Xiaomi


The Xiaomi camera platform allows you to utilize Xiaomi Cameras within Home Assistant.

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

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 for each models.

Once installed, please ensure that you have enabled FTP.

Currently, version 0.1.4-beta2 of the custom firmware is the highest supported. Firmwares higher than this version use Pure-FTPd, which has a bug that prevents FFmpeg from correctly rendering video files.

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

The live stream writing by the camera is not a supported format when the hass reads through FTP for Yi 720p and Xiaofang Cameras, so this platform retrieves the video which was saved 1 minute earlier.
If you enabled RTSP server, you can connect to your camera via other Home Assistant camera platforms. However, this RTSP server disables the ability to use the supremely-useful Mi Home app. In order to maintain both Home Assistant compatibility _and_ the native app, this platform retrieves videos via FTP.

Configuring the platform

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

camera:
  - platform: xiaomi
    name: Camera
    host: "192.168.1.100"
    model: "yi"
    password: YOUR_PASSWORD

Configuration Variables

name string Required

A human-friendly name for the camera.

host template Required

The IP address or hostname of the camera.

model string Required

The model of Xiaomi Camera, currently supporting yi and xiaofang.

password string Required

The password to the FTP server on the camera (from above), 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.

The default for path: will not work with all cameras. It may be needed that you add that key with the exact path for your device.

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: xiaomi
    name: My Camera
    host: "192.168.1.100"
    model: "xiaofang"
    password: YOUR_PASSWORD
    path: /home/camera/feed
    ffmpeg_arguments: "-vf scale=800:450"

Hostname template

The hostname/IP address can be provided either a value or from the existing entityAn entity represents a sensor, actor, or function in Home Assistant. Entities are used to monitor physical properties or to control other entities. An entity is usually part of a device or a service.
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attributes.

camera:
  - platform: xiaomi
    name: Front Camera
    host: ""
    model: "yi"
    password: 1234
    path: /tmp/sd/record