Core: Skybell HD Camera

[Mark612]

Skybell HD camera seems to no longer load.

All other skybell features work fine.

Current version 0.80.3

Worked fine in 0.77.1. However, was not able to successfully launch the UI after downgrading back to 0.77.1 to re-confirm. Turned on info logging on camera, and no errors were shown.

May be a Skybell issue.

RaspberryPI installation.

skybell:
  username: xxx
  password: yyy
light:
  - platform: skybell

camera:
# Skybell HD Doorbell
    - platform: skybell

[FuzzyMistborn]

Can confirm, I'm not seeing the camera shot show up in my UI either on .80.2. I was on .79.x for a while, wondering if it's a Skybell issue.

[rafale77]

Having the same problem. The switches of the component seem to work. Just not the camera shots.

[markpuls]

Same problem here in 80.3.

[StephanO1990]

I have the exact same problem. Tested with version 0.79.3

[fgorbat]

having the same problem since 0.80.0

[FuzzyMistborn]

I think it's clear this isn't related to what version of HASS but rather the Skybell component. I think @MisterWil is the Skybell component maintainer? There's a github for the integration as well here: https://github.com/MisterWil/skybellpy

[kmlucy]

Same problem here. I've just noticed it since 0.80.0, but I don't know that that is the cause.

[jaybrothers2000]

I'm having the issue on 0.81.2.

[rafale77]

Would be interesting to test a prior release. I will try that in a couple of days. This would help identify whether it is a hass or api change which caused the problem

[CodebyADHawk]

For what it's worth I am running both HA (0.81.1), and SmartThings side by side right now. Both have my Skybell integrated, but since recently, niether platform can pull images from my doorbell.

Seems like it might be an issue with Skybell's third party integrations in general.

[GaryOkie]

Thanks for that additional info ADHawk. Yep, it practically confirms there's been a Skybell API change of some sort.

@MisterWil - have you had any opportunity to examine this issue any closer? We would sure greatly appreciate any update you can provide.

[MisterWil]

The device info contains a URL to get the most recent image. The URL was just a temporarily signed AWS S3 resource that when visited could immediately return the most recent Skybell device image. This URL is still returned, however instead of returning an image it is returning an error.

For this URL:

https://v3-production-devices-avatar.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/5abc5a44b9f9760006a502b0/1539808339449-3214.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=ASIAVX5YOCNYO3S6YD3Q&Expires=1541196810&Signature=2El5u5DYSAWhkKG3%2FgaElcFuP60%3D&response-content-type=image%2Fjpeg&x-amz-security-token=FQoGZXIvYXdzEN%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2FwEaDNcZdFAFbL2llY03rSKeBORHu%2BYsy9z1iaUb8GIs2kyiIrpZXmJ%2FpyNce5nn6%2BXhFdu3zeCB7kpHRTPg9wy0QHNZfYlFIVpujlkzk9ELYkY3LjToqJXeqJy2nX4wRvp%2FVkHSDuK56wsYPqZqiy43ZpLDGrhzWMhYWY8gzgnm4nVs7iq25VsFVkdZoLHIyDiqdnfAyv4VCNKj3ka9XTw8rTDjWD0qAxVKPm%2BmjwEbSW5Kx%2FKH8HdOK4h2CB5YLdTBFTE0ddZZY2wjt1bUTES%2FXOJL43NcKA7fqQz5atl9%2BV%2BUqSvY7jqpiYTRVQmeOU99x6%2BZ55p7b7T2xZ1dVv3K1uRLLFJTwxX6r0NBLJ3PctaNPaXkll9YR4bC%2FaCR43qO7J1KWhAmdyqSrxLODjfe%2BDX3WcPK6aRcfH98tE5wU9NXf6eNx6wJFvFrgP17gNGRIDfIeI7Zq%2BuLCduEiMWdVyF%2FTyECLTUO4XJYAA24qd2p0yXaOxXKJGgY5IFLrwM5SbQqBmRuGVwy589QQFxM2BrqH7jd6hc6Wh2%2FJnl%2B2Du2fXorlIT9G7WdC2ZSlmZEhukcEQfc5kPkqkGUArD%2BNNocnjFl2Y%2BvtpS6f8s%2BnztsXATcvu75QBIfMkHmQjiSx%2BmTBY%2BFKEP4VbjX4JqjGeUjvRFCBAPrlwr90nyCYz6GYqyj2G%2BdDWxHxxi1vO6Xk3rbPwjHSWA2voDXJgI9O7MDhqMMzPgkioHogHwvKN%2BB894F

It is returning this error:

