New RCA HSDB2A 3MP Doorbell IP Camera

Pliable Pixels

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Your have to connect via a cable to your router to see them.
Yeah, that won't work for me - the node that runs the sniffer needs to be on the mesh network for other foo I've got going on. I might just go down the relay switch option. Seems more predictable. So far it seems the EZViz product working very well - but I do miss the super responsive DBell dev team - with DB1, my emails are fended off by tier 1 support who don't expose the dev team.

Anyway, I noticed you are in Maryland. Cool. That makes two of us!
 

Diabolic

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When I setup RTSP on the EZVIZ firmware I get audio from the doorbell but not 2-way so I can't talk to them!

NO, there is no HTTP web GUI

Use the software in the 101 to configure the camera
Ok so I cant play sounds out through the speaker then. I'll play with the batch config to see what else I discover. 1 last question about firmware. I am currently on hikvision firmware so I dont have alexa or google assistant but hikvision firmware is far ahead in firmware rev number. Do you think that matters? I did notice when I went to laview firmware it kept bugging me to update in the ezviz app.
 

davidew98

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Ok so I cant play sounds out through the speaker then. I'll play with the batch config to see what else I discover. 1 last question about firmware. I am currently on hikvision firmware so I dont have alexa or google assistant but hikvision firmware is far ahead in firmware rev number. Do you think that matters? I did notice when I went to laview firmware it kept bugging me to update in the ezviz app.
If you use the Laview firmware in the 101 and it says their is an update there might be a newer version David L doesn't know about yet.

As for your hikvision firmware what doe batch tool or any other tool say the firmware version is. is it something like 5.2.X

101 says Laview firmware supports both ONVIF & Alexa.

The Alexa support is only Alexa Show.
 

Diabolic

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If you use the Laview firmware in the 101 and it says their is an update there might be a newer version David L doesn't know about yet.

As for your hikvision firmware what doe batch tool or any other tool say the firmware version is. is it something like 5.2.X

101 says Laview firmware supports both ONVIF & Alexa.

The Alexa support is only Alexa Show.
Ok i guess the Alexa support is nothing for me then, I thought there was mention of it working to announce doorbell ring over the alexa. I guess for me then there is no difference between Hikvision and laview except its a higher rev of the firmware. Laview firmware is 190xxx and hikvision & ezviz is 200xxx.
 

Diabolic

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You cannot add the Ezviz DB1 camera to your Synology using the normal way. But you must connect to your Synology using SSH.

1) First open a SSH connection to your Synology.
2) Create a new file for example : Ezviz-DB1.conf It should be placed in /var/packages/SurveillanceStation/target/device_pack/camera_support
3) Change the ownership of the file to the same user and group of the other conf files in my case that is SurveillanceStation:SurveillanceStation
4) Edit the Ezviz-DB1.conf file with sudo vi
5) Paste the following lines into the conf file:

[Ezviz*DB1]
api = custom
resolution_h264 = 2048x1536
default_resolution_h264 = 2048x1536
fps_h264_2048x1536 = 5,10,15,20,25,30
fps_h264_1280x720 = 5,10,15,20,25,30
default_fps_h264_2048x1536 = 15
default_image-quality = 5

h264 = rtsp
mpeg4 = rtsp
mjpeg = rtsp
motion = h264,mpeg4,mjpeg

motion_param = sensitivity,threshold
rtsp_keepalive = none
rtsp_protocol = auto,udp,tcp

6) Save and close the file

7) Now go to the Surveillance Station management page
8) Add a new camera. Complete Setup.
9)
Brand: Ezviz
Camera Model: DB1
Port: 554
Username: admin
Password: Activation code of your doorbell
10) Next
11) In the next screen (Video) i did not change anything
12) In the Recording settings. You can change what suits you
13) In the Schedule settings i only use Motion Detection. But Continuous also works fine.
14) Once the camera is added. Now you have to edit the camera
15) In Device Settings go to the Advanced tab
Transport protocol: udp
Streaming Information Source: Streaming
16) Every setting where you can choose the quality i have chosen High Quality.
17) It should work now

When you first add your camera the "live preview" is still not visible but when you click on it you see the live stream. I do see a the small live preview but that was after i exported the config. Made some changes to the stream paths and imported the camera config again.

I hope it is clear enough.
I went ahead and adding it as a onvif camera with all functions and hit load functions and it seems to do the same thing. Is there an advantage to your method? THANKS
 

Diabolic

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Hi all!

For those using the DB1 in automation, I have published a new docker image / node package to capture ONVIF events and transmit them over MQTT.
For EzViz and RCA you will have to flash it with Laview firmware to get ONVIF endpoints.
The doorbell only publishes the motion detection, but fails to publish doorbell presses.

Docker: Docker Hub
Github: dmitrif/onvif2mqtt

Been using it past few days with HomeAssistant and Shinobi, and it works great!

Cheers.

Shinobi:
View attachment 58092

HomeAssistant:
View attachment 58093
Is there a way to install this inside the hass.io container? Like via addons? I tried to install ths via docker running on my synology and its crashing and not showing up inside my hass.io instance. Prob something I'm doing wrong as i am super new to hass.io. I'd appreciate a step by step how to install. THANKS
 

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I thought there was mention of it working to announce doorbell ring over the Alexa.

Currently have HA connected to my Alexa Devices (media devices) and use the mqtt2onvif motion sensor plugin to announce that someone is at the door.

Sort of related also have my doorbell connected as a Zone on my Leviton Omni Pro 2 panel. That said I have installed a combo HA plugin which taps in to the Alarm panel and use the doorbell button to announce a doorbell ring in HA / Alexa.
 

pete_c

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I tried to install this via docker running on my synology and its crashing and not showing up inside my hass.io instance.

The only way you will see it running is to test it first with MQTT explorer and enabling MQTT on Home Assistant.

Then afterwards you can create a Home Assistant card to track the doorbell motion and or create an event to trigger an action on the MQTT motion event.

Here is my Home Assistant Doorbell card. Note the doorbell button is hard wired to an alarm panel zone and using an alarm panel to MQTT plugin.

Doorbell.jpg

Here is what MQTT explorer sees. Note primary in wall light switches here are UPB. Still only tinkering with Zigbee, ZWave and WiFi switches.

MQTTExplorer.jpg
 
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pete_c

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Off the main topic a bit here now...

You can run Docker / Home Assistant on any computer these days.

Here also tested a combo little TV box replacing Android on it with Armbian running Ubuntu 18XX on it. (S912 Octocore CPU with 3 Gb of RAM).
With the BeeLink BT3 pro custom cooked an ISO (Linuxium) for installation of Ubuntu 18.04 and wiped out the Windows 10 instance on the eMMC.

I switched from ARM to Intel because of being able to run Virtual box on the Intel CPUs.

BTW here DIY'd my NAS box over on the Serve The Home forum a few years ago.

Purchased an 8 drive case ($200) from HKG, installed a mITX board in it, LSi SAS firmware modded 8 drive controller in it (plus 4 SATA ports on motherboard) and started with FreeNAS then went to XigmaNAS 11.2.0.4 - Omnius (revision 6766) running on FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE-p10 #0 r349200M: Wed Jun 19 20:26:53 CEST 2019. (8X2TB moving to 8X4TB drives). Built a second one for a peer with a Haswell i5 mITX board / 16Gb of RAM which would do fine running containers on it.
 

David L

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Hi all,

Ive read nearly all of this great thread and wow has it been helpful. I especially want to figure out how to use onvif2mqtt in HA for doorbell motion as this is my goal but first I need to figure out if onvif is going to work.

I have a Ezviz DB1 and I wanted to get onvif support going on my camera so I went ahead and flashed it with laview firmware to see if I can unlock that feature using batch config. The step after flashing is not mentioned here because its assumed it just works after flashing i guess, is that true?
Anyway in batch config you can setup onvif under config network protocol but for me it says configuration failed not supported. I also flashed a second time going to hikvision firmware..

