Using MQTT to inform Homey that an Alarm was Triggered

Q: I found your guide to use the INSTAR (HTTP) Alarmserver. Wouldn't it make more sense to publish those events through the MQTT service that every Full HD cameras offers? This way I would be able to be sure that every alarm event is registered by my Homey.

A: All alarm events that published by the INSTAR HTTP Alarmserver can now also be accessed through the MQTT Service!

MQTT Alarmserver

The corresponding MQTT Topic is:

alarm/triggered

All you need to do is adding a subscription to the Status Topic and you will receive updates about alarm events as well as what service triggered the alarm:

Setting up Homey

To keep it simple I will ignore the alarm trigger and have my Homey base station's LED ring flash in red whenever an alarm event happened. Let's start by creating a new Flow in the Homey smartphone app:

Click on Add Card to add the event you want to trigger your flow:

This event has to be an MQTT status update from our camera:

Add the MQTT alarm server status topic:

And save the flow trigger:

Now we have to add an action we want to execute when our flow was triggered by the MQTT Alarmserver:

To keep it simple I will just have Homey flash it's LED ring in red:

Choose the Animation option:

And select the colour and duration:

You can now click on Test to test the animation and save your flow:

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