2024.10.4
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Yi Home Cameras

The yi camera platform allows you to utilize Yi Home Cameras within Home Assistant. Specifically, this platform supports the line of Yi Home Cameras that are based on the Hi3518e Chipset. This includes:

  • Yi Home 17CN / 27US / 47US
  • Yi 1080p Home
  • Yi Dome
  • Yi 1080p Dome

To successfully implement this platform, the Home Assistant host should be capable of multiple simultaneous reads. For every concurrent Home Assistant user, a connection will be made to the camera every 10 seconds. This should normally not be a problem.

Preparing the device

Installing alternative firmware

In order to integrate the camera with Home Assistant, it is necessary to install a custom firmware on the device. Instructions for doing so can be found via the yi-hack-v3 GitHub project. If you have a 2019/2020 version camera use yi-hack-MStar GitHub project or yi-hack-Allwinner GitHub project. In this case configure the cam as ONVIF and read the wiki for further details.

Once installed, please ensure that you have enabled FTP and Telnet on your device.

Important

Currently, version 0.1.4-beta2 of the custom firmware is the highest supported without having to make additional modifications. Firmwares higher than this version use Pure-FTPd, which has a bug that prevents FFmpeg from correctly rendering video files. To use higher firmware versions you must also follow this workaround to revert back to ftpd.

Tip

If you use a version higher than 0.1.4-beta2, you can simply solve the FTP issue by creating a symlink to /tmp in the /home/yi-hack-v4 directory (the directory name can be different depending on the version which you use). For example, access the Yi camera via SSH and type command: ln -s /tmp tmp.

Important

Raspbian users: don’t forget to install FFmpeg support on your platform, otherwise, you’ll not see video.

Tip

Some alternative Yi firmwares enable an experimental RTSP server, which will allow you to connect to your camera via other Home Assistant camera platforms. However, this RTSP server disables the ability to use the supremely-useful Yi Home app. In order to maintain both Home Assistant compatibility and the native app, this platform retrieves videos via FTP.

Changing the FTP password

Once the custom firmware is installed, a password must be added to the FTP server. To do so:

  1. Telnet into your camera: telnet <IP ADDRESS>.
  2. Enter root as the username and <blank> as the password.
  3. Type passwd and hit <Enter>.
  4. Enter your new password twice.
  5. Log out of Telnet.

Configuring the platform

To enable the platform, add the following lines to yourconfiguration.yaml file:

camera:
  - platform: yi
    name: Camera
    host: "192.168.1.100"
    password: my_password_123

Configuration Variables

Looking for your configuration file?
name string Required

A human-friendly name for the camera.

host string Required

The IP address or hostname of the camera.

password string Required

The password for the FTP server running on the camera. Can be any string as the current firmware doesn’t allow setting FTP passwords.

path string (Optional)

The path to the raw MP4 files.

Default:

/media/mmcblk0p1/record

username string (Optional, default: root)

The user that can access the FTP server.

ffmpeg_arguments string (Optional)

Extra options to pass to ffmpeg (e.g., image quality or video filter options).

Image quality

Any option supported by ffmpeg camera can be utilized via the ffmpeg_arguments configuration parameter.

One particularly useful adjustment deals with video size. Since Yi videos are fairly large (especially on the 1080p cameras), the following configuration will bring them down to a manageable size:

camera:
  - platform: yi
    name: My Camera
    host: "192.168.1.100"
    password: my_password_123
    path: /home/camera/feed
    ffmpeg_arguments: "-vf scale=800:450"