camera.play_stream doesn't work to Google hub/chromecast

[colmbuckley]

Thanks for this excellent integration; it's exactly what I've been looking for. I have a G4 doorbell and am happily running a few useful automations using it.

One thing doesn't work, though - camera.play_stream won't display on any of my Google/Nest devices (eg: Chromecast with GoogleTV, Nest Home Hub, Nest Home Hub Max). The service doesn't report any errors, and the devices start the media player, but all I see on screen is the Cast logo, and it times out after a few seconds.

I can stream other camera entities (eg: Nest IQ cameras using the Nest integration), and I can view the RTSP stream from the G4 doorbell fine using VLC, so I'm not sure what's causing this. Are there any log files etc. I could use to start debugging? Any additional information I can send here?

Home Assistant OS: Core version core-2021.7.4, unifiprotect version 0.8.9.
Unifi Protect: Protect version 1.18.1 on UnifiOS 1.10.0.
G4 Doorbell: firmware version 4.38.1

Here's what I'm trying:

service: camera.play_stream
data:
  media_player: media_player.tv_room_tv
target:
  entity_id: camera.g4_doorbell_2

(media_player.tv_room_tv is a Chromecast with Google TV (Android TV), but I get the same result on a Home Hub and Home Hub Max).

Any ideas?

[briis]

I am not a cast expert, but I think the Nest Devices have an issue if the stream resolution is too high. If you go to the Unifi Protect Web App, and look at the RTSP Settings, try and turn off the 1600x1200 resolution, and turn on one of the others. Then reload the Unifi Protect Integration, and try again.

[colmbuckley]

Hmm, doesn't seem to be that; none of the three possible RTSP streams seem to work on any of the Google devices. The Nest cameras stream at 1080p and they seem to work fine.

My guess is that this is a limitation of Google Cast; it requires that the streamed data be available over HTTP/s rather than raw RTSP. Looking into whether there are any encapsulation options available, otherwise I'll see about wrapping it using VLC somehow.

[sbonnick]

Im currently looking into this too. It seems to be a problem with chromcast, as you mentioned. here is how others have done it with other RTSP sources in assistant:
https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/ameka9/rtsp_camera_to_chromecasts/

I havent yet tried this myself, but my thinking is seqencing these together.

[sbonnick]

So I was able to get this working as expected using a simple automation:

service: camera.play_stream
data:
  media_player: media_player.random_cast
target:
  entity_id: camera.g3_instant

For me the problem was the RTSP stream on my g3_instant were all turned off. turning on the low quality one, it started to work. I did need to reload the integration first. Once this was done, I no longer got the error any longer, and the video was seen on my chromecasts.

[zacs]

Just a note that HA core does now support WebRTC natively as of 2021.11.0.

[AngellusMortis]

Not really. It supports playing WebRTC streams natively. Not creating them. That requires the camera itself to support WebRTC, which Unifi Cameras do not. We still need something in between Unifi Protect and HA to create the stream.

[zacs]

Not really. It supports playing WebRTC streams natively. Not creating them. That requires the camera itself to support WebRTC, which Unifi Cameras do not. We still need something in between Unifi Protect and HA to create the stream.

D'oh, serves me right for not digging too deeply. Thanks for the clarification. I'm still scratching my head on why my cameras streamed to Google Hubs for a year or two then just stopped. I'll have to try disabling the higher res RTSP streams.

[AngellusMortis]

We did changed the streaming URLs from rtsp to rtsps. If Google Hub does not support RTSPS, that might be why.

[briis]

I just tested streaming a UniFi Protect camera to a Google Nest Hub with the rtsps stream enabled, and that works fine. So Google Hubs do support the secure streaming.

[briis]

Maybe this library (aiortc) could be used to generate a WebRTC stream? I played a little bit with it, and managed to get a WebRTC stream from the RTSPS URL. But how this would be embedded directly in our module, I am not sure. And maybe it also the wrong way to go. As @AngellusMortis says in another discussion, it would be great if this feature was built-in to HA core, so all cameras could use it.

[AngellusMortis]

It would not be easy. WebRTC does not support AAC, so we still need to transcoder the audio using ffmpeg (probably). Now that the front end does support WebRTC playback though, it does make the whole thing a bit more feasible if we can figure out aiortc.

But, any solution would likely be pretty CPU intensive since we are talking about transcoding audio.

[briis]

I just got inspired by the Next integration. :)

But to be honest, I display the Camera images in HA, but HA will never be an NVR, and is not designed to be, I think the Ubiquiti products to a much better job here. Where HA shines in this context, is automating all the stuff around the NVR: Is motion detected, is the doorbell ringing, and all the other events we get. Then linking this to other stuff that needs to happen in your Home, and to other HW from other manufactures - this is where HA is second to none.

[zacs]

Definitely agree with that logic -- I generally only use HA UI to debug stuff.

Since you mention the camera working with Home Hubs, how do you have that configured/what service are you calling to do the casting? Mine stopped working a long time ago and no matter how I setup config it won't work.

[briis]

A new issue has been raised where a users also has this problem. Here is what works perfectly for me: https://github.com/briis/unifiprotect/issues/326#issuecomment-962472694. And I found if that is not working then it has something to do with how your network is configured. I am by no means a network expert, but I am almost sure that this is where the issue is.

[AngellusMortis]

For him, it looks like it was using the internal URL for generating the HLS URL for casting and his Nest device did not like the self-signed SSL cert. So either changing your internal URL to something that has a valid cert or using the Nabu Casa one solved his problem.