Whats strange is I can use the ipaddress/onvif/snapshot.jpg but thats it, when I scan for onvif devices or try to add the camera to my synology as on onvif device it wont allow it.

So what am i doing wrong here? Is the snapshot all you guys are getting? If that is the case is that enough to detach motion? If also true how do I add it to synology (yes I know I can add the rtsp stream but I want onvif)?

Thanks all.
Here is a Tool I have used in the past, it will scan all your ONVIF compatible devices.

 

David L

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Yeah, that won't work for me - the node that runs the sniffer needs to be on the mesh network for other foo I've got going on. I might just go down the relay switch option. Seems more predictable. So far it seems the EZViz product working very well - but I do miss the super responsive DBell dev team - with DB1, my emails are fended off by tier 1 support who don't expose the dev team.

Anyway, I noticed you are in Maryland. Cool. That makes two of us!
We are EZVIZ's super responsive dev backup team :)
 

David L

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If you use the Laview firmware in the 101 and it says their is an update there might be a newer version David L doesn't know about yet.

As for your hikvision firmware what doe batch tool or any other tool say the firmware version is. is it something like 5.2.X

101 says Laview firmware supports both ONVIF & Alexa.

The Alexa support is only Alexa Show.
Thank you David. So I checked to see if LaView has a newer version but it looks like the same July 29, 2019 build. I think Diabolic saw the firmware update message since the LaView firmware he had on his DB1 showed an older # in the App than the newer EZVIZ firmware so he was prompted to update. I have experienced this too.

1587818390217.png
 

Jack007

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Anyone trying to connect the DB1 with a NVR for continuous streams who have more then 1 AP within reach of the DB1 and the AP's aren't sophisticated or meant for a mesh style network will make the device want to hop APs every once in a blue moon, hence disconnections from the NVR. I would try powering off 1 AP going to the door with your phone and seeing strength of your WiFi. Then reconnect power and disconnect power of other AP and check WiFi strength with phone at door. if both APs have about the same signal strength then the doorbell most likely is having a bad time trying to figure out which one to use. With not knowing the Wireless card that they chose to put in the DB1 it's hard to say rather the DB1 can actually handle this good. My suggestion is to try a mesh network or more sophisticated APs that can help with hand-off better.
I think you're on something with this.

Especially on the 2.4 GHz the field strength of both my AP's are "strong" enough to make a reliable connection possible. I once witnessed that the DB1 switched over to the AP with the lower field strength. Why it did this I have no idea. On the other hand I also have other wifi clients who connect only to the AP with the lower field strength and simply refuse connection to the other. Although both AP's are identical (except the wifi channel).
Anywho, now I put the DB1 on the 5 GHz hopping to the other AP should be (almost) no issue at all.
 

David L

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I think you're on something with this.

Especially on the 2.4 GHz the field strength of both my AP's are "strong" enough to make a reliable connection possible. I once witnessed that the DB1 switched over to the AP with the lower field strength. Why it did this I have no idea. On the other hand I also have other wifi clients who connect only to the AP with the lower field strength and simply refuse connection to the other. Although both AP's are identical (except the wifi channel).
Anywho, now I put the DB1 on the 5 GHz hopping to the other AP should be (almost) no issue at all.
I have experienced this, not with our DB but with other devices. I had a common SSID for our 3 APs so devices would periodically change APs, did not happen a lot but it almost made me go back to separate SSIDs. Was even thinking of doing Asus AiMesh but never got around to it. The APs I have now allow for 16 SSIDs each, 8 per band so I will have GUEST, PRIVATE, IoT, etc. SSIDs and their own Subnet and VLANs. Hope to be able to get back to working on this next week. Got home yesterday with my Dad, it was nice to be back in my own bed after almost 2 weeks on a small old couch :) Take Care...
 

gnuB

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Question about the Guarding Vision app, I have not been able to figure something out. I setup the account on my phone then shared with my wife which she installed on her phone with “all permissions,” yet there is not way to change notification settings on her phone. I have had to change PIR settings because of too many false events, I don’t get these notifications any longer but she does. Looking for any tips on fixing this issue. It looks like the Hikvision app is identical albeit different UI color, haven’t tried either the Laview or RCA app but curious if one is better than the other.
 

