Spotlight function?

iMac5K
iMac5K
in SecuritySpy

I'm looking to get a POE camera with a built-in spotlight feature which is motion activated but can also be turned on and off manually via a button in the app. Is there any chance that SS would be able to interpret and display this function? Front runners are Uniview, YCX and Reolink who all have different spotlight cameras.

Comments

  • Ben
    Ben

    I'm afraid that SecuritySpy does not support the spotlight/floodlight feature in any camera, so you will be limited to using the camera's own features related to this.

    My one suggestion would be to avoid Reolink cameras as we have seen significant problems with them. Please refer to our list of supported cameras.

  • benish
    benish

    @Ben I recently got some Hikvision cameras that have integrated spotlights, and I'd love to be able to control those lights via Security Spy. I'm not sure if that's even a possibility from a technical point of view, but if it is I wanted to add another vote for that feature. Thanks!

  • Senna_F1
    Senna_F1
    edited February 2022

    @benish Not sure how or when you want to control the light, but if you have the ability to view your network traffic using your Browsers Developer Tools or Wireshark, you might be able to figure out which commands the browser is sending the camera to control the light. Then SS would be able to do the same via something like a script under the Actions section. Again, depends on what your goal is. Or maybe page 164 of this manual:

    doku.pub_hikvision-isapi-core-protocolpdf.pdf

    I'm thinking maybe you are looking at a live view video on your Mac, and want to turn on the light from SS, and not have to jump to the app on your phone or log into the camera using a browser to do it? That's a bigger issue than getting SS to turn it on or off based on motion. But, if you can get the API to do it, you can add desktop shortcuts, or maybe menubar items, etc to turn them on/off from your Mac.

  • benish
    benish

    @Senna_F1 I was thinking something like: if a human is detected past a certain point in the frame (or in a certain area), and it's between midnight and 6am, turn on the spotlight. Basically: if some rando comes into my yard in the middle of the night I want to scare them off. I think the cameras can do that sort of thing themselves with basic motion detection but it'd be nice to do some action when the system thinks there is a human, and it'd be nice to do everything in Security Spy and never have to open those Hikvision admin pages ever again. :D

    I'm not so concerned about manually turning the lights on & off, but that would certainly be nice as well.

    Thanks for the pointers! I have a feeling this will quickly get beyond my capabilities, but I'll put this on my list of things to dig into more when I have a chance – I have plenty of other (simpler) things to get configured first.

  • benish
    benish

    Oh, it seems someone already went down this road:

    https://community.home-assistant.io/t/control-the-white-colorvu-led-on-hikvision-cameras/245092

    I don't have a ColorVu camera, but maybe the lighting control is the same.

  • Senna_F1
    Senna_F1

    Good deal.. for the future and for others, This guy did this in Home Assistant, but the code probably applies to anyone with the right Hikvision camera.

    https://github.com/nagyrobi/home-assistant-configuration-examples/tree/main/hikvision_colorvu_led_switch

  • Senna_F1
    Senna_F1

    Ha.... you saw it too! :). You win though.

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