Wednesday, 1 January 2014

IP Security CAM image in XBMC using “Security CAM Overlay” add-on

Firstly its the 1st of Jan 2014 today, so happy New Year to all my blog readers, hope you had a good one last night!

Now down to business..

There is a new XBMC add-on being developed called “Security CAM Overlay”. This is a script that can be used to display IP security camera images in XBMC, I am using XBMC Frodo V12.2 just so you know. This is ideal for doorbell scenes where the CAM image can be displayed in XBMC for a set number of seconds and then it automatically disappears again.

The current version of Security CAM Overlay is version 0.0.4 which can be found on this forum post here. There is no official forum page for this add-on currently and its not in any repositories, so keep an eye out on that forum thread for any new updates being put out. UPDATE: The add-on thread can be found here.

Installation is simple, just download the script.securitycam.zip file and install it as a Zip in XBMC add-ons area. Once installed the add-on will be listed in your Program add-ons list

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Right click the add-on and select Add-on Settings

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Under the Camera section, in the Image URL field enter the URL of the JPG image of your IP camera and in the username and password fields enter those details to access the camera etc.

The Image URL will vary depending on the type of IP camera you are using, refer to your manufacturers product guides for the correct URL to be used.

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Under the Behaviour section, you can specify things like the image size to be displayed, image refresh interval, enable auto close and how many seconds the image should stay on screen for. Select OK to save your settings once happy.

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To test its working from the Program add-ons list simply select the Security CAM Overlay and click OK / Enter.

Your IP cameras image should then slide in as an overlay in the right hand side of the XBMC UI. I am using a cheap China dome camera and its currently dark so not the best images in these screen shots etc. After 15 seconds of whatever you have set it as, the image will then slide away and disappear again.

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Home Automation

Now to integrate this in to your Home Automation system, we can use a HTTP JSON call to initiate the Security CAM Overlay add-on.

To test you can just use a web browser on your workstation and enter a command like the one below in to the address bar and hit enter
   1: http://192.168.1.10:80/jsonrpc?request={"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"Addons.ExecuteAddon","params":{"addonid":"script.securitycam"},"id":"1"}}
The IP address being the static IP address of your XBMC PC and the port number being the WebServer port number of XBMC, the default being port 80.

You first may need to turn on the WebServer and adjust the port number in the XBMC Settings –> Network –> WebServer

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If it works then the IP cameras image will then be displayed in XBMC.

For integrate in to Micasaverde VERA which is my Home Automation system I used this command in my doorbell scene in the LUUP code tab for example.

   1: luup.inet.wget("http://192.168.1.10:80/jsonrpc?request={"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"Addons.ExecuteAddon","params":{"addonid":"script.securitycam"},"id":"1"}}")
Now when someone presses my Z-Wave enabled doorbell the IP Camera image is popped up in XBMC!

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Summary

Fantastic XBMC script which I am very happy has now been released as an easy to install and setup add-on. Highly recommended!

See the Update / Part 2 here

4 comments:

  1. Dear, it is an excellent plugin. Thank you very much.

    But, when I install it works perfectly fine for the first line. Next time when I try to execute, it just waits for 15 seconds and does not display anything. Please Help

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  2. if the camera has a motion alarm and an ftp function and your using linux then you can do this without vera. I built a script

    #!/bin/bash
    while true #run indefinitely
    do
    inotifywait -e create / && php5 note.php
    done

    i added link to this script in rc.local to load at boot. It monitors the ftp directory waiting for file creation to happen within the ftp directory. Once that happens it calls the 2nd script a php script i wrote and the program loops over and runs again.. the php script sends the notifications and looks like this

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi, very nice. Is it possible to stream a RTSP with this plugin? Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm not sure about rtsp and this add-on, have you tried it? Have a look on the Kodi forum for this add-on as well.

    I know you can alternatively create a .strm file and enter the rtsp URL in there. Then in Kodi you can add the .strm file to favourites and when you select it in Kodi it will stream the live camera feed.

    ReplyDelete