Diabolic

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@dfarkov,

Thank you for the post. This is the way I installed it in Docker and I see it running with MQTT Explorer. Great stuff.

Not sure this is the proper way to install it but it works for me.

1 - docker pull dfarkov/onvif2mqtt:latest
2 - cd /opt
3 - git clone dmitrif/onvif2mqtt
4 - mkdir /opt/onvif2mqtt/config
5 - cd /opt/onvif2mqtt
6 - nano config.dev.yml
7 - cp config.dev.yml /opt/onvif2mqtt/config/config.yml
8 -
docker run -d --name="onvif2mqtt" -v /opt/onvif2mqtt:/config -v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro --net=host --restart always dfarkov/onvif2mqtt
9 - docker ps shows it continously restarting.
5420978e7f67 dfarkov/onvif2mqtt "docker-entrypoint.s…" 9 minutes ago Restarting (1) 53 seconds ago onvif2mqtt
10 - MQTT Explorer shows it running (well partially)
View attachment 58125
11- logs show errors...
thinking I messed up the IP of the camera and MQTT server...

}
{"level":30,"time":1585314771147,"msg":"Loading configuration. {\"configPath\":\"/config/config.yml\"}","v":1}
{"level":30,"time":1585314771158,"msg":"Validating configuration file.","v":1}
{"level":30,"time":1585314771466,"name":"Manager","msg":"Beginning initialization...","v":1}
{"level":30,"time":1585314771468,"name":"MQTT","hostname":"192.168.244.150:undefined","msg":"Connecting.","v":1}
{"level":30,"time":1585314771644,"name":"MQTT","hostname":"192.168.244.150:undefined","msg":"Successfully connected.","v":1}
{"level":30,"time":1585314771647,"name":"ONVIF/doorbell","hostname":"192.168.244.150","msg":"Attempting connection.","v":1}
{"level":20,"time":1585314771652,"name":"MQTT","hostname":"192.168.244.150:undefined","msg":"Publishing. {\"topic\":\"onvif2mqtt/doorbell/json\",\"value\":\"{\\n \\\"device\\\": \\\"doorbell\\\",\\n \\\"event\\\": \\\"motion\\\"\\n \\\"state\\\": \\\"false\\\"\\n}\",\"retain\":false}","v":1}
{"level":20,"time":1585314771654,"name":"MQTT","hostname":"192.168.244.150:undefined","msg":"Publishing. {\"topic\":\"onvif2mqtt/doorbell/motion\",\"value\":\"OFF\",\"retain\":true}","v":1}
{"level":50,"time":1585314771686,"name":"ONVIF/doorbell","hostname":"192.168.244.150","msg":"Failed to connect to doorbell {\"errno\":\"ECONNREFUSED\",\"code\":\"ECONNREFUSED\",\"syscall\":\"connect\",\"address\":\"192.168.244.150\",\"port\":80}","v":1}
{"level":30,"time":1585314771687,"name":"ONVIF/doorbell","hostname":"192.168.244.150","msg":"Successfully connected.","v":1}
/node_modules/onvif/lib/cam.js:185
? (this.uri[options.service] ? this.uri[options.service].path : options.service)

Duh....messed up the configuration yaml using the same IP for the MQTT server and camera...fat fingered it...looks to be running now...

docker ps shows...
19a8f406c00d dfarkov/onvif2mqtt "docker-entrypoint.s…" 2 minutes ago Up 2 minutes onvif2mqtt

docker logs onvif2mqtt looks ok but not understanding undefined.

