This is part rant, part “reference” for anybody else that’s struggling to get their Amcrest IP Camera to work with Home Assistant via ONVIF. Skip to TL;DR for a working Home Assistant config.

Briefly, ONVIF is an industry group that maintains a set of standards to allow for interoperability between IP Cameras and related devices from multiple vendors. One set of protocols so your cameras from $vendorA will work with with the recording/analytics software from $vendorB which can then pipe events into software from $vendorC. How ONVIF works and how it’s implemented are beyond the scope of this rant, but, like most standards that haven’t aged well, SOAP is involved. 🤮.

Tasmota is an incredibly powerful alternative/open source firmware for the ever popular Espressif family of WiFi equipped microcontrollers. This does not need to be another post espousing it’s many awesome qualities, so just trust me on this; Tasmota is AWESOME.

Tasmota supports user configurable rules which are simple commands wired into various device triggers. In short; a device running Tasmota gains some autonomy to react to events without needing to report the event to, and wait for commands from, a remote server.

The HASwitchPlate project by aderusha is brilliant. He’s managed to arrange some relatively cheap commodity hardware into a package that conveniently fits into a prime location for interacting with Home Automation - the light switch. The entire package sips power off of the already present mains wiring and connects to any MQTT broker via the esp8266 chip. As the HASP was designed to be used with Home Assistant, the humble 2.4 inch LCD transforms into an accessible control surface for an incredibly powerful home automation platform!

It’s hard to believe, but the venerable Home Assistant project has just celebrated it’s 7th birthday with release .115! While HA does get better with each new release, it is by no means perfect :D. This post came about because of a new feature in release .115 and the subsequent limitations of that feature!

In the course of trying to integrate Home Assistant with all the things, everybody eventually hits some major limitation or bug and is forced to find some sort of workaround. Below are a few techniques that I’ve collected over the years to simplify some of my Home Assistant configuration and work around some of the platforms various limitations.

A while back, I posted a small bit of code that could decode the data from the ubiquitous WS3 Weather Station and make it accessible to the amazing HomeAssistant via the wonderful ESPHome project. Since then, my weather station has been dutifully collecting data that’s been invaluable for augmenting automation that deals with indoor climate.

As the numerous wild fires in California rage on, the air quality has gone from bad to dangerous. Knowing that outside was warmer, but less humid, was no longer enough to make a smart decision about weather or not to open the windows for some cost-effective cooling. I now need HomeAssistant to be aware of how clean the outside air was before making the decision to pipe in outdoor air.