HA Generic Camera Help

[nebhead]

I feel like this could be a HA bug, but I'm currently trying to setup the ring-mqtt streaming using the generic camera integration (as instructed in the documentation: https://github.com/tsightler/ring-mqtt/blob/3943159123e685547a673a751faf927f53bbf210/docs/CAMERAS.md#quick-live-stream-configuration-with-home-assistant).

If I setup the generic camera in the configuration file (or in the UI) without the still image URL, it actually works fine, but without the still image capability. However, I really want to have the still image capability so it's not launching a stream every time I launch the picture glance card on the dashboard.

So, when I attempt to enter in the url, as instructed, into the still image configuration, I get an error.

Here's an example of what I'm adding to the configuration.yml (secrets replaced with non-identifying values):

camera:
  - platform: generic
    name: Doorbell Video
    still_image_url: http://192.168.10.242:8123{{ states.camera.ring_doorbell_snapshot.attributes.entity_picture }}
    stream_source: rtsp://username:[email protected]:8554/12345678910_live
    verify_ssl: false

This fails due to an 'Unknown Error'. And when I check the log file, I see that there was an interesting problem with the processing of the still_image URL as follows:

ValueError: Port could not be cast to integer value as '8123{{ states.camera.ring_doorbell_snapshot.attributes.entity_picture }}'

For some reason, it's not separating the port number from the template provided.

And from the documentation, it specifies NOT to put a slash after the port:

Note that the still_image_url uses the guessed hostname and/or localhost. This could work in some cases, but if SSL is enabled or the default default port has been changed, the correct URL may not be reflected here, simple use the Home Assistant base URL with the value template on the end and make sure there is no slash after the hostname or port. For example, if the Home Assistant instance is accessed directly via https://myha.mydomain.local/ then the URL would be https://myha.mydomain.local{{ states.camera.front_porch_snapshot.attributes.entity_picture }}.

Thanks in advance for any help or guidance!

[tsightler]

Have you enabled snapshots? The still image URL is basically just pulling the most recent image from the snapshot camera so if you haven't enabled snapshots, you won't be able to use it.

IMO, the most likely scenario is that the template is just incorrect. Have you verified by looking in Developer Tools...States, and then selecting the snapshot camera from the list? You should be able to see the value of entity_picture there and you should see that it has a /.

I don't think there's any bug in HA around this because I had basically this exact setup for my development instance until about a week ago when I finally enabled SSL for it as well.

[nebhead]

Yep, just made the change and everything works just perfectly! Thanks again for your help and the clever workaround.

[tsightler]

Thanks for verifying, and for providing the relevant details that helped to narrow down the cases where this was failing, it will definitely help other users!

[jellyneck84]

@tsightler getting this on tryting to add the generic camera, even if i have unselected the "check ssl certificate". Any idea?
I'm not using a valid certificate.

File "/usr/local/lib/python3.11/ssl.py", line 979, in do_handshake
self._sslobj.do_handshake()
ssl.SSLError: [SSL: WRONG_VERSION_NUMBER] wrong version number (_ssl.c:1006)

[jellyneck84]

Ah, seems to work with http instead of https....

[sasch901]

hmm, i have some similar problem. tried with https,http, with public url, with slash and Dot. But it wont "render" the tempelate