Viseron Documentation

Viseron manages entities and publishes them to MQTT topics using several domains. Use these domains to structure your topic subscriptions or logic:

• binary_sensor: Reports on/off states (e.g., motion, object detection).
• image: Publishes JPEG images (e.g., thumbnails).
• sensor: Reports various values (e.g., FPS, operation state).
• toggle: Used for controlling actions (e.g., turning cameras on/off, manual recording).

Tip: You can observe the Viseron logs to find specific entity IDs.

Viseron's functionality is built by combining various components. Each component implements one or more domains (e.g., cameras, object detection, motion detection). These domains are tied together to provide the full capabilities of the system.

Components are modular and can be mixed and matched freely. For instance, you can configure different object detectors for different cameras within the same Viseron instance.

Viseron uses a component-based architecture where components provide functionality by implementing domains (interfaces).

Components can implement two optional functions:

1. setup(): Used for component-level initialization, such as creating shared resources (neural networks, connections) or initializing state. This runs once at startup. It must return True on success.
2. setup_domains(): Used to register domains (e.g., cameras, detectors). This function can be called multiple times during configuration hot-reloading.

Important: setup_domains() must only register domains and should not initialize shared resources, as it is called during hot-reloads. This separation allows Viseron to reload domain configurations without re-initializing expensive shared resources.

The NVR (Network Video Recorder) component is the central coordinator for Viseron. It is a required component; without it, Viseron will not function.

Key responsibilities include:

• Stopping and starting cameras.
• Asynchronously reading frames from cameras and sending them to detectors.
• Stopping and starting the recorder.

When record_only: true is enabled, the standard still image in frontend camera cards will not work because the stream is never decoded. To display a still image, you must provide a still_image configuration using a URL that your camera supports for snapshots (e.g., Hikvision ISAPI).

ffmpeg:
  camera:
    camera_one:
      name: Camera 1
      host: !secret camera_one_host
      path: /Streaming/Channels/101/
      username: !secret camera_one_username
      password: !secret camera_one_password
      record_only: true
      recorder:
        continuous_recording: true
        continuous:
          max_age:
            days: 7
      still_image:
        url: http://camera_one.lan:80/ISAPI/Streaming/channels/101/picture
        username: !secret camera_one_username
        password: !secret camera_one_password
        authentication: digest

nvr:
  camera_one: