Amcrest

Amcrest and Dahua-compatible camera integration for camera.ui. Provides camera discovery, live streaming, two-way audio, PTZ control, and motion, object, audio and doorbell events via the native Amcrest/Dahua CGI API.

Supported devices

• Standard Amcrest IP cameras (main/sub stream, motion and object detection).
• Amcrest doorbells (e.g. AD110/AD410-style models), including doorbell press events and two-way audio.
• PTZ-capable Amcrest cameras (pan, tilt and zoom).
• Other Dahua-compatible (OEM) devices that expose the same CGI/RTSP interface.

NVR-attached channels are not supported in this release — see Known limitations below.

Features

• Live view & snapshot — native RTSP streaming and CGI snapshot capture, no ONVIF required.
• Two-way audio — talkback over the device's native audio path. Amcrest-branded devices use the AAC path; Dahua-branded doorbells use G.711A (see Known limitations).
• Events — motion, object detection (person/vehicle), audio detection, and doorbell press, all delivered over the device's native event stream (no polling).
• PTZ — pan/tilt/zoom control for capable cameras, exposed as a PTZ sensor/service.
• Discovery — automatic discovery of Dahua-compatible devices on the local network via UDP, plus manual add for devices that don't respond to discovery (e.g. across subnets).

Setup

Manual add

If a device isn't discovered automatically, add it manually with:

| Field | Description | | --- | --- | | IP Address | The camera/doorbell's IP address, e.g. 192.168.1.50. | | Username | Account username (see the admin-credential note below for doorbells). | | Password | Account password. | | Channel | Camera channel (defaults to 1; only relevant for multi-channel devices). |

Discovery

The plugin listens for Dahua DHIP discovery responses on the local network (UDP multicast/broadcast on port 37810) and lists any devices found so they can be adopted with the same IP/username/password/channel fields as manual add.

Admin credential for doorbells

For Amcrest doorbells, the plugin requires the device's local admin account credential — the same admin username and password used to configure the doorbell directly (e.g. via its web UI or Amcrest Smart Home cloud app's device settings).

This is not the same as your Amcrest Smart Home cloud account login. The cloud account uses an email address and is only used to manage the device from the mobile app; it cannot be used to authenticate directly against the device's CGI API. If you don't remember the admin password, it's the one you set the first time you configured the doorbell (before adding it to the cloud app).

Troubleshooting events

If a camera-side detection (person, vehicle, face, line crossing) isn't showing up in camera.ui, the likely cause is an event code this plugin doesn't recognize yet — firmware varies in which codes it emits.

Enable debug logging in camera.ui and look for lines like:

Unhandled Amcrest event code: ParkingDetection (action=Start) — please report it at ...

Each unrecognized code is logged once per camera. If you see one that should map to a detection, please open an issue with that line.

To watch the raw stream directly from a checkout of this repo:

npm run watch-events -- --ip 192.168.1.50 --user admin --pass secret

Then trigger the event on the camera (walk through frame, drive past, ring the doorbell). Each event prints with how the plugin classifies it:

14:02:31  CrossRegionDetection     action=Start   -> object person active box=[0.349, 0.156, 0.125, 0.440] track=863
14:02:44  ParkingDetection         action=Start   -> UNHANDLED

Credentials can also be supplied as AMCREST_IP / AMCREST_USER / AMCREST_PASS.

Known limitations / v2

The following are deferred to a future release:

• NVR channels — cameras attached to and accessed through an Amcrest/Dahua NVR are not supported; only directly-addressable devices are.
• Siren / floodlight control — not exposed in this release.
• Camera-side recording configuration — the plugin does not configure the device's own SD-card/NVR recording settings.
• Door lock/unlock — Dahua video-intercom lock relay control is not implemented.
• ONVIF-backchannel talkback fallback — devices that only support two-way audio via an ONVIF backchannel (rather than the native Amcrest/Dahua audio path) are not yet supported.
• Dahua-doorbell G.711A talkback — implemented per the documented codec path but not yet verified against real Dahua-branded doorbell hardware.
• Discovery byte format — the Dahua UDP discovery probe/response parsing is based on the documented protocol and has not yet been validated against a real device capture; manual add remains the reliable fallback if discovery doesn't find your device.