<Error>
<Code>InvalidToken</Code>
<Message>
The provided token is malformed or otherwise invalid.
</Message>
<Token-0>
FQoGZXIvYXdzENn//////////wEaDCWv4ZVXVUsFdHqPISKeBAxMR6PW oMfMRsrOpk3p0AOKgaHnpDFNDMiafqnxeapW2t845L6yLnZabo cODEsStl3L3cV92ekg0/0Q8UhUGmeXFjk3RSCB/ini35nLA6/3ZWI1Y60EZqJ nfeOU0RvuWjtHJwtKSuyW7bPDyPBWfNazXzgl9MI5wQSyPZnIr 3VDWwWOL/dRfSrFW5TpfdBkPP0M43nz dEFaY8m5q/8RGg2x6QDfXpURVf29O0HmLDDS27XCvnEcPsSxzFwsigwjkKdR5JUtcaKljhlEq0LrQLXX KLJuQ1eLKYfmVtidhVhPQaqhRyyOuXxENhIKxux2dWe4kzm7Y6AkunliR/XtdkJ8eFXBZ3Vy/n0BJHdQYxZSllNYUFbNIBk6kAyjlLaNVsb6 w107FRBd/bxnziJhyDDJVoSURgHyG JlJO51iXiB9h9fvkinASthtXYxY3HonDtKct mAD1cWBX6D2V4E4YmwbCNv41TyP9CqTsfz8sfXUxlAl4GSo0ayN028SeZ7yLON pM3xpXKnwV3DmBvka27vKsH6 zqLnscYzdvUqRVSgji6xlFwnlAYDAIJjpGJKo2SVIPRqriZehUhj5199kvMceWsLwCqH7sK/K6EUUQdBxZKyGGfgG BZPaYPwcGbMXqyJI/7OyKEFGdBHjTux6aGpKytFyPmdKVw/jQDMdhKl6jqPvUCUL88aBxNXpEmlSj9Zv4KNbp8d4F
</Token-0>
<RequestId>3A878AD6F9FB0226</RequestId>
<HostId>
T4RiYjM2brYavxNWhART5lDLPMfmeso6ht75LOB6Qmx9zUX0jHeauLiDZ3A3U5uvnkQYuPFYW8c=
</HostId>
</Error>

I'm guessing that something changed on Skybells back-end that broke their formatting of this temporary resource, but it didn't break in their app. Or perhaps the app is adding some additional data or doing some processing that doesn't cause this issue.

Unless someone can immediately notice what's wrong with the URL, I'll need to investigate further when I get a chance.

[nhorvath]

I was doing some poking around and we should probably substitute the latest activity "media" url in the mean time.

[trisk]

Have you tried stripping the x-amz-security-token from the request?
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/RESTAuthentication.html says

The query string request authentication method doesn't require any special HTTP headers. Instead, the required authentication elements are specified as query string parameters:
Query String Parameter Name | Example Value | Description
-- | -- | --
AWSAccessKeyId | AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE | Your AWS access key ID. Specifies the AWS secret access key used to sign the request and, indirectly, the identity of the developer making the request.
Expires | 1141889120 | The time when the signature expires, specified as the number of seconds since the epoch (00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970). A request received after this time (according to the server) will be rejected.
Signature | vjbyPxybdZaNmGa%2ByT272YEAiv4%3D | The URL encoding of the Base64 encoding of the HMAC-SHA1 of StringToSign.

[kmlucy]

@nhorvath Where did you substitute the media URL? Until the upstream issue gets resolved, I'd rather have a semi recent image than none at all.

[nhorvath]

I didn't actually do it I'm away on vacation and didn't have time in the
week leading up to it. I did see that requests get made to get all the
activities. It would be not very difficult to sort them by date and grab
the url to the latest.

On Wed, Nov 14, 2018, 2:21 PM Kyle Lucy <[email protected] wrote:

@nhorvath https://github.com/nhorvath Where did you substitute the
media URL? Until the upstream issue gets resolved, I'd rather have a semi
recent image than none at all.

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[GaryOkie]

Has anyone made any progress figuring this out?

@MisterWil - Are you aware that Skybell has an official API and partner program "Skybell-Connect"?

By working closely with our partners, we can customize and shape user experiences that are truly meaningful for customers. Working with partners also allows us to make SkyBell HD more accessible and powerful to more users. Together, we are bringing users a new level of home security that was not possible before now.

The integration capabilities seem to be really complete. I have no idea if this is free or if they are willing to talk to you on behalf of Ubiquiti/Home Assistant to become a partner, but it's worth a shot. Maybe Paulus can initiate the conversation?

Thanks!

[nhorvath]

I tried getting in touch with them for Skybell Connect and they
never responded.

On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 11:07 AM GaryOkie [e-mail] wrote:

Has anyone made any progress figuring this out?

@MisterWil https://github.com/MisterWil - Are you aware that Skybell
has an official API and partner program "Skybell-Connect"?
http://www.skybell.com/skybell-connect/ http://url

By working closely with our partners, we can customize and shape user
experiences that are truly meaningful for customers. Working with partners
also allows us to make SkyBell HD more accessible and powerful to more
users. Together, we are bringing users a new level of home security that
was not possible before now.

The integration capabilities seem to be really complete. I have no idea if
this is free or if they are willing to talk to you on behalf of
Ubiquiti/Home Assistant to become a partner, but it's worth a shot. Maybe
Paulus can initiate the conversation?

Thanks!

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[nhorvath]

I don't know if a bunch of you flooded their tech support email or what but
I got a semi desperate sounding reply to my original ticket about it. To
summarize, tech support can't help with engineering questions or skybell
connect, we should stop emailing them about it and contact the proper
people. I asked if I could be directed to the proper people and didn't get
a direct answer but he did say that it was escalated up to the CEO
(presumably when I originally asked about it) and that he would remind his
management about it.

On Tue, Nov 27, 2018, 11:28 AM Nick Horvath <[email protected] wrote:

I tried getting in touch with them for Skybell Connect and they
never responded.

On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 11:07 AM GaryOkie [e-mail]
wrote:

Has anyone made any progress figuring this out?

@MisterWil https://github.com/MisterWil - Are you aware that Skybell
has an official API and partner program "Skybell-Connect"?
http://www.skybell.com/skybell-connect/ http://url

By working closely with our partners, we can customize and shape user
experiences that are truly meaningful for customers. Working with partners
also allows us to make SkyBell HD more accessible and powerful to more
users. Together, we are bringing users a new level of home security that
was not possible before now.

The integration capabilities seem to be really complete. I have no idea
if this is free or if they are willing to talk to you on behalf of
Ubiquiti/Home Assistant to become a partner, but it's worth a shot. Maybe
Paulus can initiate the conversation?

Thanks!

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[GaryOkie]

Hey Nick - thanks for the update! (BTW- I have never contacted them.) That's sad that support wouldn't refer you directly to the "proper people" involved with Skybell Connect. If you have a LinkedIn account, you can find the CEO, Joseph Scalisi and send messages if so inclined. :-)

I think this might go better if Ubiquiti Networks or Nabu Casa were to make contact with the CEO to engage as an integration partner, but I'm sure appreciative of your attempts!

[nhorvath]

I guess software development is a smaller world than I thought, I'm actually a 3rd level connection of his according to linked in. Sent him a message and will let you know if I get a reply. I also sent a connection request to the person at Skybell I have a 2nd degree connection with in hopes of making the chain to him closer.

[Mark612]

Great news, and hope the company is open to reviewing the issue.

It is worth noting that some purchase the product for the API. The market share requiring an API would be a useful number to them. I certainly would not have purchased Skybell if not integrated with HA. Purchasing and then seeing it not work the next day was discouraging. Unfortunately I will return it and go with other products for my other homes if not fixed.

[nhorvath]

I'm with you @Mark612 home assistant integration was a big selling point for me too. I might try and give it a shot switching over to the last activity url soon.

[GaryOkie]

Thanks Nick - I hope your effort turns into a usable workaround in the short term.

What's discouraging is that even though SmartThings is an official partner with Skybell Connect their API integration appears to be having the same problem fetching images. This was noted a month ago by @CodebyADHawk in this thread.

I found this post on the Smartthings forum with multiple users reporting the same issue starting sometime in October. I have not seen any followup that this has been fixed or is even being addressed.

I also found an older post on the ST forum in which Andrew Thomas (Skybell's chief revenue officer and co-founder) personally replied to an issue...

If you’re experiencing any issues with the integration, you can email assistant.[email protected] and we’ll work with smart things to fix it.

[nhorvath]

No response yet, but I did switch over to the last activity url and it works in my dev homeassistant. In the past I've been able to override components using custom_components directory but I can't get that to work on my real ha right now. Anyway I opened a PR for the new skybellpy version, unfortunately because of the release cycle of HA we probably won't see it in a release version until 0.85 in 3 weeks.

[MisterWil]

Note that if you're tech-savvy enough you can make the same changes as in #19100 locally, restart HASS, and it should automatically pull the new version of the library for you in the mean time.

This is kinda difficult if running HASS in a docker, especially on HASSOS.

Thanks for making these changes @nhorvath!

