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GenAI Camera Notifications

AI-powered motion detection summaries and door open/close alerts with camera snapshots.

Overview

When a camera detects motion or a door opens, the system captures a snapshot, runs it through an LLM for analysis, and delivers a rich push notification to your phone — all within seconds.

Two AppDaemon apps work together to make this happen:

Detection Summary

The detection_summary_app is the backbone of the camera notification pipeline:

  1. Trigger — a camera's motion sensor fires
  2. Capture — HA takes a snapshot from the camera
  3. Score — the snapshot is sent to a multimodal LLM (Gemini, OpenAI, or Ollama) which describes what it sees
  4. Publish — the summary bundle (image + AI description + metadata) is written to the shared filesystem and an HA event is fired

The detection_summary_viewer provides a Lovelace dashboard card for browsing historical detection bundles — useful for reviewing what happened while you were away.

Door Notifications

The door_notify app listens for door open/close events (both binary_sensor and cover entities) and sends push notifications. It optionally attaches the most recent AI detection summary from a nearby camera, giving you context like "Person walking up driveway" alongside the "Garage door opened" alert.

Key features:

  • Consolidation window — rapid open/close events are batched into a single notification
  • AI attachment — when a detection summary is available for the door's camera, the AI description and snapshot are included in the notification
  • Multiple doors — each door gets its own app instance with independent config

Architecture

Camera motion sensor
  │
  ▼
detection_summary_app
  ├─ captures snapshot via HA
  ├─ sends to multimodal LLM
  ├─ writes bundle to /media/
  └─ fires HA event
        │
        ├──▶ detection_summary_viewer (dashboard card)
        │
        └──▶ door_notify (attaches to push notification)
                │
                ▼
           Mobile push notification
           (image + AI description)

Home Assistant YAML

The HA side of camera notifications lives in:

  • home-assistant/cards/detection-summary/ — Lovelace cards for garage and front door detection viewers
  • home-assistant/automations/open-close-door/ — door state change automations
  • home-assistant/automations/garage/ — garage-specific automations

Configuration

See the app READMEs for full configuration:

  • appdaemon/apps/detection_summary_app/README.md
  • appdaemon/apps/detection_summary_viewer/README.md
  • appdaemon/apps/door_notify/README.md