Home Assistant

FFmpeg Motion

The ffmpeg platform allows you to use any video feed with FFmpeg for motion sensors in Home Assistant.

If the ffmpeg process is broken, the sensor will be unavailable. To control the FFmpeg process of sensor, use the service ffmpeg.start, ffmpeg.stop, ffmpeg.restart.

Motion

FFmpeg doesn’t have a motion detection filter, but can use a scene filter to detect a new scene/motion. You can set how much needs to change in order to detect motion with the option ‘changes’, the percent value of change between frames. If you want a really small value for ‘changes’, you can also add a denoise filter.

Configuration

To add FFmpeg with motion detection to your installation, add the following to your configuration.yaml file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
binary_sensor:
  - platform: ffmpeg_motion
    input: FFMPEG_SUPPORTED_INPUT

Configuration Variables

Looking for your configuration file?
input string Required

An FFmpeg-compatible input file, stream, or feed.

name string (Optional)

Override the name of your camera for the frontend.

initial_state boolean (Optional, default: true)

Start ffmpeg with Home Assistant.

changes integer (Optional, default: 10)

How much needs to change between two frames to detect it as motion, value in percentage (a lower value is more sensitive).

reset integer (Optional, default: 20)

The time to reset the state after no new motion is detected.

repeat integer (Optional, default: 0)

How many events need to be detected in repeat_time in order to trigger a motion, 0 repeats means deactivated.

repeat_time integer (Optional, default: 0)

The span of time repeat events need to occur in before triggering a motion, 0 seconds means deactivated.

extra_arguments string (Optional)

Extra options to pass to ffmpeg, e.g., video denoise filtering.

To experiment with values (changes/100 is the scene value in ffmpeg):

ffmpeg -i YOUR_INPUT -an -filter:v select=gt(scene\,0.1) -f framemd5 -

If you are running into trouble with this sensor, please refer to the troubleshooting section.

Tips

extra_arguments: -filter:v "crop=100:100:12:34"