INSTAR MQTT Topics and Smarthome User Interfaces
Q: The are so many different MQTT Topics for my camera. Which one of them do I need for my smarthome user interface - the Status, Command or RAW Topic?
Make your camera the heart of your smart home
Using the MQTT interface of your INSTAR Full HD cameras you can connect them to an existing smarthome system (Home Assistant, OpenHAB, Node-RED, Athom Homey, Homematic, ioBroker, Loxone, homee) can be added. Or even make it the main broker for your MQTT sensors. MQTT allows you to automate ALL functions of your camera and link them to other services in your smarthome.
Control your camera via the IFTTT online service
On the IFTTT platform, we provided a service called INSTAR. The INSTAR applets provide you with the ability to control some settings of your INSTAR camera or INSTAR Cloud with IFTTT. You can connect INSTAR with triggers for location (Geo Location) and date & time, send notifications and much more. For example, you can connect INSTAR applets to the IFTTT location service and automatically disable the alarm when you arrive home. You can also use the INSTAR applets to create your own automation and connect them to other third-party applets.
A: There are two types of smarthome UIs, as shown in the graphic below. On the left is a user interface like the ioBroker Vis. All you need to do is adding a button and assigning it the RAW Command Topic that you want to update. Clicking the button will send the command and your camera will update it's configuration - e.g. switch on the motion detection area.
On the right is an UI like the OpenHAB 2 PaperUI, Home Assistant Lovelace UI or the Node-RED Dashboard. Clicking the switch will send the command topic, but the switch will only switch to the new state - ON - after your camera confirms the command with a Status Topic update:
You can test each of those steps with programs like MQTT.fx or the MQTT Explorer and verify that everything is working as expected - before attempting to use the MQTT Topics inside your smarthome UI:
