Hi everyone,
I just finished developing a new Homey app for HikVision cameras and I’m looking for testers!
Important: This app works only directly with HikVision cameras and does not works with NVR.
If you use Homey and have HikVision cameras, your feedback would be extremely valuable to help me improve the app and fix any bugs before the official release.
Feel free to reach out if you’re interested in testing or have any questions. I really appreciate your help!
Thanks in advance,
Hello, first of all! You are my hero! I’ve been waiting for this app for more than 2 years. I am going to test it as much as possible.
Would it be possible to add support also for doorbells, indoor stations etc.?
My wish would be if somebody rings the outdoor bell on the gate then my Sonos speakers would play a specific sound to let me know, that somebody is ringing the bell!
Thanks in advance for your support once again!
Thanks for your help 
For your request, one thing at a time 
Next steps: make the camera support more reliable, then support the NVRs.
The doorbell will be more complicated as i don’t have one to test…
So, all cameras were successfully added to Homey.
test connection during adding is not working, showing this:
Live video works fine, sometimes just video goes for a second or two like this:
No clue about Snapshots so far as I did not set up any flows regarding snapshots yet.
Regarding doorbell: I didn’t install one yet, but in upcoming months I plan to do that. So when I am done I feel free to support.
Thanks
A new version (1.0.1) has just been released and fixes the connection test issue when creating the camera.
The video issue is related to Homey, your network, or your camera. You should experience the same behaviour with VLC.
The app I’ve been waiting for. Shame there’s no NVR support. My cameras are connected direct to the NVR’s POE ports. Could this be added in the future or not possible? Thanks
Hello.
As I said earlier, the first step is to make the camera support reliable, and then I will try to provide camera support through the NVRs.
I can already tell you that RTSP stream (live view) support will not work.
Apologies I missed your post with regards NVR support
That was the issue. Changed it to digest/basic and now it works properly.
Hi,
I have eight Hikvision cameras around the house. They’re 4K models from a few years ago, so they don’t support RTSP, only ONVIF. I’ve already added them to Homey using the ONVIF Camera app.
When I tap the device tile in Homey, I get a static snapshot, but when I add the camera as a widget, it shows a live stream.
I have two questions:
Does this app support ONVIF?
Does it offer any additional features compared to what I’m already getting (snapshots in device tiles and live streaming in widgets)?
I’m asking because I don’t want to remove my existing devices or risk “breaking” anything just to try this app.
Thanks!
To my knowledge, ONVIF uses RTSP. And no, this app does not support ONVIF; it uses Hikvision’s ISAPI. For the moment,
If you do not see RTSP, it is probably because basic authentication is not enabled on your camera. See above. I will look into supporting digest authentication later.
new version with support of digest authentication for API. RTSP must be config as digest/basic
Thnx works perfect 
new version 1.1.0 with a new trigger flow.
The flow is activated when the camera detects an event and includes a tag for the event type.
Why? There’s a perfectly working ONVIF Camera app avaliable.
For me also trigger with doorbell from hikvision ds-kv6113-wpe1 would be nice.
Hikvision doorbells do not expose a simple REST endpoint like
/button/status.
Instead, button presses are delivered as events via a persistent HTTP event stream.To detect when the doorbell button is pressed, your app must subscribe to the Hikvision alert stream and listen for
CallButtonPressevents.The recommended and most reliable method is:
ISAPI Event Notification Alert Stream
Supported Event Mechanism
Alert Stream (Recommended)
Long-lived HTTP connection
Server pushes XML events in real time
Low latency
Used by Hikvision official software
Endpoint
/ISAPI/Event/notification/alertStream
Authentication
HTTP Digest Authentication
Basic authentication will not work
Requires an admin or sufficiently privileged user
Example: Testing with curl
Use this to verify that the device is sending events.
curl --digest -u USERNAME:PASSWORD \ http://DEVICE_IP/ISAPI/Event/notification/alertStreamExample:
curl --digest -u admin:password \ http://192.168.1.50/ISAPI/Event/notification/alertStreamKeep the connection open.
Doorbell Button Press Event
When the physical doorbell button is pressed, the device sends an XML event similar to:
<EventNotificationAlert> <eventType>CallButtonPress</eventType> <eventState>active</eventState> <eventDescription>Doorbell pressed</eventDescription> <channelID>1</channelID> <dateTime>2025-01-12T14:23:11+01:00</dateTime> </EventNotificationAlert>Important Fields
Field Value eventTypeCallButtonPresseventStateactivedateTimeTimestamp of the press
Because… why not? I have HikVision cameras connected to NVR and a HikVision video doorbell. A native HiKVision app with ONVIF support might give me more options/flow capabilities compared to a generic ONVIF app that I’m using now. More is better, right?
Well, you’re asking community app building enthousiasts to do double work, that was the thought behind my question: if such an app already exists, why not use it?
And when you miss features / functionality, you can always discuss it with Adrian, the Onvif Camera app developer
