Building automations

Automations connect what happens at your cameras to actions camera.ui can take. You build them visually: drag nodes onto a canvas and connect them into a flow. Automations are an admin feature.

How a flow works

A flow runs from left to right: a trigger starts it, optional conditions decide whether it continues, and actions do something. Utilities help pass data between steps.

Open Automations from the menu, then create one with the + button. A new flow starts empty and disabled, so you can build it before it runs.

Triggers

A trigger is what starts a flow. You can use more than one.

• Detection event. Something detected at a camera: motion, a person, vehicle, animal, or package, an audio event like a doorbell or glass breaking, a recognised face, or a license plate. Filter by object, confidence, and event phase (start, update, end).
• Sensor change. A sensor's state changes, for example a contact sensor opening.
• Schedule. A recurring time, set with a cron expression.
• System event. Something in camera.ui itself, such as a camera connecting or disconnecting, or a plugin starting or stopping.
• Webhook. An external service calls a URL to start the flow.
• Geofence. A user enters or leaves a location you define.
• Manual. You run the flow yourself with the Run button, useful while building and testing.

Conditions

Conditions decide whether a flow continues:

• If / else. Branch on a comparison.
• Switch. Branch on several possible values.
• Sensor state. Check one or more sensors, combined with AND or OR.
• Time. Only continue within a time-of-day range and on chosen days.

Actions

Actions are what the flow does:

• Send notification. Push an alert with a title, message, and severity.
• Capture snapshot. Take a fresh image from a camera.
• Control sensor. Set an accessory, such as turning on a light or locking a door.
• Camera control. Change a camera setting, like snoozing detection.
• HTTP request. Call an external service.
• Plugin call. Run a detection or analysis plugin on an image.
• Set variable and delay. Hold a value, or wait before the next step.

Utilities

• Image input. Load an image (from a URL, a variable, or an upload) for an action to use.
• Output. Collect results to view after the flow runs.

Options and running

In the toolbar you can name the flow, turn it Enabled on or off, and set two behaviours:

• Ignore repeated events, so a burst of triggers runs the flow once.
• Wait for completion, so a new trigger waits until the current run finishes.

Save with the Save button. If your flow has a Manual trigger, a Run button lets you test it. In the list, each automation shows when it last ran, and camera.ui disables one automatically if it points at a camera or sensor you've removed, with a notice to fix it.

To share automations, see Blueprints & store.