SimpliSafe Camera Integration

[tbrock47]

So the "SimpliCam" as they call it is a combination camera and motion sensor.
The camera itself is joined to your local network wifi during setup. I am unsure if the included sensor is also communicating via the local network or their standard communication protocol.

You stated you don't have a camera of your own, so let me know how I can help.

[bachya]

Thanks for offering to help! I need to understand how the SimpliSafe web app communicates with the camera. Here's my suggestion:

1. Open Google Chrome.
2. Navigate to https://webapp.simplisafe.com and login.
3. Open the Chrome Developer Tools (View >> Developer >> Developer Tools).
4. Browse around various camera "operations" – open the camera page, view the camera, stop viewing the camera, go elsewhere, etc.
5. When done, go back to the Developer Tools and click the Export HAR link (see below). Don't post that here; send it to me in a DM on the HASS Community Forum.

[bachya]

Thanks for the payload, @tbrock47. Here's what I've learned:

Once you log into the web app and access the camera page, a URL like this is request:

https://media.simplisafe.com/v1/<SOME_ID>/flv?x=472&audioEncoding=AAC

I assume that this is the stream URL to access, although when I attempted to access yours, I got Unauthorized. I'm assuming this is either because (a) the access token is shorted lived or (b) I got the headers wrong.

I'll continue to investigate.

[KTibow]

Also, how does the operation of viewing previous motion events work?

[tbrock47]

Also, how does the operation of viewing previous motion events work?

The motion events aren't logged on the Cameras page. They show up as a line item under the Timeline page as "Camera Motion Detected". The Cameras page is just a tile layout of all your cameras which allows you to click on one to get a live view.

I'm honestly more interested in just getting a live stream over anything else. The reset would be a bonus for a later date IMO.

[KTibow]

Got it. But once you get the livestream going, when you add it to Home Assistant, you probably won’t want to have live view always on. (Maybe take a “snapshot” every hour.)

[ph1ash]

Hey all - been digging into this as well. So the <SOME_ID> (which is a unique camera ID) mentioned above comes through during the https://api.simplisafe.com/v1/users/<user_id>/subscriptions GET request. In the JSON response, you'll find your camera ID in subscriptions-><first subscription entry>->location->system->cameras-><first entry>->uuid . This is then used to point to the link mentioned above; https://media.simplisafe.com/v1/<Camera UUID>/flv?x=472&audioEncoding=AAC. I'm having trouble with the get_systems call at the moment, but will try to resolve that soon and then try fetching the uuid through the get_systems API (might already be coming through but I can't tell unfortunately).

[bachya]

Thanks @ph1ash! Let me know what I can to to assist you.

[archerne]

Out of curiosity, the SimpliSafe camera is available to view on the SimpliSafe app without any subscription, are you looking into a way to be able to view the camera without pulling the subscription settings?

[jaredswarts55]

I don't really know what I am doing in python but I was able to stream the flv to a file and watch it with vlc using this code:

import asyncio

from aiohttp import ClientSession
from simplipy import *


async def get_subscriptions(user_id: str, access_token: str, client: ClientSession):
    url = 'https://api.simplisafe.com/v1/users/{}/subscriptions'.format(user_id)
    print("Url To Send Call To: {}".format(url))
    async with client.get(url, headers={'Authorization': 'Bearer {}'.format(access_token)}) as resp:
        return await resp.json()

async def get_camera_feed(camera_id: str, access_token: str, client: ClientSession):
    url = 'https://media.simplisafe.com/v1/{}/flv?x=472&audioEncoding=AAC'.format(camera_id)
    print("Url To Send Call To: {}".format(url))
    with open('testing.flv', 'wb') as file:
        async with client.get(url, headers={'Authorization': 'Bearer {}'.format(access_token)}) as resp:
            async for data in resp.content.iter_chunked(1024):
                file.write(data)

async def main() -> None:
    """Create the aiohttp session and run."""
    async with ClientSession() as session:
        simplisafe = await API.login_via_credentials(
            "YOUR_EMAIL_HERE", "YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE", session=session
        )

        systems = await simplisafe.get_systems();
        for s in systems:
            system = systems[s]

        subscriptionsBody = await get_subscriptions(simplisafe.user_id, simplisafe.access_token, session)
        cameraId = subscriptionsBody["subscriptions"][0]["location"]["system"]["cameras"][0]["uuid"]
        print("Camera Id: {}".format(cameraId))
        print("Subscriptions: {}".format(subscriptionsBody))
        await get_camera_feed(cameraId, simplisafe.access_token, session)


asyncio.run(main())

[KTibow]

@jaredswarts55 what do you mean "stream"? Did you just press Ctrl+C to stop it when you were done? I'd be interested if there was a way to get past camera recordings too.

[jaredswarts55]

@KTibow yeah, the request was open and streaming to the file, increasing its file size, I had to hit Ctrl+C to stop it.

[KTibow]

@jaredswarts55 so at the end of it did VLC complain about invalidness, or was it okay since you chunked them into 1024-byte parts?

[shamoon]

Hey guys, I work on a node implementation of the SS api for Apple HomeKit nzapponi/homebridge-simplisafe3, we've had camera integration for a while though obviously its different we pipe through ffmpeg to an rstp stream (which is what Apple requires).

Unfortunately it seems theres no way to locally tap into the cameras as you've noted but you guys have the right URL FWIW, theres also an mjpeg stream available at:
https://media.simplisafe.com/v1/{cameraID}/mjpg?x=${width}&fr=1, and finally wanted to mention if you leave off the audioEncoding=AAC you will get the h.264 stream with speex audio instead of aac.

Good luck! I will be following along in case I can learn something for my project =)