{"level":30,"time":1585316096223,"msg":"Loading configuration. {\"configPath\":\"/config/config.yml\"}","v":1}
{"level":30,"time":1585316096234,"msg":"Validating configuration file.","v":1}
{"level":30,"time":1585316096564,"name":"Manager","msg":"Beginning initialization...","v":1}
{"level":30,"time":1585316096565,"name":"MQTT","hostname":"192.168.244.150:undefined","msg":"Connecting.","v":1}
{"level":30,"time":1585316096738,"name":"MQTT","hostname":"192.168.244.150:undefined","msg":"Successfully connected.","v":1}
{"level":30,"time":1585316096741,"name":"ONVIF/doorbell","hostname":"192.168.244.152","msg":"Attempting connection.","v":1}
{"level":20,"time":1585316096747,"name":"MQTT","hostname":"192.168.244.150:undefined","msg":"Publishing. {\"topic\":\"onvif2mqtt/doorbell/json\",\"value\":\"{\\n \\\"device\\\": \\\"doorbell\\\",\\n \\\"event\\\": \\\"motion\\\"\\n \\\"state\\\": \\\"false\\\"\\n}\",\"retain\":false}","v":1}
{"level":20,"time":1585316096750,"name":"MQTT","hostname":"192.168.244.150:undefined","msg":"Publishing. {\"topic\":\"onvif2mqtt/doorbell/motion\",\"value\":\"OFF\",\"retain\":true}","v":1}
{"level":30,"time":1585316097048,"name":"ONVIF/doorbell","hostname":"192.168.244.152","msg":"Successfully connected.","v":1}

Have HA and my OmniPro2 / Samsung Smartthings hub running in docker. Homeseer is also reading the MQTT stuff.
I wanted to follow up on the install of onvif2mqtt. For those so noobish as to not understand how to even get this installed i present a totally noob friendly guide.

This is just how to get this installed on a synology nas running docker, but this possibly could be used for other HA install methods.

So step 1 which is critical you need to install git,nano editor, and most importantly nodejs V8, from the synology community package manager. I had trouble getting git so I had to manual install that one from the community online page. It was easy to find but I had to figure out how to do a manual install, again just an upload.

Then you can follow this list of commands both borrowed from pete above but also borrowed from the original install instructions here: dmitrif/onvif2mqtt and then back to pete.

1. run:: docker pull dfarkov/onvif2mqtt:latest

2. git clone dmitrif/onvif2mqtt (I feel like this does the same as step 1 but I dont think so)

3. cd ./onvif2mqtt

4. npm install <-- installing via nodejs

5. nano config.dev.yml (from Pete C.) <--This part is where you edit the config with your mqtt broker info (IE home assistant IP & your cameara info with DB1 admin & confirmation code) see here: dmitrif/onvif2mqtt NOTE: I believe there are no other parameters but idk, so I just copied this changing the details as above.

6. cp config.dev.yml /opt/onvif2mqtt/config.yml <-- copying your config from dev to production.

7. docker run -d --name="onvif2mqtt" -v /opt/onvif2mqtt:/config -v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro --net=host --restart always dfarkov/onvif2mqtt <-- running the onvif2mqtt with restart always after reboot of synology and hass.io container.

8. "docker ps" command to make sure that it is running.

9. Then to test the MQTT output on motion. Go google "MQTT Explorer" and configure it to your Mosquitto server IP again your home assistant IP.

UPDATE: I added a few more steps as I completed them and so far its working upto step 10, im stuck there.

10. You should see mqtt2onvif / doorbell there. Then trigger it and look at MQTT Explorer and you should see motion on and off. I still dont see any triggers here so I am trying to figure out what I did wrong.

11. Build a card for it in HA. Just go to unused devices and you will see the MQTT doorbell sensor. Make a card and you should be good to go. Here added it to my RTSP Doorbell video card.
I have yet to complete step 11 also.

So there I am stuck on step 10. I will update when I get past step 10 and will post another update.

THANKS all.
 
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Philled82

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Hi folks - I have an EZVIZ DB1 and a QNAP. I am trying to get the QNAP to motion record based on the on-doorbell motion sensor. I have it set up right now as a generic RTSP camera.

After reading the 101, it seems like I may be out of luck since the EZVIZ DB1 doesnt support ONVIF. Am I connecting the dots correctly?

Came across this forum after purchase and install...
 
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