[nhorvath]

@MisterWil @GaryOkie @Mark612 @kmlucy @rafale77 @trisk @FuzzyMistborn @CodebyADHawk @jaybrothers2000 @markpuls @StephanO1990 @fgorbat This is working again (using image from last activity) in HA 0.84.0 which should be pushed to Hassio shortly. You can manually update from hassio ssh command line with hassio ha update --options version=0.84.0

No word on Skybell Connect access.

PS if you have any mqtt_json components there's a breaking change in 84, you need to rename them from:
platform: mqtt_json
to

platform: mqtt
schema: json

[FuzzyMistborn]

Thanks, I manually updated a few days ago and it is working great. Use Tasker and AutoInput to update before some of my automations fire involving sending an update. I almost like using the last activity image better. If we find a way to get the old way to work again, keeping both options somehow might be nice.

[nhorvath]

Without access to the API getting the periodic images back is unlikely. I will keep on them for skybell connect.

[GaryOkie]

I wonder if the IFTTT integration with Skybell (and HA) could be used to trigger a video record so that the "last activity" is on demand to get an updated image? I've never used IFTTT before but signed up to review existing Skybell recipes and see that recording video on certain triggers is possible now.

The HA/IFTTT component can send an IFTTT event to an appropriate Skybell video record recipe. The existing Lovelace picture entity card looks like it could be used to trigger the image update via "tap_action" to call the IFTTT service.

Of course all this would be unnecessary if Skybell would work with Nick, but as long as we're implementing workarounds, is this too convoluted to pursue? Can you think of any other way to trigger a new "last activity" via HA?

[FuzzyMistborn]

Oh nice find @GaryOkie on IFTTT recording. You can set it to trigger every hour or day at specific times, that's probably what i'll do instead of relying on Tasker.

[nhorvath]

@GaryOkie last activity should include on demand actions as well so your workaround should work to update the image as long as you don't mind a bunch of on demand things in your history in the phone app.

[thoukydides]

I suspect that @trisk might have been onto something with:

Have you tried stripping the x-amz-security-token from the request?

My homebridge-skybell project just uses an http GET of the avatar URL without adding any of the special headers required for other API calls (see skybell_device.js line 217). This is still working correctly without needing any tricks to trigger recordings. The resulting avatar images are less than an hour old.

The url returned by either of:

• GET https://cloud.myskybell.com/api/v3/subscriptions/<Subscription_ID>/avatar/
• GET https://cloud.myskybell.com/api/v3/devices/<Device_ID>/avatar/

already contains the necessary AWSAccessKeyId. Even a simple wget of the returned url works for me.

[nhorvath]

We were pulling the avatar url from a json response from a different api
url. It's possible one broke but not the other. I can look into it in the
future, but I kind of like the last activity image. It could be a potential
configuration item in home assistant.

On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 9:24 AM Alexander Thoukydides <
[email protected]> wrote:

I suspect that @trisk https://github.com/trisk might have been onto
something with:

Have you tried stripping the x-amz-security-token from the request?

My homebridge-skybell https://github.com/thoukydides/homebridge-skybell
project just uses an http GET of the avatar URL without adding any of the
special headers required for other API calls (see skybell_device.js
https://github.com/thoukydides/homebridge-skybell/blob/master/skybell_device.js#L217
line 217). This is still working correctly without needing any tricks to
trigger recordings. The resulting avatar images are less than an hour old.

The url returned by either of:

• GET https://cloud.myskybell.com/api/v3/subscriptions/
  /avatar/
• GET https://cloud.myskybell.com/api/v3/devices//avatar/

already contains the necessary AWSAccessKeyId. Even a simple wget of the
returned url works for me.

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[Mark612]

Fantastic progress. Just my 2 cents. I like the idea of having both. Last activity, and most recent.

[thoukydides]

We were pulling the avatar url from a json response from a different api url. It's possible one broke but not the other.

@nhorvath, yes, that appears to be the case.

Using GET https://cloud.myskybell.com/api/v3/devices/, which is what skybellby was using, returns an avatar url that was last updated on the 17th October 2018. Unsurprisingly, attempting to retrieve that gives a 404 Not Found error.

It appears that only the .../avatar/ APIs give a recently updated and valid url now.

[nhorvath]

Bad news...

Nick, 

The engineering team is not available to speak on this issue as they do not control or grant access to use of the API. I've asked upper management and although the inquiry was appreciated, due to plans above my pay grade it seems   access to our API will not be granted. I will let you know if things change in the future. 

Thank you for your inquiry and take care.


Kindly, 
Justin
SkyBell Technologies, Inc.| Technical Services Manager

[nhorvath]

FYI watchers https://github.com/MisterWil/skybellpy/pull/8
Thanks @thoukydides