Alarm activation – IP camera control & Virtual device with Fibaro HC2 – PART 1

The purpose of this post is to illustrate an interesting capability of the Fibaro HC2 in managing some very specific devices that are not originally made to be manage by the HC2 ! An IP camera like the Foscam FI8910W presented in my previous post (Improving home security with video monitoring) is a good example for the usage of “virtual device”. The objective is to activate the camera motion detector and the automatic send email function through a script and make available the building blocks for an alarm system.

Here are the constraints when using the HC2 with version 1.046:

– Using the graphical script builder, there is NO specific IP camera command for motion detector & email. The only available command is take a picture !

– Virtual device is therefore a good solution to communicate/send orders to the IP camera through “virtual buttons”.

Let’s consider our IP camera “foscam2” located in the kitchen. The “V-foscam2” is the virtual device associated to this camera. This V-foscam2 has 3 buttons or functionalities:

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