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How-to guide: Connect QNAP NAS Surveillance Station to HomeSeer

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    How-to guide: Connect QNAP NAS Surveillance Station to HomeSeer

    Hello, this is my first post on this forum though I have been lurking for the past 3 months after I finally moved from Vera Plus to HomeSeer. I have been impressed by the strong community here and that's one of the reasons I moved to HomeSeer.

    What made me sign up and post this message here is a comment from a forum member, Nathan, on my smart home blog. He was asking about how I managed to link my QNAP NAS' Surveillance Station to HomeSeer. The QNAP documentation is very poor and I struggled quite a bit. So I can potentially save some time for those who are trying to achieve the same result.

    No plugins needed, although I would like to write one - I have just started reading up on writing HS3 plugins.

    While I am new to HomeSeer, I am no stranger to messing about with tech. So after some mucking about, I figured it out and here's a summary of how you can do the same using the built-in native features of Surveillance Station and HS3.

    The core of the integration method is the QNAP Surveillance Station feature whereby it can send http requests to any network device when motion is detected by a compatible IP camera connected to it. HS3 for its part allows an incoming http command to monitor HS3 status/devices or configure them. Putting these two halves together, you can make HS3 aware of motion detection alerts sent by your cameras to Surveillance Station.

    My approach has been, to get Surveillance Station to flip an HS3 virtual switch whenever motion is detected. Each camera has its dedicated virtual switch. An event monitors the virtual switches and resets them 1 minute after motion is detected. You can then build any event to monitor those virtual switches.

    There are 3 main steps involved:
    1. Set up HomeSeer3 virtual devices and events
    2. Set up QNAP Surveillance Station
    3. Adjust motion detection settings in your camera


    I have written a step-by-step guide over on my blog if anyone wants to achieve the same result. Hope its okay to post the link here, otherwise please let me know mods.

    Daniel

    #2
    Thank you for sharing, I will need this "How To" soon.

    Comment


      #3
      Glad to be of help!

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by danielross View Post
        Whenever motion is detected, tablet devices activate and switch to the camera view until the motion stops
        Thank you Daniel, just wondering - how?
        1. How "tablet devices activate"?
        2. How "switch to the camera view"?

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by alexbk66 View Post
          Thank you Daniel, just wondering - how?
          1. How "tablet devices activate"?
          2. How "switch to the camera view"?
          I am curious about this as well. Is this within HomeSeer (HS Touch)?

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by alexbk66 View Post
            Thank you Daniel, just wondering - how?
            1. How "tablet devices activate"?
            2. How "switch to the camera view"?
            Hi, as mentioned in the step by step guide, I have one 'motion detection' virtual switch per camera. Whenever that switch is tripped, I initiate some Homeseer actions to activate the tablet. This is how I do that bit: I use the Imperihome plugin on Homeseer and the Imperihome Android app. Each tablet shows up as a device in Homeseer - then you can choose the 'Activate device' action to turn the screen on, and 'Goto page on dashboard' action to switch to the page with the camera view widget. Its very easy to do this in Imperihome.

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by socalsharky View Post

              I am curious about this as well. Is this within HomeSeer (HS Touch)?
              No I do not use HSTouch - see my reply above, I use the Imperihome plugin on Homeseer and the Imperihome app on my Android tablets.

              Comment

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