Device Camera¶
The device's physical camera supplies Home Assistant snapshots, motion detection and an optional RTSP video stream. Motion analysis stays on the device. RTSP lets go2rtc, Frigate or VLC watch the same camera over your network.
Note: This is different from the Camera Streams feature, which displays other cameras on your kiosk screen. This documentation covers the physical camera pointing out of the kiosk itself.
Setup¶
Navigate to Settings, then Camera (this same tab is available in the remote admin). This entire feature sits behind a single master switch called Enable camera, which is off by default. Using the camera adds CPU load (roughly 10% while motion detection runs) and generates heat, so the app will not touch the camera until you explicitly opt in.
When you turn the switch on, the app will ask for the Android camera permission. If the switch is on but the permission is missing, a notice with a Grant button will appear right beneath it. If Android has blocked the app from asking for permissions, the notice will direct you to the system app settings instead. In the remote admin, the notice clarifies that the permission dialog will appear on the device screen itself.
For devices that were already using the Dismiss on motion feature before the Camera page existed, the camera was enabled automatically during the upgrade.
Settings¶
| Setting | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Enable camera | off | The master switch. All settings below depend on this being turned on. |
| Camera | Front | Choose Front or Back. This single choice applies to every camera feature. On devices with only one camera, this picker acts as a plain label. |
| Snapshot resolution | 480p | Choose 480p, 720p, or 1080p on the 4:3 ladder. This maps to the nearest resolution the hardware offers. A single 480p frame is approximately 30 KB. |
| Disable snapshots on detection | off | Prevent automatic snapshots triggered by detection while keeping motion, face, presence and gesture detection working. Manual requests and continuous snapshots can still capture images. |
| Continuous snapshots | off | Capture a new snapshot for Home Assistant at a fixed, recurring interval. |
| Snapshot interval | 60 | The time in seconds between snapshots, ranging from 5 to 300. The first frame is captured immediately when the timer starts. |
Snapshots¶
A frame is captured and published to the Camera entity under the following conditions:
- On demand: When you press the Take camera snapshot button in Home Assistant, or Take snapshot in the remote admin.
- On an interval: If Continuous snapshots is turned on.
- On motion: Once per motion session, unless Disable snapshots on detection is turned on. When motion is detected, it captures a single frame upon arrival, rather than a continuous stream of frames while someone stands there.
- When requested: Whenever Home Assistant explicitly asks the camera entity for a picture, ensuring a dashboard card or a system restart never returns a blank image.
Disable snapshots on detection applies to automatic detection captures only. It leaves detection running and does not remove previously captured images. Continuous snapshots, Home Assistant image requests, manual snapshots and RTSP streaming have their own controls.
Only one capture can run at a time; if requests overlap, the system reports that a snapshot is already in progress. The camera is opened solely for the capture and is released immediately afterward. This means interval snapshots only use resources for the capture itself, rather than keeping the camera running permanently.
Capturing a snapshot requires the app to be in the foreground. If a capture is attempted while another app is covering the kiosk, it will report that the camera is unavailable in the background.
Home Assistant fetches the latest frame from the camera entity whenever it needs one, and a fetch triggers a fresh capture. If the camera is disabled, the entity remains active but returns a "Camera off" frame.
Motion Detection¶
The same camera session powers six different features, differing primarily in when the camera is actively running:
| Feature | Where it is found | When the camera runs |
|---|---|---|
| Dismiss on motion | Screensaver settings | Only while the screensaver is showing. |
| Postpone screensaver on motion | Screensaver settings | Permanently while the screen is on. |
| Motion sensor | Camera settings | Permanently while the screen is on, including the Black screensaver. |
| Dismiss on face | Screensaver settings | Only while the screensaver is showing. |
| Postpone screensaver on face | Screensaver settings | Permanently while the screen is on. |
| Show fingers gesture | Gestures | Permanently while the screen is on. |
Here is how the detection features work:
* Dismiss on motion wakes the screen when someone approaches the sleeping kiosk.
* Postpone screensaver on motion extends the wake time: movement in the room resets the idle timer, ensuring the screensaver waits until the room is actually empty (this requires Dismiss on motion to be active).
* Motion sensor exposes motion directly as a Home Assistant binary_sensor, with no screensaver restrictions. A screensaver schedule entry can override Dismiss on motion per time window, allowing an overnight Black entry to keep the camera completely off.
* Dismiss on face (the screensaver's Face detection) shares the same camera session. A lightweight on-device face detector analyzes the frames already sampled by the motion analyzer. This means the frame rate, camera selection, and startup delay settings apply to it as well. To save resources, the face model only runs when the motion grid detects a change, a face was recently seen, or the camera just opened. It runs at most twice a second on a single core, paced to ensure it never consumes more than about a fifth of a core, meaning an empty room costs zero inference processing. If both motion and face detection are on, motion takes precedence.
* The Show fingers gesture also shares this session, utilizing MediaPipe's hand landmarker under the same conditions, active whenever the screen is on and a hand mapping exists.
All six of these features pause during a voice interaction. From the moment a wake word is heard until Voice Satellite returns to listening mode, the camera remains open but the analyzer emits nothing and runs no models. During a voice turn, there are no motion ticks, no face sightings, and no hand reports. This ensures that someone talking to the satellite won't wake or postpone the screensaver, trip the motion sensor, or accidentally fire a hand gesture. It also frees up CPU cores for the voice processing. If a hand was tracked when the turn started, it is considered gone and must be raised again afterward. If a voice turn gets stuck and never ends on the page side, it releases the camera after three minutes.
What happens to the camera during a true screen off depends heavily on your Android version. Older versions generally leave the camera alone. Newer versions (observed on Android 16, and gradually rolling out since Android 11's while in use rules) will actively revoke camera access within seconds of the panel powering off from any app that is not currently visible on screen, unless that app holds a camera type foreground service.
Kiosk Satellite attaches this specific service type to the background listening service whenever the camera permission is granted. Therefore, with background listening enabled, all three motion features can keep watching even through a true screen off.
However, not every vendor respects this exemption. Samsung's One UI on Android 11 (such as the Galaxy Tab A 10.1 generation) will silently suspend the camera seconds after the panel powers off, even if background listening is on. The app detects the stalled frames, logs a warning in the Console, and brings the camera back online the moment the screen turns on, but motion cannot wake a truly dark panel on these specific devices.
This same watchdog monitors a lit screen: if a camera opens but delivers no frames for ten seconds (this same Samsung generation can refuse a reopen at wake when racing the app's return to the foreground, again without an error), the app logs it and attempts to reopen after a short backoff rather than sitting dead. Without background listening enabled, camera revocation happens everywhere, and the camera will automatically rebind at screen on.
To achieve a screen that looks off but keeps every camera feature working perfectly across all devices, use the Black screensaver (which sets the backlight to zero under a black overlay). Use this, or a scheduled Black entry, in situations where Fully Kiosk users would normally use a "fake screen off" feature.
The tuning for these features lives under Camera > Motion Sensor:
| Setting | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Motion sensor | off | The Motion binary_sensor on the ESPHome device. |
| Clear after | 5 | The time in seconds without motion before the sensor reads as clear, ranging from 1 to 300. |
| Motion frame rate | 2 | The number of frames per second the camera analyzes. A lower number is lighter on the CPU; 2 is plenty to notice someone approaching. |
| Motion sensitivity | 70 | Ranges from 1 to 100. A higher number will trip on smaller movements. |
| Startup delay | 0 | The time in seconds to ignore motion immediately after the camera starts, ranging from 0 to 15. This is designed for devices whose physical camera moves as it opens. |
Detection is engineered to be CPU efficient and to work effectively in the dark. Frames are analyzed at the camera's lowest resolution, checking luminance only, on a coarse grid. Each cell learns its own baseline sensor noise, and the app requests the longest exposures the camera offers. This ensures a person crossing a dim room registers without the detector falsely tripping on camera noise. Whole frame light changes are discounted entirely, and the app temporarily suppresses detection for a couple of seconds around its own internal light changes (like screensaver start and stop, screen power toggles, brightness adjustments, and slide transitions) to prevent the kiosk from waking itself up.
Startup delay solves a specific hardware problem: devices whose camera physically moves as it opens (like a phone with a motorized pop up module). As the lens travels into position, that sweeping movement registers as a massive change across the whole frame, rather than a simple lighting shift. None of the standard discounting algorithms can filter it out, which causes the kiosk to immediately dismiss the screensaver that just started the camera. The delay counts from the very first frame and applies to every single path that starts the camera, not just screensavers. Schedule boundaries, the screen turning on, or a tuning change all trigger the same lens deployment. Frames are still tracked as a baseline while the delay runs, ensuring detection is fully sensitive the very second the delay expires. Leave it at 0 on a device with a fixed camera; a few seconds is usually enough for the hardware that requires it.
