Integrate Reolink Cameras with Home Assistant for Enhanced Security

The Reolink integration for Home Assistant brings seamless control and monitoring of your Reolink NVRs and cameras directly into your smart home ecosystem. Known for their local storage capabilities and emphasis on privacy, Reolink cameras offer a robust solution for home security without relying on cloud subscriptions. This integration allows you to leverage the advanced features of Reolink cameras within Home Assistant, creating a unified and intelligent security system.

Before you begin, ensure your Reolink camera is connected to your network and initialized. This involves setting up the camera's credentials through the Reolink app or web interface. An admin user account is required on the Reolink device for proper integration functionality. It's crucial to use a password containing only alphanumeric characters and specific symbols (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, @$*~_-+=!?.,:;'()[]). Incompatible special characters can cause encoding issues with video streams.

Adding the Reolink integration is straightforward. Home Assistant can often auto-discover Reolink devices on your network. Alternatively, you can manually configure the integration by providing the camera's hostname or IP address, username, and password. These details can be found in your router settings or the Reolink app. Once configured, you can adjust various options through the Home Assistant user interface, such as selecting the streaming protocol (RTSP, RTMP, or FLV).

The Reolink integration unlocks a wide array of features, including camera streams with varying resolutions (Fluent, Balanced, Clear), binary sensors for motion and AI-powered detections (person, vehicle, pet, etc.), number entities for controlling settings like zoom and sensitivity, button entities for PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom) control, and select entities for choosing modes like floodlight and day/night settings. Siren and switch entities further expand the control options, allowing for a highly customizable security setup.

The integration provides multiple camera entities for different stream types and resolutions. The Fluent stream offers low resolution, while Balanced and Clear streams provide mid and high resolutions, respectively. Snapshot streams offer low latency image sequences. Dual-lens cameras offer additional streams for each lens. Choose the stream that best balances video quality and resource usage for your Home Assistant setup.

Reolink cameras equipped with AI capabilities offer a rich set of binary sensors for detecting various events. These include motion detection, visitor detection (doorbell presses), and AI-powered detections for persons, vehicles, pets, animals, faces, and packages. Advanced features like crossline, intrusion, linger, item forgotten, and item taken detections are also supported, requiring configuration within the Reolink app to define zones and lines.

Number entities provide granular control over various camera settings. These include optical zoom, focus, floodlight brightness, volume, motion sensitivity, PIR sensitivity, and AI detection sensitivities. Delay settings for AI detections are also available. Advanced settings like image brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness, and hue can be adjusted to fine-tune the camera's image quality.

For Reolink PTZ cameras, button entities offer convenient control over pan, tilt, and zoom functions. Dedicated buttons are available for PTZ stop, left, right, up, down, zoom in, and zoom out. You can also set and go to guard positions. The `reolink.ptz_move` action allows specifying the speed of PTZ movements for compatible cameras.

The integration supports a wide range of Reolink camera models. Directly connected models include the RLC series, Duo series, TrackMix series, and Video Doorbell series. Battery-powered models can be used with a Reolink Home Hub or NVR. Some models are only compatible through an NVR or Home Hub. LTE cameras are not compatible with this integration. Refer to the official documentation for a complete list of tested and compatible models.

If you encounter issues, ensure your Reolink camera is properly initialized and has an admin user account. Verify that the password contains only supported characters. Check the camera's IP address and network connectivity. Restart the Reolink integration in Home Assistant. For battery-powered cameras, ensure the Home Hub or NVR is properly configured. Consult the Home Assistant logs for error messages and refer to the official documentation for troubleshooting tips.