Reolink Battery powered cameras (argus/argus2/keen) + ST Kludge

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Hello all, first off I’m not affiliated with reolink I’ve just become a fan for my use case (and my enjoyment of putting kludges together) hopefully this quick rant will help

Just wanted to share my setup for Reolink Battery Powered cameras (and really any device that can send email notifications

Reolink’s battery powered cameras have major disadvantage is that they don’t integrate with anything - IFTTT, API, blue iris, web, RTSP - HOWEVER the email notification they send is the fastest of any camera I tried (probably because of the lack of web overhead2)

After Using arlo/ring for some time I’ve become a convert the main upside for me has been because they really don’t have a cloud component to speak of - not because of security but because the speed and realiablity of alerts and bringing up live feeds, see attached gif for 4 argus 2 cams. (they do have some cloud storage is in beta and they have a “p2p” style network for access from outside the home)

I have 2 C1 Pro Cameras, where I have a 24/7 Feed (but recording only on motion) running on 2 different old ipads in the house, rock solid - they have more features like activitity zones.

Reolink battery powered cameras (Keen, Argus, Arugs 2, Argus Pro etc) unfortunatly limit the stream to I believe 15 minutes even when plugged in to power according to their support.

many disadvantages compared to most cameras on the market, no way to bulk set modes or bulk configure, HOWEVER compared to any other camera I have tried the speed that email notifications arrive are faster than any other product I have used.

with that in mind I set up the following:

Set up free account on mailgun.com

set up SMTP credentials

on your reolink camera (or any device that allows you to specify a SMTP server) SEND Your email via mailgun to your regular email address via emailaddress+cameraname@gmail.com (any gmail allows a + to be added and still be delivered)

in mailgun configure a “webhooks” set to go to a webcore piston URL on “Delivered Messages”

in said webhook piston for each camera I check expression {$args.recipient} is equal to email+cameraname@gmail.com and I turn on a simulated switch, wait 45 seconds and turn it back off. - I also set it to run if SMH is set to armed/away

feed those into Smart Zone motion detector (Zone Motion Manager) [Deprecated -- no longer supported] (sorry to see it’s not longer supported but it seems to work fine for me)

(along in my case with the native integration of ring doorbells)

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How did you get reolink to accept the long password in mailgun smtp credentials?

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Ha I just re read my post and I’ve completely re done this setup since, but to answer your question I shortened the password

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How did you do that as I can’t find any options on mail gun to allow short password. Even this post seems to say its not possible?


The documentation doesn’t show that it’s possible to set your own password?

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Looks like under sending -> domain settings -> smtp credentials

and I see what you mean, before I clearly remember being able to set my own (shorter) password so my existing account is probably grandfathered in, don’t have an easy reply I’m afraid besides using some other service

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it’s an old thread but in case it helps, you can create and update credentials with shorter password on mailgun through the REST api using curl: https://documentation.mailgun.com/en/latest/api-domains.html#domains

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I realise this is an old thread that is possibly not being monitored but want to get a reolink battery cam working with home assistant and i think the mailgun approach might work. However, complete novice with smtp and have never used mailgun.

I do not understand where each step is done. What does “send email via mailgun” mean and how is the gmail.com address utilised?

Would be great if someone could “translate” this into simple detailed steps for a dummy like me.

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OP here - my understanding is that this may not be possible with mailgun anymore due to changes in their plans. Unfortunately I don’t have this setup anymore. While it’s def more complex I would look at AWS SNS service which allows you to do all sorts of complex things.

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So mailgun has/had the ability to send email, but you are actually sending the email TO gmail since mailgun doesn’t have traditional mailboxes - just as a tool to send/process emails.

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giving this more thought there MUST be a better way to do this today - something that monitors Gmail for new email and does something ?

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If the cameras are Onvif compliant try this thread

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I was using the email approach with my Reolink cameras for a period of time. I set up a very simple script running on a Raspberry Pi that received the emails and then posted a webcore piston to trigger automations. It was fine, but I didn’t like the 5-10 second delay it took until the camera sent the email after detecting motion.

The ONVIF driver referenced above is much more instant. Unfortunately I would doubt that a battery powered device could support ONVIF…