hass-aarlo

Asynchronous Arlo Component for Home Assistant.

The component operates in a similar way to the Arlo web site - it opens a single event stream to the Arlo backend and monitors events and state changes for all base stations, cameras and doorbells in a system. Currently it only lets you set base station modes.

The component supports:

• base station mode changes
• camera motion detection
• camera audio detection
• door bell motion detection
• door bell button press
• on the Lovelace UI it will report camera streaming state on the picture entity - ie, a clip is being recorded or somebody is view a stream on the Arlo app or if the camera is too cold to operate
• saving of state across restarts
• camera on/off
• request thumbnail updates
• direct video streaming from arlo where possible

It provides a custom lovelace resource that is a specialised version of a picture-glance that allows you to see the last snapshot taken and give quick access to clip counts, the last recorded video and signal and battery levels.

This is an alpha release - it's working great for me - 3 base stations, 11 cameras, 2 doorbells - but I haven't had chance to test it against many different configurations! If I had to say where stuff might blow up I'd guess at the resource card, I've only really tested it on Chrome!

Notes

Wherever you see /config in this README it refers to your home-assistant configuration directory. For me, for example, it's /home/steve/ha that is mapped to /config inside my docker container.

Many thanks to:

• Pyarlo and Arlo for doing all the hard work figuring the API out and the free Python lesson!
• sseclient for reading from the event stream
• Button Card for a working lovelace card I could understand

Installation

Migrating from Old Layout

This only needs to be done once and only if you installed an older version of hass-aarlo.

Home Assitant moved to a new layout for custom components, running the remove_old script will show a list of commands needed to remove the old installation. You will need to enter these commands manually. After running the command and, if they are empty, it's safe to remove the alarm_control_panel, binary_sensor, sensor and camera directories from your /config/custom_components directory

Manually

Copy the aarlodirectory into your /config/custom_components directory.

Copy the www directory into you /config directory.

Script

Run the install script. Run it once to make sure the operations look sane and run it a second time with the go paramater to do the actual work. If you update just rerun the script, it will overwrite all installed files.

install /config
# check output looks good
install go /config

Component Configuration

For the simplest use replace all instances of the arlo with aalro in your home-assistant configuration files. To support motion and audio capture add aarlo as a platform to the binary_sensor list.

The following is an example configuration:

aarlo:
  username: !secret arlo_username
  password: !secret arlo_password

camera:
  - platform: aarlo
    ffmpeg_arguments: '-pred 1 -q:v 2'

alarm_control_panel:
  - platform: aarlo
    home_mode_name: Home
    away_mode_name: armed

binary_sensor:
  - platform: aarlo
    monitored_conditions:
    - motion
    - sound
    - ding

sensor:
  - platform: aarlo
    monitored_conditions:
    - last_capture
    - total_cameras
    - battery_level
    - captured_today
    - signal_strength

The following new parameters can be specified against the aarlo platform:

aarlo:
  username: !secret arlo_username
  password: !secret arlo_password
  packet_dump: True
  db_motion_time: 30
  db_ding_time: 10
  recent_time: 10
  last_format: '%m-%d %H:%M'
  conf_dir: /config/.aarlo

• If packet_dump is True aarlo will store all the packets it sees in /config/.aarlo/packets.dump file.
• db_motion_time sets how long a doorbell motion will last. Arlo doorbell only indicates motion is present not that it stops. You can adjust the stop time out here.
• db_ding_time sets how long a doorbell button press will last. As with motion Arlo doorbell only tells us it's pressed not released.
• recent_time is used to hold the cameras in a recent activity state after a recording or streaming event. The actually streaming or recording can be over in a few seconds and without this the camera will revert back to idle possible looking like nothing has happend.
• last_format is a strftime compatible string indicating how you want the last captured time displayed
• config_dir is where the component stores its state. The default is fine for hassio, docker system and virtualenv systems. You shoudn't have to change this.

For alarm_control_panel you only need to specify the modes if you have custom mode names, see here for more information. Names are case insensitive.

Now restart your home assistant system.

Resource Configuration

This piece is optional, aarlo will work with the standard Lovelace cards.

The new resource aarlo-glance is based on picture-glance but tailored for the Arlo component to simplify the configuration. To enable it add the following to the top of your UI configuration file.

resources:
  - type: module
    url: /local/aarlo-glance.js

You configure a camera with the following yaml. The show parameters are optional but you must have atleast one.

type: 'custom:aarlo-glance'
entity: camera.aarlo_front_door_camera
name: Front Door
show:
  - motion
  - sound
  - snapshot
  - battery_level
  - signal_strength
  - captured_today

You don't need to reoboot to see the GUI changes, a reload is sufficient. And if all goes will see a card that looks like this:

Reading from left to right you have the camera name, motion detection indicator, captured clip indicator, battery levels, signal level and current state. If you click the image the last captured clip will play, if you click the last captured icon you will be show the video library thumbnails - see below. Click the camera (not shown) will take a snapshot and replace the current thumbnail. The states are:

• Idle camera is doing nothing
• Turned Off user has turned the camera off
• Recording camera has detected something and is recording
• Streaming camera is streaming live video other login
• Taking Snapshot camers is updating the thumbnail
• Recently Active camera has seen activity within the last few minutes
• Too Cold! the camera is shutdown until it warms up

Clicking on a thumbnail starts the appropiate video. You can currently only see the last 99 videos. If you move your mouse over a thumbnail it will show you time of capture and, if you have a Smart subscription, a reason for the capture. > takes you to the next page, < to the previous and X closes the window.

See the Lovelace Custom Card page for further information.

Other Lovelace Options

Using the conditional card you can have badges of cameras appear after activity or if they go off line. I use the following to get quick updates on an overview view.

cards:
type: vertical-stack
  - card:
      show_state: false
      type: glance
    entities:
      - entity: camera.aarlo_front_door_camera
        name: Front Door
      - entity: camera.aarlo_front_camera
        name: Front
      - entity: camera.aarlo_driveway_camera
        name: Driveway
      - entity: camera.aarlo_back_door_camera
        name: Back Door
    show_empty: false
    state_filter:
      - recently active
      - streaming
      - recording
    type: entity-filter
  - card:
      show_state: true
      type: glance
    entities:
      - entity: camera.aarlo_front_door_camera
        name: Front Door
      - entity: camera.aarlo_front_camera
        name: Front
      - entity: camera.aarlo_driveway_camera
        name: Driveway
      - entity: camera.aarlo_back_door_camera
        name: Back Door
    show_empty: false
    state_filter:
      - 'offline, too cold'
      - turned off
    type: entity-filter

When things happen it will look something like:

To Do

• custom mode - like SmartThings to better control motion detection
• live streaming???
• arlo q cameras