Virtual sensors
A virtual sensor is a sensor with no plugin behind it. You create it yourself, camera.ui holds its state, and you set that state from the UI or from an automation.
Use one to mirror an external device or a state into camera.ui: a doorbell you trigger from an automation, a contact you flip when a message arrives over MQTT, a switch that stands for something no plugin reports. Once created, a virtual sensor behaves like any other sensor. You can assign it to cameras, place it on the video as a shortcut, export it to your smart home, and use it as an automation trigger.
Creating, renaming, and deleting virtual sensors needs admin.
Create a virtual sensor
Open the Sensors page and click Create virtual sensor. Fill in:
- Type. What the sensor represents. Pick it once, it can't be changed later.
- Name. How the sensor appears in camera.ui, for example "Front Door". Two virtual sensors of the same type can't share a name.
The sensor starts in its idle state: off, closed, locked, or disarmed, depending on the type. It belongs to no camera yet; click its row to assign cameras and it shows up in their Overview right away.[1]
Available types
There are 23 types:
- Doorbell. A ring you trigger. It resets itself two seconds later.
- Switch. On or off.
- Contact. Open or closed, for a door or window.
- Occupancy. Occupied or empty.
- Smoke. Clear or triggered.
- Leak. Clear or triggered.
- Light. On or off, with brightness.
- Siren. On or off, with volume.
- Lock. Locked or unlocked.
- Garage. Open or closed.
- Security System. Off, Home, Away, or Night.
- Temperature. A temperature reading.
- Humidity. A humidity reading.
- Gas. Clear or triggered.
- Carbon Monoxide. Clear or triggered.
- Heat. Clear or triggered.
- Cold. Clear or triggered.
- Vibration. Clear or triggered.
- Tamper. Clear or triggered.
- Problem. Clear or triggered.
- Power. Clear or triggered.
- Illuminance. A light-level reading in lux.
- CO₂. A carbon dioxide reading in ppm.
Control it
On an assigned camera's Overview tab, Doorbell, Switch, Light, Siren, Lock, Garage, and Security System sit there with their controls and work the same as the plugin-provided ones, see Controls & states. The same controls appear in the sensor's edit dialog on the Sensors page, which also covers sensors assigned to no camera.
Contact, Occupancy, Smoke, Leak, Temperature, Humidity, Gas, Carbon Monoxide, Heat, Cold, Vibration, Tamper, Problem, Power, Illuminance, and CO₂ are read-only. Their value comes from an automation.
Lock, Garage, and Security System follow what you set immediately. There is no hardware to report back, so they never sit in a "locking" or "opening" state.
camera.ui remembers the last state of a virtual sensor, so it survives a restart.
Control it from an automation
In the automation editor, a Control sensor action sets a virtual sensor, and a Sensor change trigger reacts when its state changes. For the read-only types this is the only way to set a value: an automation that receives an MQTT message, for example, can put that value on a virtual temperature sensor.
Rename or delete
Both happen on the Sensors page: click the row to rename the sensor, use the delete button on the row to remove it.[2]
Renaming changes the name everywhere, in the Overview, on shortcuts, and in automations. Automations that use the sensor keep working.
Deleting a camera only removes the assignment. The sensor itself stays and can be assigned to other cameras. ↩︎
Deleting a virtual sensor stops any automation that references it. Creating a new sensor with the same type and name does not restore the link, since it is a new sensor. Point the automation at it again. ↩︎