Unifi Protect for Home Assistant

This is a Home Assistant Integration for Ubiquiti's Unifi Protect Surveillance system.

Basically what this does, is integrating the Camera feeds from Unifi Protect in to Home Assistant, and furthermore there is an option to get Binary Motion Sensors and Sensors that show the current Recording Settings pr. camera.

Prerequisites

Before you install this Integration you need to ensure that the following two settings are applied in Unifi Protect:

1. Local User

• If Unifi Protect is installed on a UDMP, then you can skip this step, and instead use the username and password you use to login to the UDMP. But it is recommended that you add a specific user on your UDMP, as described here
• If your are on a CloudKey+ then open Unifi Protect in your browser. Click the USERS tab and you will get a list of users. Either select an existing user, or create a new one. The important thing is that the user is part of Administrators and that a local username and password is set for that user. This is the username and password you will use when setting up the Integration later.

2. RTSP Stream Select each camera under the CAMERAS tab, click on the camera and you will get a menu on the right side. Click the MANAGE button and there will be a menu like the picture below. (If you can't see the same picture click the + sign to the right of RTSP). Make sure that at least one of the streams is set to on. It does not matter which one, or if you select more than one, the integration will pick the one with the highest resolution.

Note:

• This has been testet on a Cloud Key Gen2+ with Unifi Protect Controller version 1.13.3-beta.4 and higher. It will not work on a lower version than that.
• As of version 0.3.0, this Integration also supports the UDM Pro with UnifiOS, thanks to the work of @msvinth. You need the version of Unifi Protect that supports the Doorbell, or this Integration will fail.

Manual Installation

To add Unifi Protect to your installation, create this folder structure in your /config directory:

custom_components/unifiprotect. Then, drop the following files into that folder:

__init__.py
manifest.json
sensor.py
binary_sensor.py
camera.py
switch.py
unifi_protect_server.py
services.yaml

HACS Installation

This Integration is part of the default HACS store. Search for unifi protect under Integrations and install from there.

Configuration

Start by configuring the core platform. No matter which of the entities you activate, this has to be configured. The core platform by itself does nothing else than establish a link the Unifi Protect NVR, so by activating this you will not see any entities being created in Home Assistant.

Edit your configuration.yaml file and add the unifiprotect component to the file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
unifiprotect:
  host: <Internal ip address of your Unifi Protect NVR>
  username: <your local Unifi Protect username>
  password: <Your local Unifi Protect Password>
  port: <Port used to communicate with your Unifi Protect NVR>
  image_width: <Size of the Thumbnail Image>

host:
(string)(Required) Type the IP address of your Unifi Protect NVR. Example: 192.168.1.10

• Important If you run UnifiOS this must be the IP Address. of your UDMP

username:
(string)(Required) The local username you setup under the Prerequisites section.

password
(string)(Required) The local password you setup under the Prerequisites section.

port
(int)(Optional) The port used to communicate with the NVR. Default is 7443.

• Important If run UnifiOS the port must be specified and it must be 443.

image_width
(int)(Optional) The width of the Thumbnail Image. Default is 640px

Camera

The Integration will add all Cameras currently connected to Unifi Protect. If you add more cameras, you will have to restart Home Assistant to see them in Home Assistant.

Remember

• if you already setup the camera using another platform, like the Generic IP Platform then remove those before you setup this Platform, as cameras with the same name cannot co-exist.
• Also, if you are running your Home Assistant installation directly on a Mac, you might need to enable stream: in your configuration.yaml to be able to do live streaming.

Edit your configuration.yaml file and add the unifiprotect component to the file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
camera:
  - platform: unifiprotect

The Integration adds specific Unifi Protect services and supports the standard camera services. Below is a list of the Unifi Protect specific services:

Service	Parameters	Description
unifiprotect.save_thumbnail_image	entity_id - Name of entity to retrieve thumbnail from. filename - Filename to store thumbnail in image_width - (Optional) Width of the image in pixels. Height will be scaled proportionally. Default is 640.	Get the thumbnail image of the last recording event (If any), from the specified camera
unifiprotect.set_recording_mode	entity_id - Name of entity to set recording mode for. recording_mode - always, motion or never	Set the recording mode for each Camera.
unifiprotect.set_ir_mode	entity_id - Name of entity to set infrared mode for. ir_mode - auto, always_on, led_off or always_off	Set the infrared mode for each Camera.

