Snapshot Update

[mlavio829]

Hi, Wondering if there is any way to add a snapshot refresh option? I understand that when motion is triggered is shows me the snapshot but I’m wondering if there is anyway to pull a fresh snapshot every time I look at HomeKit? I have to click the camera video and then it updates.

Is this possible?

[potmat]

Hi @mlavio829,

There's no way for the plugin to distinguish between a snapshot request because you opened the app, and one that happens because the app is already open. Nor is there any way to add a "button" to refresh the snapshots that I'm aware of.

As mentioned in the FAQ, the only way to get an image on demand is to actually start the video stream and grab the first frame. This works OK if you have only one camera, but if you have multiple cameras starting all their streams every 10 seconds uses a huge amount of resources and also leads to the SDM API throwing out rate limit errors (you're making too many stream requests).

[lnjustin]

By snapshot do you mean the image that shows up at the top of the Home app under the Cameras section for each of the cameras? I just have a generic icon of a home, and have to tap on each individual camera to actually see its footage. It sure would be nice to see the actual video footage there. That's what displays in a different homebridge nest cam plugin, but it doesn't use the official SDM so I'm sure that's the difference. But is that what this thread is talking about or some snapshot somewhere else?

If it is, is there any way to just display a stale snapshot instead of a generic icon that has no meaning? At least a stale snapshot would inform the user as to which camera it is.

[mlavio829]

Yes I don’t like the generic icon either. The Starlink Hub is able to get the snapshots on the newer Nest doorbells somehow. Not sure how tho.

[potmat]

@mlavio829: The Starling Home Hub uses the unofficial APIs as well as the official ones, I would guess that's how they do it.

[potmat]

@lnjustin: Yes that's what we're talking about. I agree the recent change to the home app where you just see a tile of images means you cannot tell which camera is which. If you click on "Cameras >" then you see each camera with the name overlayed. I suppose I could add some text into the image with the camera name to aid with the problem.

[tealtwo]

@lnjustin: Yes that's what we're talking about. I agree the recent change to the home app where you just see a tile of images means you cannot tell which camera is which. If you click on "Cameras >" then you see each camera with the name overlayed. I suppose I could add some text into the image with the camera name to aid with the problem.

You could add a button in the config on weather to enable snapshots or not, and if it does get rate limited (which it will thanks google) then too keep the existing snapshot until a new one is pulled. For example, I don't need a snapshot every 2 seconds of the inside of my garage, but I do need the snapshot of my living room or the kids room.

[noahbm]

+1 on something like this!

Allowing the last snapshot image to persist until there is a fresh (event generated) one to replace it would make it easier to identify cameras from the Home Screen / make things a bit more user friendly. Something configurable would be amazing, but that might be overkill.

Incredible work btw @potmat! Just finished setting things up. Getting the API credentials sorted was a bit of a journey, but everything on your end worked flawlessly. Cheers!

[potmat]

@noahbm: That could be done, the only issue is that it would be quite misleading as the Home app puts a "countdown timer" on the images. So the app would show that the image is only 3s old when it's actually 18h (or something).

Thank you so much, it's very nice to see people using the plugin!

[tealtwo]

@potmat I also noticed on my starling home hub the same thing, the image would either show the last snapshot in HomeKit as 1s old, or it would show a snapshot from the previous 10 seconds so it takes two snapshots for let’s say a delivery man to be seen

[regg00]

+1 that feature would be very appreciated

[aterriblegamer]

Got this set up today. Feel like Google just stole $5 from me.the static icons are useless. I used to be able to see all my cameras with the old plugin. I am giving up using Homebridge for Nest. Will be dumping the cameras as well

[potmat]

Ideally the API should support a snapshot feature. Feature requests for the SDM API can be made here: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues?q=status:open%20componentid:1351014&s=created_time:desc

[jradwan]

Ideally the API should support a snapshot feature. Feature requests for the SDM API can be made here: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues?q=status:open%20componentid:1351014&s=created_time:desc

Has anyone already submitted a feature request?