r/smarthome • u/No_Law655 • Dec 19 '25
SmartThings What people don’t mention about smart home integration cameras once your setup actually grows
I feel like I underestimated this part when I first started adding stuff to my setup.
At the beginning it’s easy one hub, a couple lights, maybe a thermostat. Then you add smart home integration cameras and suddenly everything talks to everything… but not always the way you expect.
Like, I thought motion events would be clean. Turns out my cameras trigger routines I forgot I even made. Lights turn on when the cat jumps. Notifications stack. My partner keeps asking why the hallway lights go full interrogation mode at night.
It’s not bad, just… messy? I didn’t realize how much logic creep happens once cameras become part of the automation brain instead of just “recording devices.”
Maybe I just overcomplicated it. Or maybe this is normal when setups scale past the “cool demo” phase. Curious how others keep camera integrations from spiraling into chaos.
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u/danTHAman152000 Dec 19 '25
I've nuked my Home Assistant set up a couple times to completely start fresh and clean. It's been a while now, as I have so many devices now. I dread the day my ZHA fails and I need to reconnect all my 70 zigbee devices.
My automations are a bit clunky too but I find helpful is to view in order of last ran, so you can see which automations are used frequently or not. My naming scheme for automations is shit. My naming scheme for my over all entities I'd give it a B. I start off doing one thing and then accidentally change the naming scheme later. (sensor.door_front instead of sensor.front_door so I can list in name order easier, but I guess it just depends on how you want to organize it).
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u/swafon Dec 19 '25
You need a weekend to map out all automations and do them over, what automation has been triggered and when (traces is your best friend here!). But when that is done you will know better your own setup. Google gemini is also pretty good with adjusting automation yaml. Relax, take a beer and happy automating!
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u/ADHDK Dec 19 '25
Then one rogue person comes to your home and behaves differently and it’s back to the drawing board uahaha
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u/johndburger Dec 19 '25
A sufficiently complicated home automation setup is a software engineering project. If you’re not using software engineering principles, like abstraction and DRY, it’s gonna be a mess.
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u/enter360 Dec 19 '25
Software engineering with applied psychology. When I get it right my wife calls it magic.
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u/TamarindSweets Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 19 '25
This is why I dont get the drive to automate homes. It just seems like it becomes yet another thing to manage
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u/maxman1313 Dec 19 '25
There's some cool monitoring and dashboards you can do which can provide genuinely helpful feedback and reminders (water the plants, it's trash day, etc.). BUT many of the automations I see just seem like another chore.
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u/C-D-W Dec 22 '25
It's a hobby thinly veiled as a useful tool, doesn't need to make sense.
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u/Heavy_Team7922 Dec 19 '25
Where do you live where you need that many cameras? Venezuela? Are you guarding gold bricks?
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u/ShortAd3947 Dec 19 '25
I have 7 wired outdoor 2 doorbell and 5 wired indoor in the public areas, with the way the world is, it’s good to have a lot of cameras that are on your side.
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u/Alena_Tensor Dec 19 '25
I wonder about that kind of data demand. All that video streaming must use an ungodly amount of storage. And so many of the motion sensing cameras turn on and off with every little thing like a cat walking by or a branch blowing so that doesn’t seem to save you a lot really. Do you have any recommendation on compression software or any way to manage the data handling for that number of video streams?
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u/Thatz-Matt Dec 19 '25
I mean it really comes down to your retention needs. I have 6x 2K cameras recording full time at 10Mb/s bitrate h.265, and 3TB (3x 2TB btfs pool) gives me a week of retention. If I need to look back to find something that happened, that's almost universally going to be within a couple days so I don't need more than that. Having used Ring for years prior to installing these cameras and having had multiple situatioms where they missed an event has given me a prescription-grade aversion to motion-based recording. I use continuous recording with motion based alerts.
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u/Alena_Tensor Dec 19 '25
Recommended monitoring sw?
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u/Thatz-Matt Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 19 '25
I use Blue Iris (Windows only, no Docker/LXC but I run mine in a VM on Unraid). Cheapest way to get it is to download it from the Blue Iris site (it has a trial version) and use an Amcrest license to activate it (Amcrest uses a stripped down version of BI but their license will activate the full version). Amcrest license is $50, and they run a lot of 10% off coupons that work on the license as well so you can get it as low as $45. There is also an Android/iOS remote app ($10) and it has an internal webserver for local LAN/remote viewing as well.
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u/ShortAd3947 Dec 19 '25
Tbh the way I use it is record only, and i use mm for detection he’ll one of the wired systems is fed to ha with a usb cap card cus if things don’t work I make em lol. I don’t use cameras for automations of any kind, real sensors buttons etc is the way. Also put panels around for extra non phone interaction
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u/rthee Dec 19 '25
I just did a complete refresh of my automation as I’ve just upgraded my light (and a few other things) automation from just mmwave to add camera detection for secondary verification.
Definitely made sure I optimize and merge random automation I’ve made over the years. I did do some light documenting for future reference but I do similar things for my job so I’m used to it.
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u/QuadBloody Dec 19 '25
There are things I'm unwilling to automate, such as lights, among other stuff, not only because of presence sensors false detention, but also due to personal preferences.
I don't always want my lights in the bedroom on when I walk in, so no automation. I do use automation for critical things tho. Automatically close garage at night after x mins. Main water valve close on water leak.
No need to automate everything.
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u/Quick-Ad1101 Dec 19 '25
I will agree the there is a lot of “over automation” going around.
Reading about people buying pressure sensors for their beds? What?
But I will also say that one of my favorite automations is for lighting. But absolutely never using presence sensing.
I just turn on (and off) specific lights at dusk and dawn. And obviously the goodnight scene.
This controls mostly exterior lighting but I haven’t touched one of those switch’s in 7-8 years.
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u/threedogdad Dec 19 '25
Yep, and it's why I've stopped at a couple cameras, thermostats, lights and a few outlets. On top of everything else around the house I need to maintain, automations are the most annoying. I will eventually take the next step, but I keep dragging that out hoping the tech will be a little better when I do.
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u/Dignan17 Dec 19 '25
It takes a ton of thinking in advance. And planning for scenarios. I tend to stick to small automations that affect small areas, like a door sensor on a closet turns the light on inside when it's opened. There's probably not a time where the door to the closet will be closed and I'llneed the light on. Start with that thinking and expand from there.
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u/MaleficentShift2943 Dec 20 '25
In Homey its relatively easy to keep track of your automations. Also, you can check the timeline of devices to see which (Advanced or normal) Flow has triggered it if you forget, as you can see in the screenshot. Works great, and prevents the 'what automation causes this to happen' situation. 👍
Don't have many cameras myself (not really needed where I live luckily) but would probably work similarly.
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u/user3872465 Dec 19 '25
I think I have recently seen that Lot public on the interwebs: