific models. People detection via Frigate + Coral TPU (Google hardware accelerator) recognizes faces or vehicles without saturating your server.
To protect your home intelligently, our complete guide on video surveillance covers good practices for camera placement and regulations to follow in France.
Conclusion
A surveillance camera in Home Assistant is much more than a video feed. It’s a versatile sensor that triggers automations, stores evidence, and alerts you in real time. With the right hardware (ONVIF preferred), a local server for storage, and Frigate for smart detection, you have a professional system without subscriptions.
No cloud, no monthly fees. Just a home that watches over you, from your Home Assistant dashboard.
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