Two related switches are located elsewhere: with Allow screensaver turned on under Lockdown Mode, Dismiss on motion remains deactivated until the lock lifts. Additionally, the Sendspin player's full screen view only reacts to motion if its own Dismiss "Now Playing" on motion setting is enabled.
RTSP Streaming¶
Open Settings -> Camera -> RTSP Streaming, after Motion Sensor, then turn on Enable RTSP Streaming. The page reveals the stream settings and its URL. The Camera master switch and Android camera permission must also be enabled.
Tap the Stream URL field below Port to copy it. Stream Status shows a green icon while streaming and a gray icon while idle. Connected Clients lists each viewer's IP address, player name when available, connection port, transport and connection duration. The status and client list refresh every two seconds.
| Setting | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Port | 8554 | Connect to rtsp://DEVICE_IP:8554/camera. Choose a free port from 1024 to 65535. |
| Resolution | 480p | 480p, 720p or 1080p. Android picks the closest supported size. Video uses the camera sensor's orientation. |
| Frame rate | 10 fps | Target rate from 5 to 30 fps. Actual delivery depends on the hardware and lighting. |
| Bitrate | 500 kbps | Target H.264 bitrate from 100 to 8000 kbps. |
| Include microphone audio | off | Add 16 kHz mono AAC audio at 32 kbps. Continues when Voice Satellite is muted or Lockdown Mode is on. |
| Require authentication | off | Reveals Username and Password. Both must be set before an authenticated listener starts. |
Use RTSP over TCP in your viewer. The stream contains H.264 video and optional AAC microphone audio. For go2rtc, add the URL as a stream source. Frigate can record the H.264 stream without transcoding it. Authentication uses RTSP Digest. Enter the credentials in your client or use rtsp://USERNAME:PASSWORD@DEVICE_IP:8554/camera, with URL encoding for special characters.
One H.264 encoder serves up to four connected viewers. Hardware encoding is preferred. If no compatible hardware encoder can start, the app tries software encoding, which can use more CPU. It starts when the first authenticated viewer requests video and stops shortly after the last viewer disconnects. Enabling the listener alone does not open the camera or encode video. A recorder that stays connected keeps the encoder running. Slow viewers are disconnected instead of blocking the camera or growing an unlimited queue.
The camera sends video to a SurfaceTexture. A dedicated graphics worker draws those frames upright and unmirrored, matching snapshots, and limits video to the requested frame rate while motion analysis keeps its own cadence. A stream started in portrait uses portrait dimensions. Rotating during a stream fits the image inside its existing dimensions without stretching or cropping. Detection and snapshots continue sharing the camera session. Encoder selection and graphics failures appear in App Logs.
Microphone audio shares the capture used by native wake word detection and voice interactions, including the selected device, channel, gain and echo cancellation settings. The AAC encoder runs on a separate worker only while a viewer requests the audio track. Video-only viewers do not start it. Audio encoding and slow viewers cannot block microphone capture.
RTSP audio is independent of Voice Satellite mute and Lockdown Mode. Turn off Include microphone audio or RTSP Streaming to stop broadcasting the microphone. Android microphone permission still applies. While the dashboard captures audio through the browser, native capture yields and RTSP audio pauses. It resumes after the browser releases its last microphone track. Native voice interactions continue sharing capture without pausing RTSP audio. Stream Status reports audio activity, browser pauses and audio errors separately from video.
Motion and face detection keep their own analysis rates. A voice interaction pauses that analysis while video continues. Snapshots share the same camera session. Hardware that cannot supply all three outputs reports a streaming error and preserves motion and snapshots. Changing the camera or video settings disconnects viewers so they can reconnect with the new configuration.
The status row reports startup errors and the actual encoded resolution. Screen-off support follows the device's Android camera restrictions. A device that refuses camera access while dark may need to wake before a new viewer can connect.