Note: When using camera.enable_motion_detection, Recording in Unfi Protect will be set to motion. If you want to have the cameras recording all the time, you have to set that in Unifi Protect App or use the service unifiprotect.set_recording_mode.

Binary Sensor

If this component is enabled a Binary Motion Sensor for each camera configured, will be created.

In order to use the Binary Sensors, add the following to your configuration.yaml file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
binary_sensor:
  - platform: unifiprotect

There is a little delay for when this will be triggered, as the way the data is retrieved is through the Unifi Protect event log, and that has a small delay before updated.

Note: This will only work if Recording state is set to motion or always as there is nothing written to the event log, if recording is disabled.

Sensor

If this component is enabled a Sensor describing the current Recording state for each camera configured, will be created.

In order to use the Sensors, add the following to your configuration.yaml file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
sensor:
  - platform: unifiprotect

The sensor can have 3 different states:

1. never - There will be no recording on the camera
2. motion - Recording will happen only when motion is detected
3. always - The camera will record everything, and motion events will be logged in Unfi Protect

Switch

If this component is enabled three Switches are created per Camera.

1. Enable or disable motion recording
2. Enable or disable constant recording
3. Enable or disable Infrared sensors. This switch also supports extra options to define what setting is ON and what settings is OFF. See more below.

In order to use the Switch component, add the following to your configuration.yaml file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
switch:
  - platform: unifiprotect
    ir_on: <Optional, type what mode defines on for Infrared>
    ir_off: <Optional, type what mode defines off for Infrared>

ir_on (string)(Optional) The mode that defines Infrared On. Values are: auto and always_on. Default is auto

ir_off (string)(Optional) The mode that defines Infrared OFF. Values are: led_off and always_off. Default is always_off

Automating Services

If you want to change Recording Mode or Infrared Mode for a camera, this can be done through the two services unifiprotect.set_recording_mode and unifiprotect.set_ir_mode. These Services support more than 2 different modes each, and as such it would be good to have a list to select from when switching the mode of those settings. I have not found a way to create a listbox as Custom Component, but it is fairly simpel to use an input_select integration and an Automation to achieve a UI friendly way of changing these modes. Below is an example that creates an inputselect* integration for one of the Cameras and then an example of an automation that is triggered whenever the user selects a new value in the dropdown list.

Start by creating the input_select integration. If you are on Version 107.x or greater that can now be done directly from the menu under Configuration and then Helpers. Click the PLUS sign at the bottom and use the Dropdown option. Important Fill in the Option part as seen below for the Infrared Service. If you do it manually add the following to your configuration.yaml file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
input_select:
  camera_office_ir_mode:
    name: IR Mode for Camera Office
    options:
      - auto
      - always_on
      - led_off
      - always_off
    icon: mdi:brightness-4

If you did it manually, you need to restart Home Assistant, else you can continue.

Now add a new Automation, like the following:

- id: '1585900471122'
  alias: Camera Office IR Mode Change
  description: ''
  trigger:
  - entity_id: input_select.camera_office_ir_mode
    platform: state
  condition: []
  action:
  - data_template:
      entity_id: camera.camera_office
      ir_mode: '{{ states(''input_select.camera_office_ir_mode'') }}'
    entity_id: camera.camera_office
    service: unifiprotect.set_ir_mode

Thats it. Whenever you now select a new value from the Dropdown, the automation is activated, and the service is called to change the IR mode. The same can then be achieved for the recording_mode by changing the options and the service call in the automation.

Contribute to project and developing with a devcontainer

1. Fork and clone the repository.

2. Open in VSCode and choose to open in devcontainer. Must have VSCode devcontainer prerequisites.

3. Create a secrets.yaml file in .devcontainer/secrets.yaml with content

unifiprotect_host: 192.168.1.1 # Your protect address
unifiprotect_port: 443  # The port. Typically 7443 for CloudKey+ or 443 for UnifiOS
unifiprotect_user: YOUR_USERNAME
unifiprotect_password: YOUR_PASSWORD

4. Run the command container start from VSCode terminal

5. A fresh Home Assistant test instance will install and will eventually be running on port 9123 with this integration running