Home Assistant¶
With ESPHome Expose kiosk entities turned on, the camera adds several features to the Kiosk Satellite device:
| Entity | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Camera | camera | Displays the latest snapshot. This snapshot entity stays idle even while the separate RTSP stream is active (read the Camera enabled switch for the camera status). While the camera is off, it displays a "Camera off" frame. The Screenshot camera exists alongside it on every device. |
| Take camera snapshot | button | Captures a fresh frame and hands it directly to Home Assistant. |
| Last camera snapshot | sensor | Shows exactly when the current frame was captured, formatted as a timestamp. This allows an automation to react to a fresh frame arriving. |
| Motion | binary_sensor | Reads motion for the duration of the configured Clear after window, then clears itself. Shows as unknown while the Motion sensor or the camera is off. |
| Camera enabled | switch | The remote master toggle. This exists whenever the hardware does, even with the camera off, allowing an automation to arm the camera only when a room wide sensor indicates someone is home. |
| RTSP Streaming | switch | Enables or disables RTSP using the saved stream settings. Appears under Configuration. |
| Screensaver motion detection | switch | The remote Dismiss on motion toggle. Pairs nicely with the Camera enabled switch for staged wake ups. |
| Screensaver face detection | switch | The remote Dismiss on face toggle. Motion maintains precedence on the device, allowing an automation to flip the motion switch to use faces by day and raw motion by night. |
| Camera facing | select | The remote Camera pick: Front or Back, applying to every camera feature at once. Switching it captures a fresh frame from the newly selected camera a moment later, allowing an automation to flip a phone to its back camera for use as a baby monitor, and back again. Like the switches, it functions even with the camera off. Only available on devices with both cameras. |
Disabling the camera keeps every one of these entities in place: the camera simply shows a "Camera off" frame, and the Motion sensor reads unknown until the camera is re-enabled. The entity list only changes if the hardware itself changes. This means an automation that arms the camera when someone is home and disarms it when they leave will never force the device to re-register with Home Assistant. On camera-less hardware, none of these entities will exist, though the Screenshot camera will be available either way.
The RTSP Streaming switch appears under Configuration and controls the same setting as the local and remote settings pages. Turning it off disconnects viewers and stops the RTSP server. Turning it on starts the listener using the saved settings. The Camera master switch and Android camera permission still apply.
To display the RTSP video in Home Assistant, add the Generic Camera integration. Set Stream Source to the copied RTSP URL and RTSP transport protocol to TCP. Enter the RTSP username and password if authentication is enabled. You can leave Still Image URL empty when Home Assistant's stream integration is loaded. This creates a separate camera entity. The ESPHome Camera entity continues to provide JPEG snapshots because Home Assistant's ESPHome camera integration does not accept an RTSP stream source.
Sharing the Camera¶
Android gives one session camera access at a time. Motion detection, snapshots and RTSP share that session so taking a snapshot does not reopen the camera or reset exposure.
A few extremely low end devices cannot run motion analysis and JPEG capture in the same session. On those devices, motion wins, and snapshots will report the camera as busy while motion is running. If another app entirely is holding the camera open, captures will fail until that app lets go.
Hardware Notes¶
- No usable camera: Some custom ROMs (such as LineageOS ports on Echo Show hardware) have no camera support at all, even if the physical hardware is present. The Camera page will state this up front, and no camera entities will be published. If a device has a physical privacy shutter, closing it disconnects the camera completely and looks identical to the app.
- Single camera: The Front/Back picker turns into a simple label naming the one camera the device has. The app automatically handles devices whose ROM falsely advertises cameras they do not possess. It also handles camera HALs that pad their lists with a phantom camera whose lens facing cannot be read (common on cheap Unisoc tablets) by skipping the phantom and using the real camera. Failed captures will report a real error instead of simply hanging.
The Remote Admin¶
The remote admin's Camera tab mirrors every setting available on the device and adds a Latest snapshot panel. This panel shows the newest frame, when it was taken, and provides a Take snapshot button. The panel displays the cached frame and refreshes itself automatically while open; merely viewing the panel never triggers a new capture. The same frame is available at GET /api/camera/snapshot for anything else that might want it (see the Remote API).
Privacy¶
- Motion analysis happens entirely locally on the device. Motion frames are never stored or transmitted; only the fact that motion occurred leaves the app.
- Snapshots go to Home Assistant over ESPHome and to authorized remote admin clients. RTSP video is available only when enabled and requested by a viewer. RTSP traffic is not encrypted, even with authentication enabled.
- The Enable webcam access setting located under Web Content is completely unrelated. That setting governs whether the dashboard web page itself may use the camera, not this specific feature.